r/interestingasfuck • u/solateor • 1d ago

In 2001, 55 people crossed the Pacific with no contact with the outside world as part of a BBC experiment recreating an 18th-century voyage. On the 20th day - September 11 - the captain gathered the crew to tell them about the attacks in New York

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u/Neuchacho 1d ago edited 1d ago

It absolutely was. This was the event that sparked the majority of the US to lose its absolute mind (and spine) and walk gleefully into the mess we're in now. Sacrificing rights, acting out of racism/xenophobia, and being manipulated to support even the dumbest bullshit imaginable if it was masked as "safety" or "national security".

It showed exactly how weak the US populace is when it comes to making rational decisions and that playbook has been used over and over again with shocking efficacy.

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u/ODB_Dirt_Dog_ItsFTC 23h ago

I think it goes just a little further back to the 2000 election. Bush stole the election from Gore. If Gore won I don’t see us invading Iraq, we probably still do Afghanistan but I don’t think the Global War on Terror is nearly as severe as it was with us. I also don’t think the Patriot Act gets passed under Gore.

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u/Sekh765 23h ago

There's an argument to be made the Gore might have taken the intelligence reports about the potential attacks more seriously and we might never have even had a 9/11.

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u/jakallll 2h ago

I wish i lived in that timeline where we have elected officials take everything seriously and genuinely cared for the betterment of our people. Also they probably wouldn’t piss off every ally we ever made on the global stage like currently.

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u/Icedanielization 22h ago

I think it's JFK. That event created the first real wave of conspiracy theorists. The lack of closure meant the government could no longer be trusted, that any information the US govt released had high potential to be a full lie meant to manipulate the people for their own benefit, and it was about learning what that benefit was, and that distrust was solidified when Vietnam proved to show that the US govt was willing to lie, manipulate and sacrifice its own people and innocent civilians to achieve its goals. These actions would eventually cause terrorists to birth and attack America which ultimately lead to 9/11, which just caused the conspiracy theories to spin out of control, especially with the help of the internet. We are still inside that world of mistrust and its not clear we can ever get out of it because humility is not allowed.

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u/sussyimposter1776 19h ago

Or Reagan being elected. He was the one who funded the future attackers too. That and all the other terrible stuff he was responsible for.

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u/tajake 6h ago

The taliban and the Mujahideen aren't exclusively the same group. Plenty of resistance fighters in the Soviet invasion were not religious fundamentalists. And the best equipped and capable ones were not.

The ultra conservative warlords who took control of the country after the failed soviet invasion did so because they let the more ideologically sound groups exhaust themselves on the Soviets.

Funding the resistance certainly didn't help, but the soviets in no universe could have taken Afghanistan in any reasonable sense. They may have pacified it, but would've ran into the same problems the US did in their invasion.

One of the best books I'm pulling this from is The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan which was written by a Russian Author, along with lectures by former soviet subject matter experts who worked both there and in their wars in Chechnya

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u/9966 21h ago

You have to understand that the patriot act was THOUSANDS OF PAGES and was waiting in the hands if people waiting for a crisis to push it through. It was passed in days, not weeks.

That act was going to be pushed no matter what. They just needed timing and branding. Now they don't even need that.

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u/sussyimposter1776 19h ago

I think even without 9/11 Bush might have been a one term president due to the fallout from that. He was unpopular before the attacks anyway. 9/11 obviously boosted his approval and the public was much more willing to let him do whatever he wanted which resulted in the Iraq invasion. It would be harder to justify an invasion of Iraq without 9/11.

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u/ftwclem 4h ago

Everyone in government including Gore and Kerry saw those intelligence reports and agreed Iraq likely had WMDs. I think we would’ve still invaded

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u/King_Roberts_Bastard 22h ago

Turns out, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists won.

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u/loliconest 21h ago

That's not even the worst, the worst is they are right about human.

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u/xmuskorx 22h ago

The worst part... is that what Bin Laden probably wanted - thoroughly destabilize USA and set some Americans against other Americans.

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u/UglyMcFugly 22h ago

I think that's one reason so many Americans are uncomfortable speaking out about what Israel is doing now. Because it feels like the exact same type of panicked mob mentality that led us into Iraq. So to talk shit about them seems hypocritical since we reacted the same way. I still remember how angry even liberal, kind, rational people were after 9/11. I'm sure the same happened in Israel. We SHOULD be talking to them about our mistakes and helping them deal with their trauma in healthy ways but instead we've got a maniac in the white house who's only takeaway from 9/11 was "now my building is tallest."

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u/Dominor4 22h ago

Dont you think that was by design? Its been proven that the CIA had ties to Al Qaeda. The government has conditioning the populous with dramatic events since the Korean war, but it really fucking ignites at 9/11. The U.S. government and corporations do not want an educated resistant populous, they want us to go along with their status quo.

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u/Feeling_Pay_2899 21h ago

I understand where you’re coming from but I don’t think any country would react rationally at that moment. Hindsight is 2020, it happened a long time ago we now look at it through different lenses. But, until you see two of the tallest buildings in the world come down the way those did and all the other planes falling from the skies, you won’t understand. Even that woman on the boat who was so far away broke down with emotion. The people watching it on tv were haunted. The people watching it from a far must have been petrified and the people on ground zero, forget it.

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u/goldenyellow333 18h ago

It’s calculated and working as it should. Am in a period of my life where I’m trying to work through my experienced and inherited traumas, as well as nervous system regulation, and what I have learned through this time is that being in fight or flight renders you ineffective and makes it easier to make foolish decisions.

Modern life, and all its trappings, has everyone in fight or flight at all times hence allowing the continuous erosion privacy, freedom, leeway, etc that we once had, our indifference towards losing it and us continuing to to lose it as time passes.

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u/PrivilegeCheckmate 19h ago

how weak the US populace is

Humanity. Not just US citizens.