90s = my cool childhood where I got lightly ostracized/bullied for broken english but otherwise passed as white barely middle class and did culvasack shit with other randos. I have no formal understanding or frame of reference in relation to anything bad before 911 except that one+ time(s) (alot) somebody was mean to me on the playground.
I actually still don’t know anything bad that happened between 1990 and 911, but my contemporaries are apparently immune to learning about all the bad things that happened between 1776-1990 and 911-2023. Apparently learning is just too much.
Growing up in the 90s I’d hear random splotches of bad stuff happening here and there. People starving in Somalia, the Waco massacre, the Bosnian genocide, Oklahoma City bombing. I just vaguely remember news reports of people dying in these incidents, but not really understanding why.
In 1997-98, when I was 13 I particularly remember hearing about this dude named Saddam Hussein wanting to make germ weapons to drop on us. My dad reassured me that it was all fake, that the media just wants to scare us. I took his word for it. Then 9/11 happened a few years later and he was suddenly convinced that Saddam was stockpiling WMDs to use against us. I was older and knew better, but no amount of reassuring from me was ever able to convince him otherwise.
I feel like 9/11 just broke a lot of peoples’ brains.
90s = my cool childhood where I got lightly ostracized/bullied for broken english but otherwise passed as white barely middle class and did culvasack shit with other randos. I have no formal understanding or frame of reference in relation to anything bad before 911 except that one+ time(s) (alot) somebody was mean to me on the playground.
I actually still don’t know anything bad that happened between 1990 and 911, but my contemporaries are apparently immune to learning about all the bad things that happened between 1776-1990 and 911-2023. Apparently learning is just too much.
The illegal dissolutions of the USSR and Yugoslavia are two big ones.
The Rwandan genocide for one is a pretty notable example of a bad thing that happened between 1990 and 2001
Growing up in the 90s I’d hear random splotches of bad stuff happening here and there. People starving in Somalia, the Waco massacre, the Bosnian genocide, Oklahoma City bombing. I just vaguely remember news reports of people dying in these incidents, but not really understanding why.
In 1997-98, when I was 13 I particularly remember hearing about this dude named Saddam Hussein wanting to make germ weapons to drop on us. My dad reassured me that it was all fake, that the media just wants to scare us. I took his word for it. Then 9/11 happened a few years later and he was suddenly convinced that Saddam was stockpiling WMDs to use against us. I was older and knew better, but no amount of reassuring from me was ever able to convince him otherwise.
I feel like 9/11 just broke a lot of peoples’ brains.