Your views on America and the world pre and post 9/11: Did they change?

[PwrdOn]

The poll results surprise me, but then again there is always a tendency to look back into the past with nostalgia. When questions like this come up, I can't help but think of the window through which we al receive information about the world around us. That has definitely changed since 9/11.

Due to the advent of smartphones there has been a huge change in the way news gets distributed and what counts as news. During the 1990s news came mainly from just the main TV networks and newspapers. The internet existed, sure, but it was not the beast it is now. Most of the more soft news stories from random people were was separated out as opinion. Now news can come from anyone with a smartphone. And there is just a ton more information available for consumption, its not filtered like it was before. Plus there is always the chance that what we see is faked by someone with an agenda, moreso than ever with the technology. This leads to perceptions that there is a ton more bad news and bad stuff going on out there, whereas before it was just fewer bad things being reported because there was a lot less reporting in general. No 24/7 news cycle.

Anyway, no change in my opinion. America has always been a land of contrasts of good and bad. Perception comes from what you focus on.

Again, I really want people to pinpoint what time period exactly they're referring to when they're talking about this supposed golden age of unbiased and objective media. Oh sure, the news media of the past wrapped itself in more of an air of somber professionalism, but the actual stories they were running were no less sensationalist or misleading than they are now. If anything, the expansion of the internet has made it a lot easier for people to fact check sources if they so choose. The reason that most people don't bother to do this is because it's not so much the media's fault for poisoning people's minds, but that people's minds were already poisoned to begin with and the media is simply telling them what they want to hear. It's not that seeing a bunch of random Facebook memes is turning your aunt into a lunatic racist, it's just that she was already racist to begin with and the reason those memes exist is that there are way more people like her out there than we'd like to admit.

[Scott Taylor]

Again, I really want people to pinpoint what time period exactly they're referring to when they're talking about this supposed golden age of unbiased and objective media. Oh sure, the news media of the past wrapped itself in more of an air of somber professionalism, but the actual stories they were running were no less sensationalist or misleading than they are now. If anything, the expansion of the internet has made it a lot easier for people to fact check sources if they so choose. The reason that most people don't bother to do this is because it's not so much the media's fault for poisoning people's minds, but that people's minds were already poisoned to begin with and the media is simply telling them what they want to hear. It's not that seeing a bunch of random Facebook memes is turning your aunt into a lunatic racist, it's just that she was already racist to begin with and the reason those memes exist is that there are way more people like her out there than we'd like to admit.

Well, there's the famous Watergate stuff with Nixon, that sowed quite a bit of distrust in the government (setting the stage for more trust in the media). Cable TV was a big moment for media, as it led to actual dedicated news channels for the first time ever. Rodney King was a huge moment for citizen journalism, probably the biggest step in that direction. The OJ Simpson trial was a big moment for the mass media, leading to formation of larger news networks and the true birth of the 24/7 news cycle. You could probably figure that reality TV had some kind of influence to get us to now, a time when people feel like they can get as good or better information from citizen journalism as from mass media. So maybe that would have begun with Survivor?

BTW I did not mean to blame the mass media for anything, and did not say that in my post. They're just people with jobs, same as anybody else. The statement was more intended to point out that because we have a lot more citizen journalism in our media sources now, our news is quite diluted. You can form almost any opinion about a story or topic and then google your way to finding support for that particular opinion. Its trickier than ever to really learn what truly is going on. Orwell's concept of newspeak is literally everywhere. But in other ways, its the same as it was back in the 1800s, when you could support any opinion just by subscribing to the correct news rag.

Not sure if I could pinpoint a time when modern citizen journalism through smartphones and internet mass media took off so much exactly. Maybe sometime around when the iPhone 4 came about in the late 2000s.

[Captain Nostalgia]

Stayed the same.

From an American bodybag count, Iraq was far better than Vietnam, arguably both are quagmires, unless you felt Saddam was a legitimate threat to global security.

911 and Pearl Harbour are close to being equivalent in terms of the American death toll, but the occupation of Afghanistan's bodycount pales in comparision to the war against Japan on both sides.

The crash of 2008 was bad, but not near as bad as the Great Depression that kicked off in 1929.


The emergence of a new far left and right after the collapse of the Soviet Union & Nazi Germany were probably inevitable, these things don't go away. (Ie; Wokeism to the rise of Trumpism)

The hollowing out the working class and the de-industrialization of the United States accelerated with the rise of globalization and China, but that process had already started under Reagan.

Overall (GDP debt ratio concerns aside) I remain pretty optimistic that United States has many more prosperous decades ahead.

[DrNewGod]

I became more conscious of just how oppressive society had been to anyone other that white males as LGBTQ, women and POC began demanding to be heard. It had been going on before 9/11, but I began to take notice after, so yeah, my view dimmed.

[QuinnFillory]

Here is another article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...DHP&li=BBnb7Kz