No Stupid Questions

I don’t know about 9/11, but I feel like the US has been creeping towards another Oklahoma City for some time now.

I think it definitely will, but it will probably be carried out by domestic terrorist Nazis er uh, I mean "white nationalists"

I get that 9/11 is a big cultural event for you guys, but you also have mass shootings like every other day..

Gonna be civil unrest. I really don't see a different outcome with the right wing screeching hatred 24/7.

Pretty broad question.

A massive terror attack? I consider that unlikely.

A generation-defining historical event? We had one in Covid.

A mass casualty event? Again, Covid.

An excuse to wage war on another country, remove American rights, consolidate government power, and enrich certain people? I think that's quite possible. It worked extremely well for that purpose once.

(note I'm not one of those "9/11 was an inside job" conspiracy nuts, I just think there were some very smart, very greedy, and very evil people who seized the opportunity of 9/11 to effect the awful stuff)

at its peak (which lasted for months), covid killed more people daily than 9/11 did, and noone cared.

so the question is more about whether people blow up some highrise buildings that will cause chaos and despair.

I think we’ll have an environmental “9/11” moment fairly soon where a major American city gets flooded and the waters don’t recede and large parts of the city will need to migrate elsewhere. There will be a lot of handwringing, and news channels going, “How could this have happened?”, and stuff like that. Similar to Katrina I think, but it’ll affect more white people this time, so that’ll make it worse.

As for terrorist attacks, yeah that shit will keep happening, maybe not at the scale of planes crashing into stuff, but there will probably be significant, mass-casualty events I should think.

I think it’s more likely that we will see smaller scale attacks by domestic terrorists, ranging from mass shootings to something on the scale of a Timothy McVeigh. I can also see a probability of a return to a 1960s/1970s level of political violence and assassinations.

I think those are more likely than a large scale attack from foreign terrorists.

Bush isn't president anymore, and there's already a reason to justify another two decade war.

In any case, theres domestic terrorism happening every day in the US including Trump's Jan 6, and the twice a week school shootings.

I sure fucking hope not.

We lose more than a 9/11’s worth of people every day still due to COVID. The presence of other factors that result in death in no way erases this amount of loss, and yet we’re so numb to this it almost feels like it isn’t happening anymore to most of us.

Unfortunately I think we’re all too desensitized from the last decade or so to care if anything does happen, but I genuinely hope I’m wrong. It’s not looking good, though.

I recently read a book by a retired agent about the effort against terrorism. If I remember correctly, terrorism has changed substantially since 9/11. The author described that terrorist nowadays are still organised more or less centrally but have a focus on smaller activities. I remember them describing them as "Nike terrorists" because of Niles slogan "just do it". The smaller and more isolated activities are apparently much harder to detect and counter than massive attempts like 9/11

Ignoring domestic terrorism, an outside attack to me seems most likely in terms of cyberattacks on weak infrastructure (utilities, signals, etc.)

All the reasons those guys did it are still there, nothing has changed yet so maybe? Hacking a plane got harder though.

Yes!

As someone who is not American, it's so obvious that your shit is a bit fucked. Everyone is so deeply unhappy, it's being channelled into political partisanship.

Honestly I don't think there's any way to get back on track without some kind of event that galvanises you.

You mean an event blown way out of proportion to justify draconian overreach? The Republicans trot one of those out literally every week.

Yes. It's going to be 9/11 x 2 which is 18/11

I think the likelihood of another major terrorist attack happening on US soil is drastically higher now than 30 years ago. But thats due to a lot of factors, primarily increased political hostility and increased population density.

Some external group doing a terrorist attack? Nah, they don't need to. The US can attack themselves easily and will. With the coming high court ruling coming about Trump being withheld from voting slips (correct term? Not being alowed to be on the list during election) will be a huge thing. Either the very conservative judges he appointed will rule he incited a riot and should not be allowed in office again (according to the intention of article 14 of the US constitution, which those judges say they adhere), or they will say it's not up to us.

In the 1st case, the Trump adepts will start the 2nd civil war, in the 2nd case, who knows. Leaving it to the states could result in problems in some.

However you look at it, the USA is on it's way to a massive implosion. With a destabalised political system like that, which state needs enemies. No real democratic system has only 2 parties.