In 2010 Cracked.com released their tongue-in-cheek awards for the last decade. Awards went to best TV-show, best video-game and best viral video, which for some strange reason went to "2 girls 1 cup". Candidates for "New Word of the Decade" was e.g. Tweet and Green, as in eco-friendly. The word that interested me though was "Post- 9/11!".
We all remember where we were and what we did that day nearly ten years ago. When Al Qaida attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. It was the first attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor in 1941.
We now live in a "post-9/11" world with invasive body-scanning in Airports to the PATRIOT Act and horrible political rhetoric. But today it is mostly used as an excuse or punch line. The most famous and prominent use of the term "post 9/11" are used in politics. The most prominent use was in the legislation process of the PATRIOT Act. The PATRIOT Act is often frowned upon as it limits some civil liberties and make wire-taps and other investigative activities. Even censorship of Radio and TV have been forced to stop airing reruns of certain "un-American" TV-episodes and a list of several hundred songs deemed inappropriate and not to be played on radio because of their lyrics. The term "post-9/11" has also in some instances been reduced to one of the worst pick-up lines ever; "hey we should totally hook, or the terrorists win".
Maybe the men and women of the future will learn about our time as "Post-9/11" next to the Cold War, industrial age and the Renaissance in history class.
This is a very different post about 9/11 then the others I have been reading. Post-9/11 as a term, I have never thought about it. But the date certainly marks an important change in our way of living and we are reminded about it often. You might have mentioned the movie we saw, but this works!
SvarSlett