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[-] Steve@startrek.website 31 points 6 days ago

25 years ago, the day I stopped watching TV news- the dramatic talking head told me that terrorists had attacked a US military base in Afganistan.

[-] sad_detective_man@leminal.space 24 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

oof. yeah. I don't like pointing at 9/11 and desert storm as the time when it changed but it REALLY seems like that was when it changed. I was 9 and got in a lot of trouble for not saying the pledge of allegiance and even though I was way to young to have a real opinion bback then you really can't fault anyone for coming to the conclusion that we might be the fucking baddies

[-] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Yeah, that was the inflexion point.

Back then, people were cautioning against this lingusitic slight of hand, this overuse of rhetorically charged language... because they could lead to a world where 'everything i dont like is a terrorist'.

But they weren't listened to, PATRIOT ACT passed, and we now live in the world we were told we would, but even worse actually, because the internet is forever and the NSA has been doing its damndest to make a permanent hard backup of all internet traffic at its mega data center in Utah for over a decade.

Ironically what this means is that Osama Bin Laden won.

He goaded us into destroying ourselves, and we did, we went insane.

The 'Great Satan' is doing just a bangup job of carrying out the NeoCon plan for an American Century, what with electing an incompetent idiot rapist who has basically single handedly caused the second Great Depression, and caused us to lose almost all of our international allies.

[-] Steve@startrek.website 9 points 6 days ago

That was when I first noticed that word being abused so egregiously. I wouldn’t be surprised if it started before that.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 5 days ago

It definitely started before then, but that's probably when they realized they aren't getting any push back from using it and can use it to slander anyone they want.

I know in Star Trek DS9 ('93-99) there's a part that's talking about the native people resisting the authoritarian faction taking over. It talks about how terrorism can be good if it's used to do good. I don't recall if it uses the word specifically, but I think it does, so by that time it had become obvious enough that it was being abused for the writers of DS9 to talk about it.

[-] Serinus@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

we might be the fucking baddies

It depends. Is it relative? Even then, sometimes we are and sometimes we aren't.

There aren't many nations that have their hands clean.

[-] 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago

Again with the same dum dum "all countries are bad, it's the same as invading a people half way across the globe and trying to wipe them out" talking point when all other arguments don't hold up.

this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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