I remember the aftermath of 9/11. TV shows and movies with the twin towers in them were cancelled, some had the towers edited out. Studios wanted to avoid seen as being in poor taste over a recent tragedy.

Fast forward to 2020/21 and if anything studios are chomping at the bit to capitalise on covid. TV shows like Sweet Tooth, movies like Songbird. Hell, I even saw a board game about surviving a pandemic at my local Target today, haha what fun.

Does anyone else find this kind of fucked up? Here we have a tragedy that has a death toll far, far greater than 9/11 and rising. A tragedy that is still continuing today. Many people, especially in places like America and India, have had family and friends killed by covid or at least know someone who has lost a loved one.

Does anyone else find it disrespectful that people are capitalising on something very real and traumatic? I mean Jesus Christ, at least wait until the bodies are cold.

  • Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    It's because 9/11 was an attack on the ruling class of america which was/is the largest and most harmful attack on them to have ever existed. It was turned into a national tragedy.

    Covid? Hardly affected the ruling class directly, they're insulated from it and only have a temporary loss of their slaves. Not a national tragedy, an inconvenience to the ruling class at best that they really want to move past not turn into some massive national tragedy that justifies any changes people might want made from it.

    Evidence: If a building full of working class people falls down and kills everyone inside they don't give a fuuuuuuuck.

    • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I wrote this post ten months ago and it's still relevant.

      Perhaps it will be instructive to take a look at the victims of each tragedy. The victims of 9/11 worked at the World Trade Center, one of the bastions of high finance in New York City. Overwhelming white, wealthy, and male, these victims were financiers, executives, and managers. “The best of the best,” and the idealized version of the “winners” of American meritocracy. They were also men who had their fingers on power in the United States, with connections to Congressmen and government bureaucrats. Because of these victims, we started two wars that killed upwards of a million people.

      Those dying of covid-19 could not be more different. In NYC specifically, they are primarily black and Latino and primarily working-class—the folks who could not afford to quarantine and work from home. They are inherently lesser than those who died on 9/11, despite dying in far higher numbers, for they are not those who hold power in the United States. They are not “the best of the best,” they are merely workers. They will receive no nationwide mourning, for nationwide they “do not matter.” Instructive is the idea many were once pushing on social media to create “mask free” days at stores, that way antimaskers could go without making those who wear masks feel unsafe. Little consideration was paid towards the fact that the workers in the store itself would still be exposed to the virus by these antimaskers, for those people “don’t count.” They’re not really people at all. They are nobodies.

      • Awoo [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Agree completely.

        National tragedies only apply to the ruling class. If someone walks into a major stock firm or bank on wall street with a gun and shoots up 50 members of the ruling class the laws in America will change overnight to prevent it happening ever again.

        If someone walks into a school and does the same? Meh. Footnote in a long list of similar events.

        Not that I'm advocating for gun control. I'm just pointing out that the reaction would be VERY different if such an attack actually affected the ruling class instead of the working class.

        • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Yup, I think you're right. I'm sure the only reason the global North locked down at all very quickly initially is because covid did effect the ruling class. There was real fear and nobody knew basically anything, and the people who initially caught it/spread it were the jetsetting elite class. By the time they figured out that covid isn't serious if you're rich since you can a) quarantine in your mansion and b) get access to ridiculously experimental but effective drug cocktails like that antibody shot Trump got, they started lifting lockdowns and covid became no big deal.

      • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Yeah I was thinking that too. Rich people are pretty safe from covid due to access to better health, so they don't give as much of a shit.