Lol it's hard to convey just how bad TV was after 9/11 for quite awhile. Everything was over the top sad. Also while on the topic I'm pretty sure if I recall correctly for the entire day of 9/11 every single network besides kids shows and maybe a few others like weather all were showing 9/11 coverage. You literally couldn't find a channel not rebroadcasting the news coverage besides those, it was wild.
God this is so spot on. I was a freshman in college when 9/11 happened. I will never forget riding in a truck with my buddy to pick up some t-shirts on that day. It was quiet for a bit and my friend out of nowhere said "I kind of want the death toll to be a lot higher".
For context, this friend was and is a very chill and very compassionate, empathetic person. His statement was a confession to me. He was expressing something he was feeling deep down and he was telling me because he knew it was "wrong", but couldn't really articulate why or why he felt that way. When he said that I knew I kinda felt the same way, too.
I think about that moment a lot. Personally, I don't think Americans (other than those directly impacted and maybe New Yorkers, too) were actually "sad". For 99.9% of Americans, 9/11 was just spectacle. I would bet most Americans on some level wanted the death toll to be crazy high and were a little disappointed it was "only" ~3,000. And I think for a lot of the reasons you say. We knew this was going be a defining moment. Something that would reshape our identity. And also because people just love to play the victim. So yeah, I don't buy that Americans were "sad" because I sure didn't see any genuine sadness around me. Mostly it was like people seeing the first 5 minutes of a really exciting movie that promises to be really interesting. But you don't dare express any excitement because you know on some level you're not supposed to feel that way.
The mood wasn't about mourning the loss of 3000 human beings, it was mourning the fall of American hegemony. That's the line I kept hearing ad nausea in the media. "We were attacked on our own soil." It didn't matter what the impact was, the fact that it happened was an offense to American ego itself. How dare people attack America, don't you know we're the ones who do the invading. We will show you what you signed up for. As if this wasn't a decades of imperalism coming home to roost.
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