Peeve Farm

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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.

On My Blog Menu:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue

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10/6/2003 -  10/8/2003
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10/28/2002 -  11/3/2002
10/21/2002 - 10/27/2002
10/14/2002 - 10/20/2002
10/7/2002 - 10/13/2002
9/30/2002 -  10/6/2002
9/23/2002 -  9/29/2002
9/16/2002 -  9/22/2002
  9/9/2002 -  9/15/2002
  9/2/2002 -   9/8/2002
8/26/2002 -   9/1/2002
8/19/2002 -  8/25/2002
8/12/2002 -  8/18/2002
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7/29/2002 -   8/4/2002
7/22/2002 -  7/28/2002
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  1/7/2002 -  1/13/2002
12/31/2001 -   1/6/2002
12/24/2001 - 12/30/2001
12/17/2001 - 12/23/2001

Monday, June 3, 2002

16:31 - A new kind of grim amusement
http://denbeste.nu/entries/archive-09092001-09152001.shtml

(top)

Something I sort of silently and casually did on and around the eleventh of March was to go back through the archives of various blogs and read the entries leading up to, during, and following the 9/11 attacks, on their six-month anniversary. Just to compare the tone... to see how far we've come... to see what was predicted that would happen, and what actually did... to see what opinions have changed.

To experience it all over again, too.

This link is to USS Clueless, which I only started reading after the event (I only found out about the existence of blogs in mid-December, thanks to a mention in a Bleat). But to give you some idea of just how much has changed, an entry by den Beste on or shortly after 9/11 mentions "a guy named James in Minneapolis".

It was only a few months ago that none of these guys knew each other. This whole weird, sometimes snarky, sometimes critical, often recursive and reciprocal extended family of blogdom in its current form and strength and cast of characters is less than a year old.

So are many of the opinions we hold now. Den Beste had an essay on terrorism that posited that the Palestinian cause was every bit as justified as any nation's is that is under attack, and with severe language he said that the Israeli government would have to use tactics of compromise and appeasement in order to have any measure of peace.

That's before we all saw the video of the Palestinians celebrating in the streets.

So, as you read through this archive, note the following landmarks:

The initial half-unbelieving, distant "Yeah, yeah, it's all over the news" kick-start, with the dark sense that it's going to get a lot worse
The first true realization of just how big this is
The first mention of Osama bin Laden
The first reactions to the Taliban's statements
The first predictions of war in Afghanistan and what form it will take
The first mention of the Palestinian strategic loss from 9/11
The first mention of Israel's vastly improved lot
The first exhortation to give blood
The first realization of how many rescue workers were in there
The first thoughts on Flight 93 and its passengers' rebellion
The first mention of NATO and the global implications of the attack
The first cries of "We deserved it" from self-effacing American liberals
The first head-shaking, tongue-clucking grandfatherly scoldings from European politicians
The first predictions of economic devastation and ruin
The first sighting of an exploitation of patriotic feeling for commercial gain
The first post after the fact that was not related to the attack

Look at how quickly these all happened. All within the space of about three days.

Three days of real-time reflection of real American sentiment. Whereas the Gulf was the CNN War, today we're engaged in the Blogger War. This one has a permanent record, realized and accessible at the common-citizen level. The immediacy of it is its strength-- it still feels like a glimpse into Everyman's day and Everyman's mind, not like a CNN broadcast. We (or those of us who were alive at the time) can look at the Zapruder film and think in abstract terms of where we were when it was being shot. But blogs make it as real as a recording of a voice.

I dare you to scroll upward past the early morning hours of the Eleventh without your heart starting to race uncontrollably.

One more milestone to note:

The first tears shed by the blogger.