I feel like these takes are getting more unhinged with each passing month.
Socially yes, but 9/11 had much more institutional movement.
The patriot act was passed to legalize and publicize the spying they’d been doing
FISA courts, black sites, and NSA were made public knowledge
Airlines went from no security (my grade-school teacher brought a sword back on a plane) to banning non-ticket holders from going up to the gate and metal detectors to making you take off your shoes to banning liquids.
The tightening control on children since the 80s also kicked up a notch; cameras, metal detectors, school cops, students not being allowed to leave school during the day all became more prevalent.
There was a big shift in movies and country music, portraying a soldier or a cop in negative light used to be acceptable in fiction.
It was so comprehensive and massive it’s almost difficult to describe how all encompassing everything changing was…another point, during ‘the surge’ in 2004-ish, they started playing the anthem before every sporting event; iirc, that only used to happen sporadically beforehand (the department of defense paid a bunch of professional leagues to start doing it ‘to help recruitment’)
