Hard to boil it down but I’ll say what goes through my mind when I read jokes about it. First, it was the consequences of our own imperialism coming home to roost, and the death toll is nothing compared to our previous or subsequent “adventures” in the Middle East. Second, remember during the height of Covid counting daily deaths in 9/11’s, but half the country slept on that, and 4x as many people starve to death here every year but food stamps get cut and poor people get spat on instead of having memorials built for them. Third, the reaction to 9/11 basically ended any serious anti war energy this country ever had, it gave our leaders justification and consent to do the shit they already wanted to do, it ushered in the blood thirsty imperial era many of us grew up in. So for me, the way people talk about it like this totem, this singular National tragedy, this moment of unimaginable American victimhood… It’s so incredibly tone deaf and uninformed that it sickens me, and seeing someone mock that kind of tone sarcastically is cathartic in a way.