I had just turned 10 when September 11 happened, and my father was active duty Army. We lived in El Paso at the time, and so we were on our way to school in the morning when the news came on the radio. We didn't know the extent of the attack yet, but the second my mom pulled into the driveway of the other girl in our carpool, she told the other mom to turn on the news and call her (also active duty) husband because things were about to get bad.

I think I'm one of the only people whose teacher refused to turn the TV on that day. She wanted to give us some sense of normalcy, at least for a day. I tried to turn on the news as soon as I got home but my mom immediately turned it off, assuming I'd watched footage at school all day. It was at least a month before I saw any video of the attack.

The mood on post sifted immediately - not even overnight but that same day. And it wasn't executive the changed security that made everything feel different. There was just this palpable resignation from everyone that we WOULD be going to war very shortly.

For me, the most palpable differences have been the general parinoia others are mentioning and the chang in public rhetoric. There's a very black and white, "you're either 100% with us or your the event" shift in discourse. There were so many just plain stupid debates about how certain politicians weren't patriots because they had the gal to note wear an American flag lapel pin. It's obvious in politics, but it's also leaked into everyday life in little things like how quickly celebrities go from beloved to vilified over the tiniest thing.

Regarding recent terror attacks: I find the truck attacks in Europe are the most comperable in the "strike when you thought you were secure" sense. But at least as an American living in America, I think it'll take time rather than magnitude of attack for singing to have the same impact on the national psyche. Part of why 9/11 impacted is the easy it did is because we did have that false sense that we were untouchable - the lasr time we'd experienced a comparable attack was Pearl Harbor.