I was in 7th Grade when the towers fell. That whole day nothing happened and we just watched the news.
Once we had a day or two to digest it my Social Studies teacher talked to us about what it meant. She talked about how the Vietnam war lasted nearly 20 years and that was not triggered by an attack on US soil. She basically told me that everything was going to change and that we were going to be fighting someone forever.
I'm sure she wasn't quite that precient at the time and I am colouring my memories, but she really got it to stick that the world had changed overnight for us.
Long story short, we have been murdering brown kids in their homes my entire life. Even if more death and destruction is justified in response, we really went overboard. Why would people my age and younger have any fucking desire to support more of that?
PLUS we finally talk a little more about mental health in this country and it is clear that when you brainwash young people to be ok with murdering humans, and then have them do that while watching their friends get blown up, they fuck their brains up.
I was on track to go in to the military as a kid. I wanted to serve my country and get college paid for, but by the time I was 18 it no longer seemed like a fair trade. I'll go in to debt to the capitalists to start my life, seemed like a better deal than a pension and a lifetime of demons from my past to battle.