Latest / The Scott Townsend Show / #257 Where Were You on 9/11?
Transcript
- Scott M Townsend: Welcome to the Scott Townsend Show, brought to you by Dizoman Productions. Recording in progress. All right. So are we recording? Yeah. So ⁓ yeah, we I heard some people talking about nine eleven the other day and it's the twenty fifth ⁓ anniversary, which kinda sounds weird to say anniversary. It's like twenty-five years ago, let's just say it that way. ⁓ so I was thinking about that and number one, how fast time flies and ⁓ so now here we are twenty five years later. And so I thought, ⁓ you know, I'd get you on and talk about, you know, take us back Ben Townsend, take us back to September nine eleven. And ⁓ what do you remember about that? What how did your day start? ⁓ So can I ask you a question first? Yeah. Did you watch the Oklahoma State football game? I did not. ⁓ we saw we were at Painted Horse and watched the last quarter. So I guess we d we did watch a little bit of it, yeah. Okay. Yeah, you know, I I I think all OSU fans had high hopes, you know, for the new coach. What's his name? ⁓ I don't even know his name. I can't remember his name. I know it. ⁓ but anyway, they they had high hopes for him, of course, coming from Texas State. And ⁓ I was looking at some stats on the game, it's really interesting because Oklahoma State actually had more yards, more first downs. You know, they had a lot of great things going on, but they just had the they just couldn't close the deal. They couldn't execute when it was time to execute. They had too many penalties, key penalties. And then of course they lost their best offensive lineman early in the game. And that ⁓ the quarter, the new quarterback was just kind of running for his life back there, hurried throws, all this kind of stuff. So they got beat. They got beat pretty pretty pretty soundly by Tulsa. Mm-hmm. I think Tulsa did a good job. Tulsa did a good job. I'm not not disparaging Tulsa at all. What I am talking about is a program that that has for years, in my opinion, has lost its way. And the program I think was ⁓ underperforming for years. Even though they've had successful records, I think, I think they've underperformed the talent, consistently underperformed the talent they had. So the loss, the opener loss to Tulsa last year, if you'll remember, the loss to Tulsa was kind of like the end of Gundy. You know, that kind of started the avalanche, the loss of whatever support he had, you know, to remain his coach and say he's got to go, somebody else got to come in. So you know, the new coaches come in. They've can he's completely turned over the team. They've got all these new players. There's only just a handful of OSU players from last year that are still still played, started in the Tulsa game, as I rec as I understand it. ⁓ and so you had, you know, a bunch of bunch of new players. ⁓ so it's kind of like a total roster turnover, you know, and this was a test to see how ready it was. And I think the coach himself was saying they're not seasoned well enough, they're not ⁓ yeah, it's gonna take time to Get that all put together. Because that you know, they were over on the sidelines like throwing up and you know, just like suffering heat exhaustion. It was hot. It was hot, baby. But I think Tulsa was on the same field and they didn't seem to be having the same issues. And so conditioning that to me, that's a coaching thing. If you got a team that's not conditioned to play, that is a coaching thing. So I don't know, man. And then we're going into this next week playing Oregon. It's like one of the one of the worst possible things, one of the worst possible teams we could play next is Oregon. ⁓ and so I just don't expect much out of the Oregon game. ⁓ Murray State and West Virginia coming up. ⁓ yeah. I think after Oregon, which are gonna be better tests. I don't expect to win Oregon. But ⁓ anyway, gonna be an interesting season. And They've got to get their mistakes down and they've got to be able to score when they get down there in the red zone. They gotta have more discipline. ⁓ it's nothing just get rid of the stupid penalties. ⁓ and you know, maybe they'll have a better outcome. But boy, that sh that first game sure did not was not confidence inspiring. No. No, it wasn't. And ⁓ yeah, it was hot. Dang. Yeah. Still is. It's Africa hot. Alexa, how hot is it? Ninety seven degrees right now. Ninety seven degrees. Feels like a hundred and six. Hundred and three degrees. Hundred and nine heat index. Okay, Alexa. Stop okay. So there's a little sidetrack on LSU football. Yeah, LSU football. ⁓ we were talking about wanting to watch more football this year. we didn't hardly watch any last year. So yeah, I might be cranking up the ESPN or whatever to get some nothing better than just having football playing in the background, you know? Kind of like golf. Turn it down. Even if you're to watch it's one thing to let it just play if you're not really interested in the teams. But just the the sound of it is kind of soothing. Golf is good nap territory too. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ yeah. And I've gotten into baseball this year. ⁓ yeah. Any other any other year of my life and I've just really enjoyed the heck out of it. Been following the Astros and ⁓ it's great. Love it. Yeah. I do like that. And a great thing about baseball is it's such a summer thing. Yeah. You know, they they they they play games five Days out of the week, six days out the week. There's always like a baseball game on. Right. ⁓ and you know, you can watch and you know, evening kind of thing. So I kinda wind down with the baseball game in the evening, I love it. Right. I was watching the video ⁓ compilation of ⁓ pitchers catching wild hits right towards them, you know. Right off the bat. Dang. Literally right off the bat. Yeah. That ⁓ ball coming at him like two hundred miles an hour and Yeah, and they catch it and throw somebody out on second or whatever, you know. Yeah. I think I was I was watching one the other day, ⁓ I think it was a brewer's pitcher. He pitched the ball, it was coming in like ninety nine miles an hour to the batter. It comes off the bat at about a hundred and thirteen right back at him and hit him like he got turned, but it like hit him in the shoulder blades or something and you know, really rattled him. And ⁓ you know that's ⁓ it's tough. I mean you're you're looking right down the barrel of a shotgun, you know, and you're Yeah, and you better be ready because you're you've thrown the ball and and it takes everything they've got. You know, their whole wind up and pitch and follow through and finish. If you think about where they are, their their whole body is leaning head first directly toward that bat where that ball is gonna come in contact with that bat. They are like all extended. Leaning forward, their feet, you know, are several feet behind ⁓ You know, they're all stretched out, and they've got to take like a step forward to so that they don't just fall down after the follow-through is over. And then they gotta recoil fast. And then they gotta recoil. So boy, you better have that core strength going. You can you can adjust to that if it comes right back at you. ⁓ man. Golly. So anyway, nine one one. Nine one one. Yeah. So Where was Little Bendy Bo September eleventh? I was I was driving into work when you work. I was working at USAA San Antonio. I was on a ⁓ I ten coming into work and I was about a half mile out from where I turn off the highway to drive onto the USAA campus. And I heard the first thing I heard was that there was a small plane That had run into the World Trade Center. That's what I heard first. Right. And I'm like, golly, that's that's horrible. And and I and I seem to recall there was I think there was like an incident way back in the day. Nineteen forty five. Yeah, something like that in the forties. Yeah. B twenty five Mitchell hit the ⁓ Empire State building. Yeah. And so, you know, I'm I'm I'm remembering that. You know, not I I don't have all I didn't have all the specifics, but I remember planes running in the building before. It's it's a odd thing. It doesn't happen very often. Right. But there's a precedent for it. Yeah. You know. Same thing I thought. So the so I'm I go, I I drive on into the campus and the news is really waking up with this incident. And then somebody, you know, saying, you know, we're hearing reports or something that it wasn't a small plane, that it was a large plane. know they hit the building. Larger. Uh-huh. Yeah. And and so then, you know, I'm like, man, this is crazy. You know, they hit the Empire State Building. It's crazy. So I go into work. World World Trade Center. Every yeah, what'd I say? Empire. ⁓ yeah. World Trade Center. Yeah. And so when when I go into work, I start walking in and people are already buzzing about it. You know, and there's a ⁓ TV on in a break room and in different locations, you know, there'll be a TV on. And ⁓ so people were kind of like crowd around the TV and it's starting to interrupt the work day. And and you know, they started showing it. And and by the time I walked into the building, got to USA is a huge place. Takes some time to get there to park, to go in, get in there, you know, people are buzzing about it, and they start showing video, you know, of it, and they show the place where the plane struck the building, and you can see the profile. of that plane. And you know, the commentary it was changing to, you know, it's a large plane, you know, that hit the building. And ⁓ you know, I mean it's like dead on hit, like bullseye hit, you know, in that building. And and and people are like, you know, this is this happened something like this has kinda happened before. I don't know if that was top of mind for everybody, but you know, that's what I was thinking. And I think everybody at that time was thinking that it was some sort of ⁓ It was a sort sort of unfortunate accident, you know, where a plane ran into building. I think some commentators too were kind of mentioning the ⁓ B twenty five bomber. You know, they were scrambling for yeah. Research. I don't I don't remember that, but ⁓ but you know, I do I do remember some some discussion. I remember the discussion, you know, it kind of was turning to the plane was getting bigger and bigger that they were talking. And then somebody, you know, there there's the question of whether or not, you know, surely this isn't an intentional kind of thing. And I remember looking at one of our executives, he was sitting in his office and everybody else is obviously distracted, and he's working on something, a briefing or something, and he's not going to be distracted by what's going on on TV. And, you know, it's such a black swan event, you know, and you don't realize, you know, what's going on until you realize what's going on. You don't really you don't have context for it. You know. And he's trying to stay focused on his number one job as he should be as an executive in a large corporation. You know, staying focused on the task at hand, you know, work. He's there to work and he's there to drive people to accomplish the the the strategy and goals of the organization. Beautiful job. But if this event kind of supersedes that, you know, it it he does he doesn't understand yet that. The historic context of what's happening. Because it's not clear. Right. And he's missing it. But but and he's staying focused. And because he's focused on that, he's not considering, you know, the things that aren't quite adding up in this whole thing. And so people are still crowded around TVs and watching, and they're showing, you know, people, you know, talking about where the plane ran into the building and and they're they're showing it. And I remember at some point, I don't remember how how long it was, but at some point. We were we're watching the T V and there was somebody talking and there there was a pullback camera shot to show the world the World Trade Centers or two towers things there. And it's showing you know the smoke pouring up from the one and sitting there. And as he's sitting there talking, another plane enters a view and bam into the other building and smoke and fire. He doesn't even realize for a second what happened. He's like, What you know, what did s did another plane just hit and all of sudden, no, this is not an accident becomes pretty darn clear, you know. And then the whole thing just kind of changes. At this point, executives that are sequestered in their office and too busy to be worried about interesting story in the news all of a sudden become interested in what's going on in the news. And so they they now kind of paused and trying to get information about what's going on, you know, and ⁓ you know, kind of all kind of went from there. But that's what I remember, you know, about that day. and you know, where I was when I heard it, ⁓ what I was doing, what the reaction, the various reactions of the people around you know, around me were. And, you know, of course the story just unfolded from there. And there and there was a lot of ⁓ you know, it kind of resulted in kind of a renewed sense of like patriotism and people wanted ⁓ wanting to ⁓ put their political differences aside and unite on the fact that you, you know, our country was just attacked by somebody, you know, and then, you know, there's lots of things that happened after that. There's been all kinds of conspiracy stuff, you know, after the whole thing that, you know, I think there's some questions that remain about what what exactly did happen, you know, there financial transactions that are kind of inexplicable without some sort of advanced knowledge of what was going on, things like that. I don't know I don't know what to think about all that stuff. I've heard it. I I don't know what to think about it and ⁓ you know it's not it's not something I think about a lot. But ⁓ yeah, that's where I was. How about you? ⁓ Bartlesville, Oklahoma was kind of a gray, over overcast day. I was at United Linen and I was getting ready to go to Tulsa and ⁓ sorry in fact I was going to ⁓ the Williams Center, which is the tallest building in Tulsa. And it was also designed by the same architect that designed the World Trade Center. So it looks remarkably like the World Trade Center. And Sandy was listening to the radio in her little office there, and she's like, ⁓ I just they just said something about us A little plane hitting the ⁓ World Trade Center. ⁓ God, that's bad, you know? And ⁓ and then I had remembered about the ⁓ B twenty five bomber hitting the Empire State Building and I can't remember if the tail section was sticking out of the Empire State Building or not. I'm just not quite sure. Yeah, it'd be interesting to go back and look at video or pictures or whatever. But I ⁓ Got in the got in the car and went to Tulsa and on the on the radio, you know, like you said, it was becoming more apparent that the plane was getting bigger and bigger and the fog of war was kind of lifting and people were coming to understand kinda what was really happening. But I hadn't seen any T V, I hadn't seen anything. And ⁓ I went to the World Trade. trade center in the Williams Center and went up I don't know how high I was up in the building, but the news was that you know there this bigger plane had hit the building and ⁓ so after the meeting I went up I went right up to the glass, right to the edge where you could look down and you know see the street way down below. And I thought to myself, if I saw a plane coming at me, what would I do? So I thought, you know, I'll just I would just run towards the center of the building. Yeah. You know, and get out of the way. That's what I would do. And ⁓ I later on when I got back home and got to a TV and I saw the planes ⁓ melting into the World Trade Center, it was very apparent. There was no running into the center of the building. I mean it i it just phew it it just sliced through like butter, you know? And and then when you see the profile of the plane as it hits the building and then just disappears into the building. ⁓ there's no tail section sticking out. There's not I mean it's nothing. And I just it just blew blew my mind. And then the second one and you know, and and the story just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. And then you see the tower starting to collapse and everything that day was epic. Everything that day was just inconceivable. And here we are, and you you're then and then the Pentagon and then ⁓ Yeah, you start getting rid of other things. Yeah. And ⁓ passengers taken down ⁓ another plane to keep it from hitting the White House or whatever. And then they start and then all the planes all around the world start coming day you know they order all planes grounded. So you have stories of like a gander or someplace in Canada that ⁓ small little place in Newfoundland that had like 43 jumbo jets landing in this little bit, kind of like Bartlesville's air airport. And the whole town came together to the these people were stuck for like two or three days. Out in the middle of kinda like nowhere. And nobody was going anywhere. So the city of Gander or Cander or whatever it was came together and people started letting passengers stay in their house and they got meals together. They even shut down the ice rink, hockey rink, and used it as a huge refrigerator to keep all the food cool, you know. And ⁓ So there's a lot of nice stories of people coming together to help each other out. But yeah. And then, you know, seeing military aircraft flying overhead, which I I never see that here, but boy, we sure did that day and many days after that. Then ⁓ What was I was gonna say, ⁓ exercising or mobilizing aircraft, you know. And then the story of and then the story of ⁓ Air Force One, you know, and they're trying to play hide and seek. and everything's you know, everything that they're doing has never been done before, trying to go up and go down and military escorts and all that stuff. Nobody knows what's going on. All they know is they gotta keep the president safe and nobody that's just everything's just crazy that day. And afterwards you kind of think, well, there's nothing I you know, I think I've seen everything now. So if whatever comes next, I'm not gonna be surprised, you know. ⁓ real quick you get ⁓ conditioned. with all the stories that are coming out and everything that everybody's doing and ⁓ coming together and helping each other out and and just the aftermath and ⁓ on the street, all the dust and the fireman and just how do you get out from underneath all of that and papers blown around, you know, somebody's desk up on the seventieth floors down on the ground and All these little bits of paper blowing around and people falling out of the building and slamming into the ceiling of the pavilion down below. Just and the photographs that you can see people standing at the hole and they're trying to decide whether to jump or stay. And someone said, you know, they were committing suicide to get away from the fire. I don't think I don't agree with that. I think it was I think they were it wasn't suicide. It was You just can't stand the heat. It's jet fuel, man. And it's burning up your back. And you're just trying to get away from it. And you know you're not gonna live jumping out of that hole. But it's better than burning alive, you know, w ⁓ while you're mobile. You just wanna do something. Yeah, it's a that's a that's a kind of a gruesome choice. It's really kinda about choosing the mode of your death. Yeah. At that point. No, whether you hadn't thought about that. You want it to be, you know, burning burning to death in that building. Or a quick ⁓ yeah. A quick death, a quick slam, and that's it. So yeah, the choices that people were having to make and Yeah, and then the pictures, you know, they they start showing pictures of people. Then you see the you see the building fall. And to me that was that was amazing. I I've never seen like a building fall, you know, outside of a controlled demolition. Right. Implosion. Mm-hmm. And I've seen some I've seen some buildings ⁓ demolitions where they're trying to bring the building straight down. They've got all these engineers on it, you know, trying to build it bring the building straight down. They're unable to do so. And it winds up kind of like falling sideways and doing damage to surrounding structures. And this one you know, kind of this unplanned, you know, thing. I was just amazed at how it just can't it just pancakes straight down. Mm-hmm. And when that started happening, you know, there's a camera, you know, all kinds of cameras people had on the street level. And people were just, you know, they got out of the building, those who got out got out, and they were, you know, walking away from the building. They were exhausted at this point, walking away. All of a sudden the thing started coming down and you had all this dust. It's kind of like It's kind of like when you see a volcano ⁓ you know, go off and there's this big whatever that's like a pyroclastic flow or the the the debris, the heat, the ash, the stone, ⁓ all the steam just coming in in dark, billowing clouds. It's moving, you know, at a hundred miles an hour. You can try to run and that would be your instinct, and that's what you should do, but you ain't running away from that. And those people You know, it it's coming, it's being channeled through these narrow corridors. Which makes it even worse. Which makes it even worse. It's kind of like watching that ⁓ flood that happened recently and whatever that was. ⁓ but yeah, it was chan and and and then you know it showed people and they were they were just covered. Covered. Everything was covered. And they're breathing it. Yeah, and and this cloud. you know, of debris and smoke and ash and w everything that was in that cloud. Everything is being, you know, so you have big particles. You know, it's such a forceful blast that you have large particles suspended, you know, in this thickened air. And it's just landing on people. And you know, they they just look like gray people. Yeah. You know, and and they're kind of talking about their experience. Some people were just kinda like in a complete daze. You know, you're you're looking at that. And yeah, it was It was pretty, pretty crazy. Yeah, you think you're in the building, see, and then it gets hit. And then ⁓ it it i it quickly becomes apparent that ⁓ I'm on the thirtieth floor and up above an airplane ⁓ Boeing whatever hit. So we need to get the heck out of here. So we start going down the elevators. No, probably going down the stairs as fast as you can. People are, you know, pushing each other. In the back, you know, trying to get down as quick as you can. People are falling down. You finally make it down 30 flights of stairs or more. And you get outside and you look up and you see this huge hole. You're exhausted. You're scared to death. It ain't over yet. Now you start walking down the sidewalk going, ⁓ my gosh, what was that all about? And all of a sudden, it's just It's still coming, man. You got another thing you gotta deal with. The building's gonna come down, smoke and and all that stuff. And where are you gonna go? And you're like, Are you kidding me? I'm gonna keep running again? Start running again? And ⁓ Right, and you realize I think You can't make this stuff up. Especially when the sp second plane came in, you know, you realize that not only did you just experience this black swan event, but it's not over. And the black swan is bigger and blacker than you thought it was. Yeah. As black swan as it was when it happened. Right. You know, and you know, that's kind of overwhelming, you know, for everybody. But imagine being in the middle of all that. Yeah. Yeah. And the chaos and everybody out in the streets and you're thinking you're safe in the street now, you know? ⁓ no you're not, buddy. You better keep on running. but anyway, ⁓ it's ⁓ I just kinda wondered what your r ⁓ remembrance was, what you remembered from nine eleven. That was kind of my ⁓ those are my memories and it was nice to see people just in general coming together. It's kinda like Pearl Harbor, you know, it's kinda like ⁓ when everybody realizes that ⁓ we need to stick together and figure this thing out. Yeah, I mean it kind of brings you together. You just kinda realize that you no longer have the luxury of just ⁓ you know, living and being politically nasty and be comfortable with ⁓ you know, ripping each other's throats out every day over stupid policy decisions and things like that. And there's something bigger. You no longer have that that kind of luxury to do those those kind of things and it's like you you better unite around something here, you know, ⁓ because something's coming to get you. You know, and we're stronger together than we are apart. And we learned that lesson for I would say a a period of time that was relatively short. ⁓ but th those kind of things don't seem to last very long. No, they don't. I think we've kind of forgotten that and we're back the luxury of ripping each other's throats out and being nasty to each other and we're back to not having a not having a country that's ⁓ that is that has kind of ⁓ consensus on what we want to be, how we want to be. And ⁓ you know frankly we have a political class I think that that promotes its its self preservation is somewhat dependent on you know, keeping people at each other's throats. It's rallying the base. It's key you know, and so it's it's probably if you're a politician, maybe an an irresistible thing, it's also a destructive force. So anyway They're calling for a mandami not to show up for the nine eleven thing, not to get too not to get really wild and crazy here, 'cause we could. But what do you think about that? You know, I I've heard that too. I don't know the facts of the situation. So, you know, but if what they're saying is true, ⁓ I think that's valid. You know, but I don't know the facts. So I I hear what I hear in the news and frankly I don't really trust the news that much. ⁓ so but I hear what they say. my tendency is to lend credibility to it because I've heard it from many different angles. ⁓ but I don't know. I'll just say if it's true, ⁓ I can I can I agree with that sentiment. Shouldn't be there. And the question would be, and and that kind of gets to, you know, if that's if those things are true and these things were known, you know, when he was elected, it just gets right back to how quickly we forget that that somebody, you know, that has ties to people and organizations that were prime movers, you know, behind that incident. ⁓ and they're a political leader of that. Town, that city? That's insane. How quickly we forget. And what what's if we can do that, what is our priority here? What's the priority? What what priority supersedes our existence as a people, as a nation? You know, it gets down to you know stupid things we shouldn't be quarreling about. So how quickly we forget. So how do we not forget? How do we ⁓ you know, you're bouncing a little tater tot on your knee and you ⁓ how do you help people how do you help yourself remember? How do you help your kids remember? Do we need to remember? Yeah, probably do, yeah, I think so. How do we keep future generations ⁓ from repeating mean, that's that's that's a really wide open question. What should we do to slow down the forgetting process? question. ⁓ because all through history we forget. of the ⁓ you know Moses leading the people through the wilderness and they just keep screwing up, you know, after he's bailed ⁓ out time and time and time again. And then they've Time goes by, they kind of forget, they go back to their old ways and start screwing up again. Yeah. I think I think there's a lack of ⁓ that that happens, we forget when when there's you know, w basically when you're you're ill educated, there's lots of people that will hear this and they they weren't at an age or born at all when this happened and they're now and they're now adults, so you that it's a history book thing for them. But you know, I think I think education and understanding our history. ⁓ I think a sense of ownership in our country and agency is important. ⁓ that we have some sort of control over our destination and the political process works. ⁓ but you know, go going back to what I was saying earlier, I I think ⁓ our faith in the political process is ⁓ suffered some damage. And so I think that I think that's factor. You know. But if we if we have that sense of agency, that sense of ownership, you know, you won't give it up so easy. If if we're talking about our household, you know, you can't you can't not think about If your roof is leaking and you know it was because ⁓ it because of some sort of ⁓ maintenance issue or whatever, you can't think about anything else other than getting your roof your roof fixed. You know, or preventing what whatever happened to make your roof leak. This ever every analogy breaks down somewhere and that's why it's an analogy and not the actual thing you're talking about. But ⁓ you know, you do everything you can to prevent that from happening again. You know. ⁓ but but if you feel like you have no control over it like it was a hail storm that damaged your roof, what can I do about a hailstorm? Nothing. So do I do anything about it? No, I don't. You know, if it was a tree limb fell fell on the house, then you get busy and cut tree limbs, it could fall on your house. Yeah. You know, but if it was a hail storm, you don't do anything about it. I think people treat a lot of these things like a hail storm. They're just worried about other things or concerned about other things. Yeah. So and we we argue over trivial, what amount to kind of like trivial things. Yeah. Don't yeah, that doesn't matter at all. And they get us they, the media gets us all wound up about stupid stuff. And we need to get a magician. Look over here, look over here. Look over here. I'm and and I'm gonna distract it because over here I'm doing something else that I don't want you to notice, you know. Sometimes I get that feeling. Yep. Yeah, we just need to be Find a reason to be more united. And it's like we're thinking about a quote from St. Augustine that is loosely applicable here, but he said something like in essentials, unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things love. So kind of getting to what what are the what are the essentials here? What are the essentials of my ⁓ for me as a citizen? ⁓ and what are the non essentials, and don't major in the minors. You know, we do that. Amen. Well that's ⁓ that was a great discussion. Ben Townsend, one of the smartest most ⁓ well written and articulated individuals that I know of. And ⁓ glad you're back and have you back again. You're a regular contributor to the show and that's ⁓ makes this show ⁓ so much better. 'Cause if it's just me, we're we're screwed. But Yeah, it's fun. Yeah. ⁓ so ⁓ yeah, so for Ben Townsend, this is Scott Townsend. Thanks for listening to the Scott Townsend show. A lot of Townsend stuff going on here. Have a great day. Everything's gonna be alright. And we'll talk to you later. For more episodes, visit the Scott Townsend Show YouTube channel, listen on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.