like a figure from the deeply distant past

No one in the media even seemed to notice… June 11 was the 10th anniversary of the execution of Oklahoma City bomber TIMOTHY MCVEIGH.

If 9/11 hadn’t happened, that probably would have been big news, since Oklahoma City was an unprecedented shock at the time. But just three months after McVeigh was executed in a federal prison in Indiana, his actions were permanently eclipsed.

This may sound like a weird question, but it would be interesting to know if 9/11 actually diminished the trauma in Oklahoma City somewhat. It’s a familiar experience that we can be having a bad day, hear about someone’s much worse day (such as being diagnosed with cancer), and suddenly decide our problem is pretty small by comparison. I suppose that can happen on the level of collective psychology as well, and other those who actually lost friends and family members, I wonder if Oklahoma Cityans somehow had their 1995 trauma reframed by the bigger national trauma a few years later.