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Have you forgotten?
Today is the anniversary of that day, six years ago. Has anyone forgotten? Does anyone really need a memory nudge to recall those hideous pictures of planes crashing and exploding into buildings?
I know people react to things differently and I’m not discounting, for a second, the traumatic effect it has had on many. It scared the hell out of me, that’s for sure.
But.
I’m curious to see how many years will have to pass before I stop seeing “NEVER FORGET” banners popping up on blogs, in front yards, on cars, (etc. etc.) as the day approaches.
For me, seeing “NEVER FORGET” is like fingernails down a blackboard. There is some inherent hostility in the simple phrase as well as an unhealthy dose of victimhood. As if the Never Forgetters are stuck in time and can’t get past it. Or don’t want to. That might be what grates on me most—not wanting to get past it. There is something unhealthy in Never Forget. I think forgetting is quite out of the question for those of us who were sentient on that day. I’m positive that I will always remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when the towers were hit. And, certainly, the relational events of the past 6 years haven’t been lost on me, either. Why do people think we need to be reminded? What is it that they want us to NEVER FORGET? There is an entire psychology bound up in that phrase.
I think it likely that my son’s children will grow up learning that something terrible happened on September 11 and they will be tested on the date and significance in social studies classes, but it will be another date to memorize for them. Same as December 7 was for me. I was born only 12 years after December 7, 1941. My parents, who had not forgotten the day nor the terror (and believe me, December 7 knocked them sideways and readjusted their world view considerably), at least understood that time marches forward and people do forget. They thought that was healthy. They wanted to forget the rawness and the terror, yet give it its due for the importance in their lives. They never forgot the date nor the significance nor the lives lost, but they let it go and were not surprised nor upset that subsequent generations relegated the day to history. It didn’t need to be kept alive. It just was. It happened and the world went on. Many other people across the world and through time have faced their own September 11s and the world still moved on, they along with it. It is probably too soon to do that for September 11, but it will happen. As it should.
I sure as hell don’t need to see endless video loops of the WTC on television again.
I have vivid memories of a fair number of bad days, from the Kennedy assassination to the Challenger explosion to 9/11. I won’t forget, but neither will I let it rule my life; it seems to me that too many people have. Worse, it seems to me that our policymakers can be counted in that group, and they feel compelled to remind us of it (fortuitously, they seem to do so more every time something which might make them look bad surfaces).
Given there was a massive intelligence failure (remember that Presidential Daily Brief dated August 6, 2001 which was titled “Bin Laden to attack US?"), one wonders how we’ve allowed ourselves to be so cowed by the very people who ignored that warning.
I am blessedly without television...is that what’s on today? I should have guessed. It is a sickness. Possibly an extension of our collective American exceptionalism. If it happens to us, it’s thousands of times worse than anything that happens to anyone else at any time in any place. It changed the world, y’know. I’d suggest that the yahoos in power are the ones who changed the world, using 9/11 as a big fat handy excuse. And I’d really like to forget them after they’re tucked away in some dank little cell someplace. Which, of course, is a pipe dream.
And, by the way, where’s bin Laden?
Was it an intelligence failure? The intelligence was there, but certain people simply ignored it. “We could never have imagined...” the very thing that was printed in black and white on their desks before the event took place.
PZ Myers has it about right, I think.
Yes, he does. And with an economy of words.
Oh my, yes.
Bad enough to remind us of Dubya’s failure to listen to intelligence warnings. Worse to revel in it, to wrap themselves in the bloody flag of jingoism.
Never forget?? They wouldn’t let us. Unfortunately, it’s horribly selective.
You have to wonder, given the short attention span of the American public, just how foremost in memory September 11 would be by now if we didn’t have a government that reminded us daily how skeered we should be and how we have to set the world in flames to keep us safe. You gotta wonder.
Just as well that this week is TV turn off week for us at school. There was a man today on an overpass with a HUGE American flag held up with one arm - he was there at 8 am - there still at 11 am - and still there at 4pm when I ran home to pick up the kids. His arms must have been so tired.
I with you, I don’t need reminders all over the place. I won’t forget. I was having coffee and watched it happen on tv. It also happened to be my step-daughters sixteenth birthday. Which also means I will always remember how many years ago it happened.
Sadly, when we were introduced to the way the rest of the world has spent decades living...we failed to understand the test.
When the rest of the world would have followed our lead...we made a wrong turn.
When we were given a map to help us find our way back...we burned it to make a light to lead the way to us.
Will we ever forget...I hope not...Some lessons are too hard to relive.
I don’t think any of us will ever forget that day. But there is a wide distinction between that and clinging to the memory as if letting it go is some kind of unpatriotic act. I’m not sure that we’ve learned anything other than that we’re as vulnerable as any other country in the world. I don’t believe we’ve acquitted ourselves very well with the newfound understanding of our vulnerability. More like a bull in a china shop.
There’s also a distinction between memorializing and fetishizing. Between commemoration and cynical fear-mongering.
For Dubya and Darth Cheney, it’s all about making us afraid.
My reaction this year as much like my reaction last year. And I know it’s not proper form to link from a comment back to your own blog, but after reading what I wrote last year, I don’t think I can say it any better this year:
http://www.kudzufiles.com/000914.html
That was a good read, Harry. Thank you. Out of tragedy there was so much possibility for something positive. Alas, no.