dagblog - Comments for "Forgetting September 11th"

Thanks, Bruce. I would

Doctor Cleveland — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 21:39:12 +0000

Thanks, Bruce. I would respectfully say that I agree with half of this statement:

I hope it always seems like yesterday, and I hope that it is long considered in the mix as we make decisions in the years to come.

I also hope (and expect) that it those events will be "considered in the mix" when we make decisions. We would be fools to forget. But I think when they "seem like yesterday," when there seems to be no past between us and the memory, then events aren't considered in the mix, but become the whole mix. And that's where we get ourselves in trouble. We're right to remember that danger, and guard against future events like it. But if we allow the memory to block out everything else, we start treating that as the only danger we face and doing things that actually endanger us.

I'm not arguing for forgetting those events. (As I say several times above, I could not possibly forget.) I am arguing for integrating the memories.

Look, a few years ago I was in a frightening car accident. I wasn't hurt, and no one else was either, but my car was totaled and it was pretty clear that I had come within two or three feet of being killed. I am certainly never going to forget that. But initially I had to learn how to keep that traumatic memory from overriding everything else and endangering me.

The first time I was in a car after the accident (by which I mean, riding in the back seat of a car), I felt panic seizing my chest. I was in a car on the highway! I could be killed! My body was ready for the full freakout panic response, and my memory ready to serve up a feels-like-live skidding-toward-the-truck-headlights replay, when I got in a car.

I had to get control and teach myself not to relive the event whenever I got a ride from someone. Then I had to repeat that process the first time I drove a car myself, and again the first time I drove on a highway, and then again the first time I drove in the snow (because the accident had happened in a blizzard), and yet again when I drove in more than a few flakes of snow. The traumatic memory had to be integrated into a larger whole, as one thing to remember instead of the only thing in the world to remember. Having done that, I'm still a very careful driver in the winter. I don't block out the memory or ignore its lesson; I use it to make myself safer. But if I allowed the traumatic memory to take over and override everything else, I couldn't drive a car without becoming a danger to myself and to other drivers. Of course I remember the accident. But I have also gained a little distance from it, which allows me to function. I used to relive it. Now I remember it. They're different things.

I share the wish for the

moat — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 21:10:23 +0000

In reply to Forgetting September 11th

I share the wish for the event to become a distant memory in the sense you emphasize; We don't have to remain paralyzed for the rest of our lives to express sorrow and give respect to those who are gone or keep that time clear in our minds.

The people who struck their blow wanted to teach us a lesson. They hated the way our system created so many structures in their lives when we were barely cognizant of their existence. They wanted us to start directly fighting them instead of using our "partners" as Janissairies.

Well, we totally blew their minds by attacking one of our former partners while letting Al Qaeda reorganize in Pakistan. Who knows if they saw that coming. Whatever is the truth about what happened, there is something to be learned after the attack. Learned by us.

The best counter I can imagine against those who carried out the attacks is not the obliteration of everyone who assisted them or cheered them on or used the loss of innocents as the call/permit for the death of innocents but to have the recognition they have undoubtedly gained for themselves be the cause of the very future they gave their lives to avoid. But that sort of thing can only happen amongst them; the opposite of some neo=con vision of global syntax. It is not a fight if you have to feel the giving of the blow to tell you it is happening.

You are implicating a

jollyroger — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 19:37:12 +0000

In reply to Yours are my thoughts for the

You are implicating a subtlety of thought that is foreign to the American electorate.

We are capable only of such concentration as is required to grunt three syllables...."You Ess Ay"

Yeah, I'm with you, Bruce. I

artappraiser — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 18:48:22 +0000

In reply to Doc, I hear you loud and

Yeah, I'm with you, Bruce. I get what Doc is trying to say but I think he's using the wrong terminology.

I hope people never forget Hiroshima. I hope people never forget the Holocaust. Just like I hope I never forget my mother's slow torturous death in the ICU, how and why it happened, the trauma it caused my extended family and the circumstances following it.

Forgetting is what people with amnesia do because they can't handle trauma in reality. They go to another reality where the bad thing didn't happen.

When we take oral histories from older people, we hope they haven't forgotten what happened and what it was like, that time has not altered their memory.

The title of the following is apropos:

'It Wasn't a Dream'
By Bob Herbert, New York Times
Published: September 13, 2001

When I got to this point in Herbert's essay, I started to cry:

The Police Department has a large number of body bags, but I'm told they have 6,000 more coming in from Tennessee. I don't think people understand the scope of this yet. Fish companies are calling up, saying, 'What do you need? You need refrigerated trucks? We have them. Where do you want them?' "

I hope I don't lose those emotions as I age.

I hope I never forget the way most of the country came together to support the often ridiculed if not despised liberal NYC (not to mention Wall Street workers,) especially since I haven't seen that kind of unity in this country since. I'll never forget that there are people out there for whom an ideology can inspire them to use innocent people on an airplane as weapons against other innocent people. People that could actually do such a thing with foresight, planning and purpose and actually follow through with it as the innocents screamed. I hope I never forget that much larger death and mayhem was intended with this operation. That the U.S. Capitol or the White House may also have been destroyed. And how clear it was at the time, not knowing how many missiles were out there, that the intent was to paralyze our world.

I hope I never forget that the center for the defense of our country, the Pentagon (as much as we left of center tend to dislike how it is operated,) was unprotected from such an attack and took a direct hit that could have been much more devastating. And that our top leader was missing in action, that our centers of power were very ill-prepared, but that nonetheless this country broke out in empathy and unity, and not into chaos and anarchy.

Republicans are still

NCD — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 17:21:41 +0000

In reply to Yours are my thoughts for the

Republicans are still exploiting 9/11 for partisan gain:

New York GOP Exploits 9/11 Anniversary, Sends Islamophobic Mailer To Voters In NY Special Election

Doc, I hear you loud and

Bruce Levine — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 15:12:45 +0000

In reply to Forgetting September 11th

Doc, I hear you loud and clear and appreciate your rational and good faith admonition to us. But, respectfully, I hope we never forget what happened on 9/11--I hope it always seems like yesterday, and I hope that it is long considered in the mix as we make decisions in the years to come. And I hope those decisions are good ones, and sound, and moral ones too.

I understand that a 9/11 worldview in some forms can be destructive. Heaven knows we've seen that over the past decade. But no political faction or worldview has a monopoly on what we learn from 9/11, and in particular those who would use 9/11 as a battle-cry as an end in itself, have no such monopoly. Collective memory is there. We cannot and must not shy away from it, or from what we take with us as a result of what happened.

I knew two of the people who died ten years ago today, Eric who was a boyhood friend of mine from Patchogue, and Adam whom I had come to know as a fellow Dad and train slave (commuter) from Plainview, NY. I watched Adam's daughter celebrate her Bat Mitzvah around a month after Adam was murdered. They said nary a word on that day about what happened on 9/11--but they had not then and do not now come close to forgetting about what happened. And G-d willing, the children that Adam, Eric, and so many others left on that day will not be forgotten.

Yours are my thoughts for the

AmericanDreamer — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 14:31:54 +0000

In reply to Forgetting September 11th

Yours are my thoughts for the day so far, except eloquently and beautifully expressed.

I can think of two public reasons to want to remember 9/11/01 in ways that could be beneficial going forward.

One is to remind ourselves there are people and organizations out there that mean us grievous harm. And we need to be alert and vigilant in protecting ourselves from that specific threat, without going out of our way or obsessing about being alert and vigilant about it, and without concocting phantom threats, as we have too often done over the past 10 years.

As it turns out, the political party that has done the most to exploit 9/11 for political gain is the party that was asleep at the switch in protecting us from al qaeda, from the day it took power, and despite special pleas from its immediate predecessors to be vigilant and alert about defending the country, from al qaeda.

A second public reason to remember 9/11 is to honor the work that public employees did at that time, and continue to do every day. In addition to the on-site emergency workers who will be the major focus of public remembrances today, this includes the work of school teachers. Many of them were the first adults who sought to reassure and protect our children on that day. And many of them played crucial roles in efforts to help our kids cope and move on in the weeks and months to come. This was the case, notwithstanding that many of them were themselves traumatized, yet put aside their own emotional needs, to be there for their kids.

As it turns out, the political party which has adamantly refused to provide votes to prevent the layoffs of many of these public employees, and indeed has sought to exploit current state budget crises to facilitate such layoffs, is the political party that has most aggressively sought to exploit 9/11 and its memory for political gain. Notwithstanding that the economic circumstances leading to these layoffs were in significant part the results of the economic and political philosophy this political party has been most ardently and aggressively promoting over the past 30 years. And notwithstanding that preventing layoffs of public employees would mitigate the current poor economic conditions.

So. Not to politicize 9/11. But we might also want to remember which political party has most sought to exploit it for political gain, and what its performance and philosophy say about its own adherence to, and real learning from, the legitimate things we should take away from 9/11.

Thank you. Reposting.

Sierra Volk — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:14:40 +0000

In reply to Forgetting September 11th

Thank you. Reposting.

Thanks for posting this. I

CVille Dem — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 12:03:58 +0000

In reply to Forgetting September 11th

Thanks for posting this. I agree with every word.

Thank you. I am a New Yorker,

LisB — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 04:21:15 +0000

In reply to Forgetting September 11th

Thank you.

I am a New Yorker, and I thank you for writing this, because I feel the same way.

Thank you.