"Never Forget"

 

I recall exactly where I was when the events of 9/11 occurred. I was sitting in a high school classroom with my best friend, ironically named Kurt (I reference Vonnegut later). I remember watching the towers fall, and I remember teachers handling this in different ways. Some stopped everything to allow us to watch the old bubble television and listen to updates while others moved about their day as if nothing happened. Like many people, when 9/11 rolls around on the calendar, my friends and I, especially the one who was right next to me, talk about this day. It is obviously something I will never forget.

“Never forget.” That is the phrase, right? Every year on 9/11, we see the phrase “never forget” pop up all over the place, and I think it generally has good intentions. And, until relatively recently, I had no idea how complicated that phrase can be. Who has forgotten the events of 9/11? Is there really a chance somebody has? Or is that just a message to those of us old enough to remember? Should I find it odd when a person who did not exist in 2001 tweets out “never forget?” Also, what exactly are we in danger of forgetting? The event in general? The people who tragically perished on that day? The people who risked (and gave) their life to save others? More so, who am I saying it to in the first place? Those of us who live far away and experienced it via our television and computer? Or those who were there and who physically experienced it? I would imagine the answer “everybody.”

The problem is that “everybody” is different from “everybody.” This past 9/11, a man I know who lived in New York posted a lengthy thread about the nature of “never forget” and how it affects him as somebody who was actually there. In the morning, he went outside and was absolutely baffled that there was essentially no traffic in the streets. He did not understand what had happened in his own city until he went back inside and saw it on the television. Shocked and afraid, he talked about how the events unfolded, and how he watched and talked to local people, literally sharing in their pain. What we are asking him to “never forget” is already impossible for him to do. He cannot forget it, though he desperately wishes he could.

To be clear, I am not encouraging the idea that we should “never forget.” Frankly, I don’t know what the right answer is here pertaining to using that phrase. What I merely want to draw attention to here is the polysemic nature of the phrase itself. I, a man in my mid thirties who was barely a teenager at the time, do not engage with this phrase in the same way that the man I am referencing does. For him, asking him to “never forget” is also forcing him to remember absolute pain. Pain he could not escape by going home or going about his daily business, or by going back to school and high school sports the next day. He knew people who lost loved ones. He saw their faces in real time and in the flesh. I did not. He and I do not even remember the same thing we are being asked for “never forget.”

Now, as I read Sandra Silverstein’s War of Words, I am thinking back on a lot of phrases and words that were used during the events of 9/11 and how they shaped the world I grew up in. Hell, even 9/11 likely rings a little differently for me than the young person who only knows it via their parents, textbooks, and YouTube. What about them? Can they “never forget” something they did not experience in the first place?

Naturally, this whole thing has got me thinking. I think that in some sense, I was so outraged by the events that when retaliation bombings occurred, I never even questioned it (at the time). I blindly followed, and upon reflection, the rhetoric of words kind of makes me shiver a bit.

Speaking of blind faith, whenever I hear that term, I usually think of Kurt Vonnegut, who I believe once said that he found “unquestioning faith” to be “terrifying and absolutely vile.” For me personally, I cannot even blindly follow my own religion, let alone anything else.

That is why I was so intrigued by the “National Cathedral” section in Silverstein’s text, located inside the “Becoming President” chapter. As language transitioned from condemning an act of “evil” to experiencing an act of “war,” faith was profoundly linked to the upcoming war that would define the next decade plus of life. And, I think for a good while, there was a lot of this “blind faith” that was linked to this new war. I am intrigued by the language maneuverings mentioned in the text. Now in 2020, I can look back with nearly two decades of new information and become critical of a number of things (and less critical of others), and regardless of whether or not I support or condemn decisions that were made, it is obvious that my blind faith at the time gave me a crystal clear window of vision for a particular agenda, whereas my more current criticism has opened my eyes to see things quite differently. I was in fact blind. Now I see.