Federalist, The Day We Forgot

This is an article by Ben Domenech. It is another of those memory things. There's memorializing and then there's remembering, and there's learning the right and wrong things to begin with and then forgetting them. And there are things one generation learns and transmits poorly to the next generation who learn things afresh that culturally speaking are being relearned. Then things that are genuinely forgotten in the recounting and the retelling are facts that are left out, culled by their complicating the retelling such as who supported what legislation when and why they did so, who voted for war and for sanctions and for laws bearing on personal relationships and marriages, who was a 3-K grand wizard and which party Lincoln belong to, and what Margaret Sanger actually stood for. That kind of convenient forgetting.

"Reading through rhetoric and press coverage of the time, a few threads run through every piece and speech."

Really? This should be good. What runs through all the rhetoric back then?

* Americans are more united than ever in understanding who we are and our place in the world.
* New and different sort of enemy that will be defeated by same American attributes as the past.
* The world will stand with us if we show purpose and clarity.

Odd. I don't recall much concern about the world standing with us or not. Missed that whole thing. A brief recognition of global sympathy with a few unforgettable notable exceptions, but that's it as far as the world being with us goes. That whole "united" thing lasted for five whole minutes and nobody I recall was concerned with other nations standing with us. Rather, I sensed at the time deep schizophrenia from the start and no talk at all of being united, an idea so absurd it's not even brought up. I recall rhetoric about fear of backlash against Muslims and insistence on making sure Americans understand the difference between regular Islam and the few rare incidents of radicalized Islamists. I recall a lot of lecturing about not feeling or acting how I wasn't feeling or acting. But if that's what the author reviewed, then fine.

¶ Ben Domenech is astonished at the lessons forgotten.

¶ Ben Domenech claims America didn't learn much.

C'mon, Ben. We didn't learn much and we forgot what we leaned. Losing patience, Ben, not in the mood for another lecture. Make this good.

The next paragraph is about America failing to change as if that were a bad thing. He lists things that remained steady.

* No general assumptions overturned.
* No historical critical plateau was attained. [Incidentally, watershed: 1) A time when an important change happens 2) a line of hills or mountains from which rivers drain, or a ridge between two rivers 3) area of land that includes a river or lake and all the rivers and streams that flow into it.
* Produced no great art.
* Monuments are defeatists, not of resolve.
* America's future on Sept 10, 2001 is unchanged.
* The nation did not change.

But it did change. The government is bigger than ever, more intrusive than ever, security concerns are addressed first leaving discussion about its impact to freedom for later and undone after billions already invested, plus dragging all this through the courts, the lowest, dumbest, most expensive way of settling things. Government became larger and worse with more departments and flying became another layer more miserable, American freedom has been pinched shockingly.

Back to the article.

America went from Bush's optimistic interventionism to Obama's vacuum creating.

The next paragraph claims no great change in political coalitions then says the process is more monopartisan than ever. Domenech imagines Obama following Hillary but having him first feels like already experiencing Hillary. How this fantasy indulgence supports his claim that nothing is learned but shocking what is forgotten since the original 9-11 is not clear.

Okay, I get it now. Ben says we didn't learn the right things that were available to learn by the event instead our way of dealing with it collectively has allowed important learned things to become unlearned, not actually forgotten simply not transmitted to a new generation and so relearned if they must or lost forever. We have to overlook Domenech's mixed messages of learning little, and nothing meaningful changing, then listing significant backward steps, and relearning significant lessons the hard way. Changes. Today America is more fractured than ever along racial and class lines. Lessons unlearned and relearned. Significant changes. Domenech say we didn't change. We did. He says philosophically we learned very little. I'd say learning and understanding our deepening schizophrenia is a powerful philosophical lesson that bears on pretty much everything and all that is significant lesson and change.

The next paragraph is about security and liberty and government spying and the abuses Americans submit for security theater.

And maybe we do it for fun.

I just now thought of that. What if frequent flyers accept all that frisking because they like the poking, prodding, frisking, and feeling, and stripping and being ogled naked? Not all of them, of course, but it's clear the general outrage is not such that the practice is stopped outright when there are good alternatives to having government do all this. I can conclude it's more attention than they get elsewhere, generally speaking, that keeps the slider of outrage at middle area, or else they wouldn't stand for Barney Fife perving on them every time they fly.

Domenech tells us to look back at other epochal moments in American history and see that they caused Americans to take a stand, make choices, and change their lives.

I don't know what Ben Domenech is not seeing, but personally, my life was completely changed. All relationships changed. It's how I came into contact with the likes of Ben Domenech. That would not have been possible had we all been allowed to continue unchanged.

Ben tells us nothing like that happened. Incomprehensibly, he writes, "It came and went. We wept and forgot."

What?

The worst thing is that the date hasn't changed everything for us, not the elites, not the people.

What?

Digging for hope Ben Domenech ends with the solace of a paean to unchanging character of real American heroes that show balance of independence and duty with courage to rise when the moment of testing comes.