Notes From D. R.

Oh, come on, admit it:

You’ve forgotten.

You’ve forgotten the bodies leaping from the towers.

You’ve forgotten the ash that covered the streets of New York.

You’ve forgotten the last cell phone calls.

All of it’s a distant memory now. Don’t deny it.

"Let’s roll?" Gone.

"I can hear you?" Null.

"We’ll rebuild?" Void.

No one remembers. That’s the dirty little secret.

No one cares. That’s the dirty little secret.

You think there would be this much whining if we remembered?

You think there would be this much fussing about "domestic spying" and "secret prisons" if we remembered?

You think we’d give a damn about crap like Paris Hilton and John Mark Carr if we remembered?

We don’t remember!

We don’t care!

We want our garbage TV shows, our bad music, our self-created dramas.

We don’t want to think about the fascists who despise our very being.

We don’t want to think about those who are taking American lives on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.

We don’t want to consider the magnitude of the threat we face.

We want to live in fantasy. We want to pretend that 9/11 was a fluke, not a movement of hate.

We don’t want to remember how we felt on September 12.

We’ve all gone back to September 10–and it’s a damn shame.

Because we don’t remember.

Because we don’t care.

Because we will not come to grips with reality.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal on the legacy of 9/11.

(Thanks to Boston radio talk hosts Kevin Whelan and bestselling author Gregg Jackson for reading this piece at the beginning of the September 10, 2006 edition of their WRKO-AM show Pundit Review. The first hour of the broadcast can be heard here.)