Well, as of tomorrow, it’ll have been 22 years.

I got the news at work, where I was listening to music to alleviate the tedium of file formatting.

Tori Amos was in my ears, and somewhere in there, as shock turned to dread, she sang *can’t stop what’s coming, can’t stop what is on its way,* and I think about that lyric now when I think about that day and everything that came after it, as the years pass and certain things become increasingly clear.

https://armoxon.substack.com/p/never-remember

It sems to me now that this terrible event acted as a great hinge of history, facilitating those who would swing shut a door that had been leading out onto a different potential future, a future which seemed at the time—at least to a fool like myself—to be wide open.

Who are those who wanted to swing it shut? I’ll try to remember.

Sometimes, after 22 years, we can forget, and I know we should never forget.

Or, perhaps, Never Forget.

These days, when we talk about that day, that phrase—“Never Forget”—tends to bubble up. It’s a phrase often used when something awful has been done by people to other people, as a bulwark against it happening again. For years it was something that Jewish people and their allies against antisemitism would say when they referenced that heinous crime of the 20th century that was the Shoah.

The Shoah was an almost incomprehensible monstrosity that showed the true capacity of humans for evil; the murder of over six million lovely humans who had been deemed unlovely by a highly popular supremacist authoritarian movement called fascism.

These days it’s perhaps more often utilized in memory of a great tragedy that happened 22 years ago this Monday, back at the dawn of the 21st century, the attacks of 9/11.

These attacks represented a moment when our own infrastructure and even our own freedom of movement was turned against us in an act of modern horror. So around this time of year, when we hear Never Forget, it’s most likely the attacks of that day being referenced. It’s on posters, and t-shirts, to help you remember.

There’s a lawn decoration, I see, in the shape of the Twin Towers, which you can buy at Walmart, in case you think your neighbors might be in danger of forgetting to Never Forget.

You can put it on your lawn, and maybe you’ll all remember who your enemies outside your borders are, and if you actually sometimes like to talk as if New York City is an unlivable hellscape full of your enemies *inside* your borders, maybe you’ll be so busy Never Forget-ing that you’ll forget to remember that you do that, at least until it is time for Halloween lawn decorations.

So that’s nice.

And who could argue with the call to Never Forget? There’s little value to forgetting.

It sometimes seems a bit easy, though, that phrase, sort of like the one that says "those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it," and by *easy* I mean that it’s just as likely to be trotted out by those who seem to very much be hoping we *will* forget certain things.

Forgetting certain things would allow people wielding abusive power to run some of history’s worst plays by us again; people who would very much like to go on doing awful things to other people they deem unlovely; who actually prefer the door to that more open future remain closed; who back at the dawn of the 21st century seemed so ready to close it that in the year after 9/11 almost appeared to have already manufactured the door, to have been waiting for someone to set it on smooth hinges.

And maybe that's why so many of us who on 9/11 most loudly issue calls to Never Forget seem even today by our posture to be leaning against that door to an open future, seem to be bracing it shut.

And it seems like knowing all this about ourselves is—much like all the terrible things many of us American Never Forget-ters actually have to say about the city that bore the brunt of that attack—something we are meant to Never Remember.

So yes, I agree we should Never Forget, but I'd like a bit more contemplation about what exactly it is we should Never Forget, and what it is that we seem to want to Never Remember.

OK.
Let’s do it.

Let’s never forget.

I think I'll Never Forget how frightening that day was, or how terribly we were wounded.

But I'll also Never Forget how much more terribly we wounded ourselves in the decades following, as we answered those who desired to create a world of strife by using the resources and power that our attackers lacked to deliberately, methodically, and systemically create a world of strife.

I think I’ll Never Forget the ways we never pursued consequences for the country actually involved, which was pretty clearly Saudi Arabia at least on some level, while aggressively and preemptively devastating a country that was not involved—Iraq—for generations.

I agree that we should never forget the victims on that day, but we should also Never Forget the way their deaths were cynically used as a pretext for disastrous and murderous war, built on lies, nor should we ever forget the liars, and how they've all been laundered by our institutions, permitted to get away with one the most consequential global crimes ever committed by U.S. citizens.

I'll Never Forget how many people opposed our nationalized celebration of our own ability to bring death to others, and how thoroughly those millions of voices were minimized, and how even today the biggest cheerleaders of our most horrible mistakes receive the largest platforms upon which to manufacture consent in favor of other authoritarians, and against those who would oppose authoritarians.

I'll Never Forget the way the liars who had the steering wheel on that day bragged that they would create their own reality, and then proved it. I'll Never Forget how proud they were of making us a country that tortures. I'll Never Forget how lie led to lie led to lie, but never to consequences.

And I'll Never Forget how the liars who came after—even less scrupulous, even more flagrant—noticed there would be no crime that an authoritarian-facing Presidential power couldn't survive, no outrage that would not be normalized, no meat too raw for voters who craved bigotry, and pressed that advantage far past our breaking point.

I'll Never Forget that all this facilitate our reality today, when we have an openly criminal party speaking and acting against any elections they do not win, and arguing in public and even in court that it isn’t illegal if a president does it, provided the president is an authoritarian.

I think we'd do well to Never Forget that the failure to prevent those attacks did not represent insufficiently aggressive national security, or insufficiently guarded borders, or insufficient domestic policing, but rather insufficient attention paid to available information—an intelligence failure, in other words. So it strikes me that those who still today insist on ignoring available information risk similarly catastrophic failures of our national intelligence.

That's what we ought, in my opinion, to Never Forget, after all these years.

And then, there are all those things we seem to Never Remember.

So many of us seem to Never Remember that the value of power is only ever measured in how it protects those without power against power’s abuses, not how it can align with abusive power to better control those without any power.

To Never Remember that reality isn't multiple choice, that truth isn’t an opinion, science isn't optional, and that an expert isn't a charlatan just because they know more than you, any more than a charlatan is an expert just because they don't.

To Never Remember that opposing bigots isn't the cause of divisiveness; bigotry is.

To Never Remember that parroting fascists and neo Nazis, or furnishing yourself with some excuse to support those who do, is *supposed* to earn you scorn and shunning.

To Never Remember that in all fights the difference between an aggressor and a defender matters, and it is those who are being presently attacked—not those who attack out of some fear of some future hypothetical—who deserve our defense, and that our fear of losing our advantages do not give us the irrevocable right to seek indiscriminate preemptive retribution.

To Never Remember that there is no true unity other than solidarity that acknowledges that all other people exist and live and matter.

@JuliusGoat Asking in good faith as a longtime follower of yours who struggles with this question: If (as we both believe) "it is those who are being presently attacked—not those who attack out of some fear of some future hypothetical—who deserve our defense" then why shouldn't we have defended, say, Richard Spencer when he was punched? Is it ok if it's just one punch? Aren't we required to oppose all violence in the moment of its commission?