Sitting quietly at my desk yesterday, thinking my thoughts about earthquakes, hurricanes, and the glorious Libya campaign, I was awakened by a phone call. A radio reporter from one of our major Chicago stations called, asking for my opinion about a newly minted coloring book that is designed to help children remember the “truth” of 9/11. This effort from a company named “Really Big Coloring Books” is what they describe as a “graphic coloring novel.” Perhaps we should think of this as a “Mickey Maus” effort.
While the coloring book, rated PG by corporate description, aims at teaching children “the facts surrounding 9/11,” it is not without its red-state politics. The company claims proudly that “Our Coloring Books are made in the USA. Since 1988.” The production of coloring books has not, yet, been outsourced to Vietnam. The book, We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom, has as its target audience a group that can, in fact, never remember 9/11, but only know of the day through the visceral accounts that we provide. According to the publisher, “The book was created with honesty, integrity, reverence, respect and does not shy away from the truth.” When a publisher (no author is listed) suggests that a work does not “shy away” from the truth, he is suggesting that others are doing that very shying and that the truth is both unambiguous and uncomfortable.
The book is filled with accounts of brave Americans and dangerous Arabs, and the text reminds its readers, “Children, the truth is these terrorist acts were done by freedom-hating radical Islamic Muslim extremists. These crazy people hate the American way of life because we are FREE and our society is FREE.” Nice touch, particularly on the page in which “the coward” Bin Laden is shot, while using women and children as a shield. One wonders which age child is captivated both by Crayolas and by the moral philosophy of human shields.
But my argument is less about this canonical text than about the process by which hot memories become cool.
By the tenth anniversary, particularly after the shooting of Osama bin Laden and the organizational decay of the Al Qaeda infrastructure, September 11th is barely with us. Yes, we have to remove belts, shoes, and wallets at the airport, and yes we make Canadians show border control agents their passports (and we, in return, are compelled to show them ours when we visit Canada). However, on most days we think no more about the World Trade Center than we think about Pearl Harbor. September 11th remembrance has become ritualized – a calendrical custom – rather than firmly situated within our national identity.
And this is how it should be. Trauma has an expiration date: a time after which it is no longer relevant as an insistent reality. As a people, we have moved on. While there are terrorists about, they excite no more concern than a low-grade fever. The likelihood of an event on the magnitude and complexity of 9/11 occurring again is remote. Radical Islam is in retreat, if it ever were on the march. Yes, a few failed states exist in which radicals have found a home, but there are no states where the central authority actively pursues a radical Islamic agenda.
And so I call for the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks to be our final collective gasp of über-patriotism, serving as a bookend for active memory rather than as a spark to inspire the furious. To be sure we will remember the attacks in the same modest way that we recall Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor, or Hiroshima, but mostly as a historical curiosity.
Days that are said to live in infamy have a way, over time, to live as relics. This is to the good. Times change. Crises pass, and villains find their evil trimmed. The death of 3000 is no trivial matter, of course, and it deserved the shock and anger that we felt in 2001. But in the past decade, many have been targeted and many more have succumbed to disasters natural and manmade.
A very timely and informative article. I just have a few points to make.
“Trauma has an expiration date: a time after which it is no longer relevant as an insistent reality. As a people, we have moved on.”
In China the “Nanjing Massacre” still inspires hate for and protests against the Japanese, while in Vietnam, much seems to be forgiven concerning the Vietnam War. Will Americans forgive and forget so easily? Unfortunately, especially for Muslim Americans, it may be another ten years, if not longer, before all is forgiven.
“Children, the truth is these terrorist acts were done by freedom-hating radical Islamic Muslim extremists. These crazy people hate the American way of life because we are FREE and our society is FREE.”
Although the book was written for children, for whom material is often simplified, the fact that this over-simplified version passes as the stone cold “truth” tells you something about the mentality which prevailed in the wake of 911 and which still persists. This another reason why it will probably take longer for the “uber-patriotism” which 911 inspired to fade. Yet if a new generation is taught such “truth,” it might take much much longer.
And I could not resist noting that, odd as it seems, “Made in the USA” does not seem to be part of “red-state politics,” at least not as much as free-trade, which more often than not occludes “Made in the USA.” Such is the peculiar nature of American patriotism.