The forgetting of 9/11

How did this coordinated mass murder become so irrelevant?

Ihave written a lot about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 over the years, including a book on United Flight 93, which went down a few hours from my home in central Pennsylvania. In much of that work, I argued for the importance of that day not only in its human and material cost but also in what it represented as a contribution to the American civil religion. Core aspects of traditional American national identity—masculine heroism, a democratic citizenry prepared to stand in its defense, the deeply spiritual values that were present at the country’s origin—were displayed that day. I believed our collective memory of the response to terror by our heroic co-citizens would be sustained in our culture and perhaps even point the way to a return to previous unity.

The truth is that the farther we get from the date, the more evident it becomes that unifying this country is likely an impossible mission. In fact, the commonly claimed temporary unity produced in the wake of the attacks was itself, alas, illusory. It was not even fleeting. It was never real. The massive rift in this country, only too apparent now, was already visible then, but I and many others hoped our collective response to this national tragedy could bind up those old wounds and move us toward healing our broken culture.