What I'll never forget

Like a lot of people, I have unremarkable but vivid memories of September 11, 2001. I was a college student in Boston at the time, and that Tuesday marked the first day of my junior year. The night before, a friend had come into town and we saw the band Clinic at the Middle East Upstairs. He spent the night on my dorm room floor. The next morning, I walked him to the Arlington stop on the Green Line around 8:30 and then headed to the dining hall to grab breakfast before my 10 o’clock class. The TVs there were tuned to CNN. Still half-awake, eating a mediocre omelette and drinking mediocre coffee, I began watching the live coverage uncomprehendingly.

What happened from there, I’ll never forget.

I’ll never forget wondering how they had footage of the plane striking the tower when the tower was already on fire. I’ll never forget how long it took me to realize this wasn’t like the story I had read about the small plane that once crashed into the Empire State Building. I’ll never forget the girl from New York who came into the dining hall shortly after I did and who immediately burst into tears upon looking up at the screen.

I’ll never forget going to class anyway, and everyone speculating on what was going on until the fire alarm went off at about 10:25 and we all went outside. I’ll never forget looking around at hundreds of my classmates standing around Boston Common and realizing, for the first time, that it seemed like everybody had a cell phone.

I’ll never forget the rumors of an explosion on Mass Ave. I’ll never forget overhearing a black denim-clad hipster saying that the towers had been “leveled,” and feeling very confident that rumors were getting out of control.

I’ll never forget turning the TV on in my dorm room and finding out that the hipster had been right.

I’ll never forget when I — bespectacled, overweight, having nearly completed my BFA — met with an Army recruiter because I was seriously considering enlisting.

I’ll never forget reading reports of people around the country assaulting Muslims and people who “looked” Muslim. It seemed like this usually happened at gas stations.

I’ll never forget the ClearChannel memorandum. I’ll never forget every company in the country using our collective grief to sell me shit. I’ll never forget TV networks pitching sitcoms as the balm for a wounded nation.

I’ll never forget the PATRIOT Act, the terror alert level, and the TSA. I’ll never forget right-wing bloggers accusing their political foes of being in league with the terrorists and gleefully suspecting them of mounting a fifth column.

I’ll never forget how quickly the drumbeat began to invade a Middle Eastern country that had nothing to do with the attack. I’ll never forget administration officials warning of mushroom clouds over American cities. I’ll never forget Colin Powell lying his ass off to the United Nations.

I’ll never forget that I believed the lies. I believed them for far longer than I should have.

I’ll never forget how the people who turned out to be right about everything between 2001 and 2003 were marginalized, mocked, and ignored, and in most cases remain so to this day. So many of the people who were wrong about everything still appear on TV and in the op-ed pages, and I’ll never forget them either.

I’ll never forget “Freedom Fries.” I’ll never forget the Dixie Chicks getting blacklisted from radio play and receiving death threats because they spoke up against the war. I’ll never forget “Mission Accomplished.”

I’ll never forget about Poland.

I’ll never forget Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and countless black sites we never learned about. I’ll never forget Daniel Pearl or Nicholas Berg. I’ll never forget Chelsea Manning.

I’ll never forget decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’ll never forget thousands of American lives lost, and I damn sure won’t forget a million dead Iraqis.

I’ll never forget 20 years of a nation losing its mind. And when I read the recollections of those for whom 9/11 marked a return to unity, patriotism, and shared national purpose, I will try even harder not to forget. Because those people don’t remember a goddamn thing.