Sunday Late Night: and… Exhale

And our collective national remembrance, summary of lessons learned and wrong paths taken, moments of silence for the victims and fond memories of an America that was and shall not be — is all done for another year, and without an echo-event to further traumatize a fearful people.

Behind us, then, this last and greatest anniversary: perhaps? Without forgetting the victims or disrespecting their loved ones — might it be? Can we now move on? Will it be possible now to dial back the public, national paroxysm of grief to allow private mourning, personal reflection, and public accountability? All of which, I submit, have been obscured by our media and political elites’ co-option of this anniversary.

Everyone mourns differently because everyone’s experience of that day is different. Acknowledging that uniqueness, though, I submit that this weeks-long media celebration (for that’s what it was), the repetition of painful images and recitation of mistakes made and opportunities lost helps no one. I simply do not believe that continued escalation of the public, national, communal nature of this commemoration will help any one individual — or our nation — heal.

And we favor healing, do we not?

Honoring the victims, remembering — and caring for — the heroes, comforting the grieving survivors, mourning actual loss: can we make this anniversary about that as we go forward? Let’s excuse our political and military leaders (who failed us all that day) from their pompous displays of jingoism, while we prevail upon our orgiastic media to lock away in their vaults the ghastly images they use to claim our eyeballs and then sell us stuff.

Media alert: We know what that day looked like. You needn’t remind us.