Josh Marshall solicited "What's Your 9/11" thoughts from the readers of Talking Points Memo. I've avoided reading them, and most such other efforts this week. But the title he gave to reader DE's submission really encapsulated my own ambivalence about what the Memorial Industrial Complex has metastasized into, and why I'm reluctant to turn myself over to it:
So my personal unease with 9/11 memorials is the feeling that there are a lot of people in this country with a vested interest in the country not moving on, even though the two main perpetrators of the attack are either dead or in US custody and the organization they led has been soundly defeated. They want our leaders to keep delivering the Gettysburg Address every year, to keep us on that war footing, so that they can misdirect our resources and some Americans' lives in the service of foreign and domestic policy goals that have nothing to do with what happened on 9/11.This manipulation of memorialization by keeping the wounds open was quickly apparent to some, of course. For all the good that did.
