Never forgetting as a failure to remember. Charlie Bertsch, in Tuesday's Souciant.
As almost any athlete can tell you, though, the steps we take to avoid the recurrence of an injury rob us of the freedom to follow our instincts. Frequently, this favoring results in secondary and tertiary injuries, until the original trauma becomes the center of the body’s universe. When the analogous process plays out in the political arena, the potential outcomes are practically destined to be bleak. The insistence that we “never forget” ends up making us forget what we were like before we had something bad to remember.
This is a great analogy. Still, our collective consciousness as a nation is constantly being forged anew. I just read a fantastic article titled, What Happened on the Flight from Dallas about the immediate aftermath of the JFK assassination. What is clear from the piece and from some of the comments is that our country was forever changed. Triumph can come from tragedy if you let it. You may recall the first days after the towers fell, the world was united. If only sustaining that had been the priority and objective.