I really hate 9/11.  Keith reminded me this morning to stay away from Facebook and avoid the barrage of “tributes” in people’s statuses.

I won’t go as extreme to say that unless a person lost someone close to them that I don’t get the weeping. I’m an emotional person and as a result the correctly manufactured form of mass produced rememberence CAN get to me – but that’s because the correctly manufactured form of almost anything can get me to choke up. It’s just the way I am. I cry at the movie “Armanggedon” for Christ’s sake.

Really, most of the “grieving” and “remembering” that goes on is just that – manufactured. I won’t say I don’t understand it – it feeds into the human need to feel part of something and collective mourning is a way to do that.  Most of it though, seems to be just terribly false sincerity. David posed the rhetorical question “”Do the emotional pronouncements of a relative few make most other people nod along, so as not to seem monsters?” If I were to put “I don’t really care that it’s 9/11″ as my facebook status, I’m sure I’d be deemed insensitive.

The demand to “Never Forget” just strikes me as silly. In the most clinical sense of the word I doubt there is anyone who was alive for the event that will forget the day. It’s the “Where Were You When You Found Out JFK Got Shot” for my generation. And how on Earth could we forget when it won’t go away? Why is dying in a terrorist attack anymore significant than the hundreds of other horrible ways to go? Why is the “heroism” of individuals doing their jobs anymore laudable than the work performed on any other day?

I’m not talking about the people who actually lost someone (although people die everyday and their loved ones move on with their lives. You have to.) But among the remaining 99.99999999999% of the population it’s like a continual contest for who can show the most emotional effects from the events without actually having experienced loss themselves.

(also, it’s always struck me as …something…that most of this collective wringing of hands and metaphorical rending of clothing takes place nowhere near NYC or DC. When I lived in Jersey City, I passed through the WTC site on most days, as do millions of commuters.)

Really, it’s been eight years. How much longer must this show go on? How much longer will this self righteous mourning continue? How many more years will the demand to prove just how dedicated we are to remembering be shoved in our faces?