anniversary

this is an excerpt from my old journal dated September 12th, 2002:

Yesterday was the first anniversary of the attacks. Steve & I boycotted TV & radio for the day. How can we suddenly be expected to "remember" something that never went away? For the past year, every time you opened a newspaper or turned on the TV, someone was talking about "the effects of 9/11 on the economy", "the effects of 9/11 on our children", "the effects of 9/11" on business/travel/Wall Street/movies/TV/music/art - fucking EVERYTHING. Is this actually helping anyone? I find it hard to imagine that the victims' families are comforted by this constant analysis.
And another thing-if a company wants to use its money to take out an ad or a billboard and put an inspirational message on it in an effort to "comfort a mourning nation", then that can be a nice, commendable gesture. But if they insist on slapping their company logo at the bottom, it is no longer a nice gesture. It is a FUCKING COMMERCIAL. It's manipulating other peoples' grief for your own financial gain. I'm so tired of driving down the road & seeing signs that say, "United We Stand - Half-off Ground Beef" or "Free Oil Change With Purchase - God Bless America!" It's things like that that make me forget that September 11th was very tragic. We watched thousands of people die on television. It was a horrific spectacle that supposedly touched all of us, but what's changed really? Racism and xenophobia are up, blind patriotism is up, military action is up. Meanwhile, dissent, discourse & serious critique of U.S. policies are down. We've done everything to assure that this type of attack will happen again.