There’s a picture of me, my sister, and my mom on top of one of the World Trade Center towers. I think I’m maybe 8. I keep thinking I should digitize that, so I’ll have the record long after my memory lets it go.

I think about that every year. About how much those people, that city, and the world has changed since then.

We plant the flag on that day, telling each other to “never forget,” without filling in reasons why.

And 9/11 still gets used as a touchstone for our lesser angels, to excuse our bigotry, biases, and bullying.

Because the decades that followed were ones best forgotten, from the violation of American privacy up through the violation of human rights for anyone not quite American enough for our tastes.

Those are the things I wish we wouldn’t forget, because they’re the egregious behavior of a neo-colonial exceptionalism that uses freedom and capitalism to explain away its excesses.

That whatever was done in the name of that awful September day was acceptable, because look what was done to us, how terrible that was.

Trauma informs but should never excuse. It’s a reason, not a justification. And waving that flag of national trauma, as the US does well and often, only leads to more of the same. That we should not forget. Ever.