The world looks pretty scary sometimes.
There exists a tendency to attribute the fear to uncertainty -- the cobwebbed gooey darkness of our bad dreams. It smells like fried Play-doh. It's sticky.
And all around are drunken Bostonians chanting "Go Sawx."
Terrifying.
Yet equally haunting for the generation to which I belong -- the source of a nagging fear that twists the insides of every wide-eyed idealist college student in America today -- is the equally murky darkness that envelops our past. It has become necessary to question not only what is to come, but where exactly we should look for our beginnings, the source of what it means to be an American in this Post-Soxian nightmare.
Do we look to our forefathers -- the white-wigged male slaveholding middle class of outlaw British colonies who proclaimed that all men were created equal?
Do we look to our grandparents -- who endured poverty in their homes and died on foreign soil to protect the American Dream they had been raised to pursue?
Do we look to our parents -- the Baby Boomers who found themselves denouncing the ideals their parents had fought to save?
I remember the sound of F-14s flying over Manhattan as I walked with my friends to 125th Street to take the train home on Sept. 11, three years ago. I remember the silence of the stuffy car and the sight of grayish smoke hovering above the Met Life building as the train banked over the Harlem River.
I remember the washed-out, pale expressions of Americans who realized the fragility of a prosperous future in the face of a present that had suddenly become tangibly violent.
It has since become hard to remember a time when the Twin Towers were reflected in the Hudson. Impossibly tall. The metallic silver that stood out so vividly against a black November sky. The images of their collapse have become part of the perpetual present, a constant reminder of what seemed then to be the demolition of the heart of America. But on the night of Sept. 10, how many people yet looked at the towers and could have imagined a time when they would not be there.
The trick is to not allow the recent past to become the entire past. Too much victory, defeat, success, failure, love and hate lie on either side of the wall that Sept. 11 has become. One must refuse to accept the notion that an act of terrorism alone will necessarily redefine the shape of this generation -- that we will be imprisoned by our promise to "never forget."
After all, there is a difference between "remembering" and "not forgetting." The latter implies a kind of resigned, teary-eyed surrender to a single tragedy of the past -- an inability to avoid the shadow it casts on the present. It focuses solely on the catastrophic singularity, while ignoring the context that proceeds and (perhaps more importantly) precedes it.
The act of remembering demands active awareness of the causes and effects of events that often seem isolated in the blurry vision of the past. Remembering implies understanding of past events as they fit into the context of all history. We remember grieving. We remember our sadness, our shock and our disbelief.
We move on, but not without a new perspective on the present.
An act of remembering establishes history as simultaneously separate from, and integral to, the shaping of the present. It is the telling of the past's stories from the clearest possible present perspective.
Will we ever be free from the lenses of the present in our viewing of the past? Of course not. But it is reinterpretation itself that allows memory to play a role in the decisions of the present.
No question, today's election determines the course of this country for the next four years. More than likely, America will feel its effects for much longer.
I won't get on the stump for either candidate. To do so would be to undermine the much more important sentiment. No matter the result of today's election, America must reestablish a clear understanding of the past. A vision of America's future has never relied so much on foresight as hindsight.
Election Day, in all the ideals it looks to embody, is ostensibly an effort to stave off the darkness of the unknown future. To magically determine the direction of the next four years by punching a few chads or flipping a few levers.
Ultimately, voting is kind of like using a Mag-Lite to futilely peer into the cosmic darkness of the universe -- a testament to the naïve but necessary belief that by latching onto someone with values similar to our own we can somehow ensure the propagation of our ideas, hopes, dreams, lives.
Democracy, in its purest form, looks to band together the collective Mag-Lites of a country's people and turn them into a unified halogen beacon.
Or, in the case of this election, the Mag-Lites of five or six states.
Though it is impossible to shed a clear light on the future, it is time for this generation to rethink its past. To reestablish consciousness of the days before Orange Alerts, Michael Moore and $2 subway fares. The responsibility to create for the future an understanding of America's past rests on the shoulders of the present.
So, Happy Election Day. Get out there with your buttons, stickers, donkey dolls and "W" masks. It's sure to be a close race, but by tomorrow we'll have a new president, and it will feel an awful lot like a new chapter in American history has begun.
Let's just not forget about all the ones that have preceded it.
A-J Aronstein can be reached ataronstein@cavalierdaily.com
Read More
It’s okay not to be okay
By Mai Hukuoka | 2 days agoWhether talking to a friend, a loved one or a professional, it is so necessary, and human, to need more than you can provide for yourself.
Taking a break at Tangerines Kitchen
By Charley Thomas | 4 days agoWhat the restaurant somewhat lacks in ambiance, it compensates for in tasty dishes and prompt service.
Virginia Policy Lab — a hub for student-led policy action
By Katherine Haden | December 9, 2024Students propose their own projects and collaborate with other members to research their issues of interest, brainstorm solutions and write policy proposals.
