Seth Ackerman wrote:
>
>
> Here's a question. What if there are no more terrorist attacks? Will the
> public's memory of Sept. 11 start to fade?
>
I would ask, "Has it already faded?" I think public memory is at least vaguely analogous to memory as it exists in the brain -- to put it loosely, you don't remember opening your front door this morning: you remember remembering remembering etc. That is memories have to be endlessly refreshed, or as Israel Rosenfield's title _The Invention of Memory_ sums it up, have to re-invented each day. And I would suggest that it is at least a reasonable first approximation that people no longer remember 911 directly, they remember the flag they have fluttering on their car aerial or they remember yesterday's headline about getting those Afghanis. There has been a sort of football-weekend or world-series atmosphere to it from the beginning, and I think that aspect of it will become more and more pronounced, the original shock vaguer and vaguer, fairly quickly.
And I would suggest not trying to predict what public reaction would be to another equal shock. That kind of thing is for penny-stock agents or the fortune teller the FBI is hunting in Boondocks.
Carrol