Retaliation is Not a Strategy, The Cienfuegos Ghost, & The Silence of NASA
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: The Architecture of Amnesia
The Price of Truth: When strategy becomes retaliation
Changing the Engine: Why prosecuting one man isn’t a fix
The Budget of Neglect: What we actually pay to stay safe
What I’m Watching: Mel Brooks, The 99 Year Old Man
Jukebox Playlist: Mr. Bojangles
Kareem’s Daily Quote
"We forgot all too soon the things we thought we could never forget." Joan Didion
If Joan Didion worked as a quote in the last newsletter, she’ll work multiple times. I might be on a Didion kick, and I wouldn’t be alone: she’s one of the greatest essayists in American history. And the quote above is pertinent not only to my past but to the present.
In my years on the court, I lived by the numbers. Points, rebounds, minutes, the score on the jumbo screen. You tell yourself that those moments—the pressure of a Game 7 and the sound of the crowd—are burned into your brain forever. You think, I will never forget this.
But Didion, one of our sharpest observers of the human condition, knew better. It’s humbling when a stranger knows your own brain better than you do.
And haunting. Because it’s not just about forgetting where you put your car keys or the name of a high school classmate. Didion was talking about the deeper stuff: the intensity of our convictions, the lessons we learned through pain, and the promises we made to ourselves when we were backed into a corner.
We have this habit of thinking that our “current” self is the permanent one. When we go through a collective trauma, like a pandemic or a national crisis like the storming of the Capitol, we swear we’ve been changed. We promise we’ll never go back to the “old way” of doing things. We think the lesson is etched in stone.
But then, the sun comes out. The urgency fades. The “standard procedure” of daily life starts to grind away at the edges of that memory. Before we know it, we’re back in the same old rhythm, making the same mistakes, wondering why that “unforgettable” lesson didn’t stick.
We watch a systemic failure unfold, whether it’s a security breach at a high-level event or a blatant overreach of government power, and the headlines scream that “everything must change.” We’re outraged. We’re certain this is the turning point. And then, six months later, or even six weeks, six days or six hours later, we’re distracted by the next trend, the next scandal, or the next “miscalculation” in the news.
Didion wasn’t just being cynical; she was issuing a warning. If we forget the things we thought were unforgettable, we lose our grip on our own growth. We become like a team that keeps running the same losing play because they forgot how ineffectual it was the last time they tried it.
To keep a memory alive—to truly remember the “why”—takes work. It requires a kind of mental discipline that is rarer than a perfect skyhook. It means looking back at your younger, more vulnerable self and honoring the lessons that version of you paid for in blood, sweat, or tears. It means refusing to let the “institutional amnesia” of our society tell you that what you saw with your own eyes didn’t matter.
In my own life, I try to keep a “commonplace book,” much like Didion did. I write things down not just to record history, but to keep a bridge open to the man and even the boy I used to be. I want to remember why I fought certain battles, why I felt certain joys, why I made certain stands.
Because if we aren’t careful, we don’t just forget the events; we forget ourselves. We forget the version of us that was brave enough to care. Or, if we were always rather timid and reticent, we forget what finally pushed us out of that shell, what enabled us to take a few more chances, to push against our own nature in order to promote the common good. As we go through our week, let’s try to reach back and grab one of those “unforgettable” things we’ve started to let slip, those things that made us draw a line in the sand. Let’s pull it out of the memory banks, dust it off, and make it current again.
