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Art Cashin Remembers 9/11
Today, the 13th Anniversary of 9/11 will see many people recall how things were. To remember that day and the heroes it spawned who better than UBS' Art Cashin - who thought it simplest to repeat what he wrote back then.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2001
On this day, in September of the fateful year 2001, America – and the world – continued to try to find some way to return to normal.
There have been no comments since the atrocity on 9/11. All of our family and staff are safe, thank God. But my office was put out of commission. (It was across a small open park from one of the towers.) We hope to get back into it this week and – maybe – begin regular comments next week.
A Few Personal Comments
A few years back the "New Yorker" magazine ran a whimsical cover showing how “egotistical” New Yorkers might conceive a map of the United States. Satirically it depicted the nation, with three-quarters of its focus on the island of Manhattan. Ironically, after the atrocity on September 11th, the nation’s heart, its concern, its generosity is disproportionately focused on New York in almost the same manner.
Similarly, in each of our lives, the picture we view of the world around us would surely have had us as the dominant feature of the canvas. Yet after the tragedy of that Tuesday, with its image of victims and heroes, of smoke and tears; none of us shall see ourselves so large again. There will be room in that picture for others – many others.
Valuing language and the words that give it shape, meaning and impact, I have always been fascinated by that special group who once wrote for the aforementioned "New Yorker" – James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woolcott and E.B. White and others. In simpler times (how foolish! Almost any time was simpler, safer, more secure)...let me start again.....my love for the writers that Harold Ross brought to the Golden Age of the New Yorker (and thus to the legendary "Algonquin Table") was to the comedic/satiric group. The events of 9-11 led me back to E.B. White. He was terrific, but given my satiric leaning I only loved or, at least remember three things about White – his marvelous book on writing style, his caption for a legendary New Yorker cartoon in which an obstinate kid, responding to his mom's explanation that what's on his plate is "broccoli, dear" says – "I say it's spinach and I say – the hell with it!", and – of course – his short story called "The Hour of Letdown" in which a computer built to play chess against a human, stops after the event to have a drink. (I'm not sure why I love that story.)
Nonetheless, the atrocity on September 11th recalled another E.B. White essay. It was (I recall) written over 50 years ago, back when the UN was moving into Manhattan from its early life in "Lake Success" on Long Island.
Much of White's essay, written over a half century ago is filled with meaning and moment this day. It has recently been republished as "Here is New York", if you care to see more. Here are some of the things that bridge generations:
"The subtlest change in New York is something people don't much speak about that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its long history is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now; in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition."
"All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm."
"....New York is not a capital city – it is not a national capital or a state capital. But it is by way of becoming the capital of the world...."
"....Once again the city will absorb, almost without showing any sign of it, a congress of visitors. It has already shown itself capable of stashing away the United Nations – a great many of the delegates have been around town during the past couple of years..."
"This race – the race between the destroying planes and the struggling Parliament of Man – it sticks in all our heads." "The city at last perfectly illustrates both the universal dilemma and the general solution, this riddle in steel and stone that is at once the perfect target and the perfect demonstration of nonviolence, of racial brotherhood, this lofty target, scraping the skies and meeting the destroying planes halfway, home of all people and all nations. Capital of everything, housing those deliberations by which the planes were to be stayed and their errand forestalled."
Thank you, Mr. White! (Mr. White earlier in the essay noted that New York and New Yorkers – and all Americans – do good, do what they do, and have traditionally defied logic and their enemies by not only surviving but actually thriving. And all that was true even a half century ago.)
A More Personal Thought
Many of us got out that Tuesday walking through streets onto which ash, smoke and business envelopes fell snow-like, blocking both your view and your breathing. Yet when a stranger was met, they were invited to join the convoy and offered a spare wet cloth (carried in pockets) through which to breath as they walked. When we reached the East River (Brooklyn side of Manhattan), there was a volunteer group of tugboats, fishing boats and mini-ferries that looked like the evacuation of Dunkirk. No charge. No money. Just – "May I help you!" No one got anyone's name. No thank you cards will be sent. But Americans – even New York Americans – who freely give to strangers but argue with neighbors were suddenly one group.
In the days since, as we wander via new strange ways back to Wall Street, we all internalize the survivor’s quandary. We are lucky to be alive – but why us.
As I noted on TV – none of us headed back to re-open the markets with relish or avarice. The President, the Governor, the Mayor and all officials asked that the markets re-open to provide a means for the economy to work – to unclog an artery.
Day after day, traders, clerks and the thousands of folks who support them walked to work. No spring in their step. Resolute to do their job, they are civil but somber. As they pass checkpoints, they say "thank you" to the policemen, firemen, and National Guardsmen who may have lost brothers saving us and some of our friends.
Ironically, the only smiles you see in Wall Street are on the photocopied photos of the missing that family and friends have taped to walls, mailboxes and lampposts. It may take a long time for smiles to naturally return to Wall Street. It may take a long while to find those criminals who took our smiles and our friends. But, we will have patience. As our President said – "We will not tire. We will not falter. We will not fail!"
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Friends of mine were flying out of New Jersey the night before, and they said they could tell something was going on because airport officials seemed to be in panic mode/ on high alert. I'm sure we had some sort of idea that something was brewing.
With Osama Dead, a 9/11 Memoir
I wish I could do my fellow Americans the courtesy of rejoicing with them over the news that, at long last—and nearly 10 years after perpetrating the terrorist attacks that made him the most wanted man on earth—Osama Bin Laden is now well and truly dead. But I’m having difficulty working up the necessary emotions, and I’m far too exhausted to go around faking it anymore. It’s not that the news isn’t good, it’s just that it no longer seems to pertain to me. The cares of 9/11 and all the reactions that followed in its wake belong to a world that I departed from a long time ago. I cannot get close to that world or feel myself to be a living member of it ever again. I can only watch it as through a pane of glass, and make such observations as seem to me supported by the facts. My personal history differs from the greater mass of men; a wrenching private struggle that I did not choose stamped me with a different set of priorities at the time when others were experiencing the horrors of 9/11. As a result, an unbridgeable chasm has grown between me and the larger world, a distance that only seems to broaden and harden with the passing years. It was already very great when that fateful Tuesday morning dawned hot and clear, those many years ago.
What follows is my 9/11 story. Perhaps it is not the most dramatic or the most profound, but it does seem to bear upon the events in a nontrivial way—a way that may find an echo in the experience of others. In any case, it is personal, it is truthful, and it is mine. I hope it will be of some value, for it is the only tale I have to tell.
“Do you remember where you were when the first plane hit?,” goes the question that will ever be asked of the generations who were alive on 09/11/2001. Indeed we are never supposed to forget it, and indeed I never have. I was on a city bus, just east of 92nd and Sheridan, in Westminster, Colorado. I overheard the bus driver mumbling something to one of his regulars, seated just behind him. “A plane crashed into the World Trade Center,” he said. “They think it’s an accident. But now 30 floors of the World Trade Center are on fire.” Thus the day’s news began to trickle in.
I recall that I felt an immediate increase in my general level of bemusement; for in those days, dear reader, I walked around in a cloud of bemusement thick enough to chew. Please forgive me if I say that I felt no pain, or at least not any additional pain. I already had all the pain I could stand, and at that point in time we still had no idea what was really going on.
I was 20 years old at the time, and it’s safe to say that my life had never been worse. Not that it had ever been much good to begin with. The neighborhood I grew up in was poor and blighted; my family had been the very picture of alcoholism, physical abuse, and dysfunction. I spent my teenage years embroiled in drugs and vandalism, got into a few fights, and even dropped out of high school in my junior year. These events precipitated my first complete nervous breakdown—at the age of 16. Nevertheless (and by the grace of God), I somehow managed to avoid serious brushes with the law, and I was even able to return to school and graduate with my class. Having no other plans for my life, I allowed a friend of mine to talk me into applying at a fairly selective engineering college with him; and to my everlasting astonishment, I was accepted. However, nothing in my previous life had taught me how to live independently in civil society, and going off to college was too much of a culture shock for me. While I had always been academically talented, I lacked the moral and character virtues necessary to thrive in my new surroundings. My behavior in college is best left unmentioned, and let us just say that I returned home shortly thereafter, with less glory than shame.
That’s when things really fell apart. My parents divorced, their drinking accelerated, my father became suicidal, and my mother took up with a much younger dirt-bag and moved him into the house. I wasn’t about to stand for that, but I had few legitimate means of recourse. After several months of intolerable tension and infighting, I found myself kicked out of my home (hauled away by police actually, at my mother’s behest), temporarily confined to a locked mental ward (I had committed no crime, but the police felt it necessary to dispose of me somehow—I shudder to recall the complete annihilation of civil rights and personhood that I experienced then), and unemployed and broke. I oscillated between wandering the streets and crashing at my father’s apartment, to which I returned mainly to cook for him and to make sure he was still alive. He tried to kill himself at least three times during that period, and twice he tried to kill me. I struggled to make ends meet by working day labor at a construction site, and thereafter by troubleshooting for Verizon customers at a call center. I did not starve, but there were times when I was grateful to be able to buy a box of cereal.
I eventually landed a slightly better job at a department store, and I got myself back into university, majoring in philosophy this time. As a fulltime student, with a fulltime job and no car, I spent several hours each day on the bus. That’s where I found myself when the planes began to hit, and that’s why I had but little sympathy to spare on the occasion. I was in a daze, dear reader. My personal 9/11 had begun long before.
That miserable life of mine dragged on and on. I will not assail you with all the details; I will only say that the sadness and anxiety I then experienced pushed me to the ragged edges of endurance, and sometimes beyond them. I cried in my sleep, which was a scant four hours a night. I felt a nameless and hitherto unknown fear in my dreams. It was the fear of waking up, the fear of having to “put on” consciousness once again like an iron maiden. If you have never been chronically depressed, dear reader, I shall describe the sensation for you. It is a hyperawareness that never dissipates. It is rather like being rudely awakened from a deep sleep as though by a drill sergeant, banging trashcan lids and shining a flashlight in your face. In fact, the pain of bright sunlight on eyes used to deep darkness is exactly like the pain of despondency, only it does not fade with adjustment. It becomes a permanent feature of your waking existence. It is like a hot knife in your mind; it is like the shame of public nakedness; it is like falling through swirling black clouds with no solid surface to fall upon. You are driven to strain every nerve in search of a solution, although you have no idea where a solution might be found.
I was weak and humiliated. I was nothing in the face of the world. I felt as vulnerable and helpless as a pinkie mouse, a tasty morsel for some dread creature that had fared better in the fortunes of life. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that I read philosophy obsessively. I had a taste for the modernists—especially Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Tillich—because I felt like I was recapitulating in my own being all the angst and despair of Western civilization. I developed a great love for Oswald Spengler, because I knew that the horrors metastasizing in my own life were but the side effects of a greater societal decay. I dabbled in Baudrillard and Foucault, because I sensed that the electronic media had long been weaving a cocoon of hyperreality about me which I would have to dismantle if I was ever to think clearly. This last consideration would be of immense importance later on.
It is a dangerous matter to lose everything you’ve ever known, dear reader. Such turnings have driven many men to their graves. It is only slightly less dangerous to take seriously the convolutions of modern philosophy; and using them, to attempt to rebuild one’s worldview at the most fundamental level of system architecture. To do both at the same time is sheer madness. It is to creep within the very shadow of Barad-dûr itself. Yet that is what I did. By the grace of God, I had passed through the ultimate anxiety and found a path through the Dead Marshes.
It is regrettable that I did not read Aristotle at that time, but of necessity I began to think after his manner. I needed something good and stable to stand upon, needed to know whether or not reality could be trusted. I’m not sure if very many people know what it’s like to have to do metaphysics—not just to study it, but to actually do it (yes, and epistemology too!)—as if your life depended on it. When you stop treating philosophy as a speculative exercise and demand from it bankable results, you inevitably become an Aristotelian. It was in those awful days that I first started believing in God because it was reasonable to do so. It was then that I started to discover, in my own rudimentary fashion, “ontological proofs” for God’s existence, and something resembling the Five Ways of St. Thomas Aquinas. Looking back on those times, I am rather proud of myself that I was able to reinvent so sublime and noble a wheel, and under such impossible circumstances to boot. But I am also somewhat upset that nobody had ever taught me these simple truths in the first place.
That was the beginning of my regeneration. I had much to suffer yet, and I have much to suffer still. I will not bore you, dear reader, with the details of my escape from the Dark Tower of modernism, my eventual conversion to the Roman Catholic faith, or with any of my present labors. It remains for me now to talk about how these experiences shaped my interpretation of 9/11, and the subsequent US reaction.
(It’s a story about 9/11 after all, so let’s get back to the point.)
Forsooth, it was some time yet before I had attained the peace of mind necessary to pay attention to external events. When I began to do so again, I found a world very differently constituted from the one that I had left behind. Consider: I had watched virtually no television for the previous three and a half years. In the meantime, “Reality TV” had become a hit phenomenon, the tech-stocks bubble had broken and burst, and nevertheless a sort of internet-savvy chicness, a pink-shirt-and-Starbucking insouciance, had become de rigueur in middleclass circles. I was not online; I didn’t even own a computer. Cultural events of the highest magnitude had passed me by unawares. I had missed Super Bowls, hit television series, the advent of Britney Spears and the boy bands, the collapse of Enron—even the Millennium itself barely registers in my memory. I found that I did not care. I had broken with the world and moved on. I lost all taste for television and never again could I stay absorbed in a mere “show.” Furthermore, I had grown up somewhat. My trials had taught me something about human psychology, and about the dark motives and deceptions that seethe in the hearts of men. Finally, my natural skepticism and my encounters with Baudrillard had taught me to deconstruct the hyperreality of the electronic media. Unwilling to get burned by the world a second time, I wanted to perceive only the reality behind all impressions and dissimulations. So there I stood, bending my mind this way and that—scrutinizing, exacting, demanding—unearthing motives and plots, reading the telltale traces of all the edits and retcons and bluffs with which men inevitably polish their accounts. Such was the mindset I brought to bear on the news when I started watching the War on Terror unfold. It was just about this time that Secretary Colin Powell gave his famous report to the United Nations.
I wasn’t all that impressed. It’s not that I didn’t believe him, it’s just that I didn’t understand what the big deal was supposed to be. A couple of white rectangles on a satellite photo which might have been trailers; trailers which might have been mobile weapons laboratories—was that it? And what did Saddam Hussein have to do with 9/11 anyway? The report was pretty underwhelming just where I demanded to be blown away. Having developed the cautious habit of overestimating the competence of authority, I was expecting the high brass to present something like a Tom Clancy novel come to life. The tiresome lecture given by Powell didn’t satisfy my desire for certainty. This initial disappointment already left me with the feeling that something was very wrong.
That feeling was confirmed by my second, much greater disappointment. It was deeply unsettling to watch the entire news media suddenly effloresce with a number of quite improbable hawks. I found the jingoistic tone at FOX News—that prim, Protestant, from-the-heartland sort of cant which is so characteristic of their reportage—to be both artificial and unwatchable. I remember when the idea of “embedded journalists” was first mooted, and my distress when such an obvious propaganda tactic did not meet with the vociferous objections it deserved. I remember reading Michael Kelly’s editorial, “Making the Moral Case for War in Iraq;” and I remember, a few weeks later, when Michael Kelly became the first embedded Iraqi war journalist to die in his emdeddedness. But most of all, I remember the massive spectator enthusiasm that the media engendered for this war, the ribbons and lapel pins and terror alerts and stupid anthems, the Cult of First Responder Worship which sprang up at about this time (my recent experience of getting railroaded into the psych ward left me none too well-disposed towards the cops), and how people who one month ago couldn’t tell you the difference between a Howitzer and Mauser rifle would now gladly inform you that the battle wagon you saw on the TV screen was a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and not, ahem, an Armored Personnel Carrier.
I couldn’t escape the impression that the whole thing was turning into a circus, but I was still willing to put up with all the media shenanigans on the theory that it was within the range of normal behavior for a people who suddenly had had war foisted upon them. However, once President Bush told me that I needed to help America in its hour of need by going shopping, I was done being generous—the romance was over for me. No longer could I maintain the belief that the captains running this war had any sense of the gravity of their actions. I remained a stalwart Republican of course, a two-time Bush voter and a (blech!) one-time McCain voter; but from that moment on, I was never quite on board with the Administration. Unlike the rabble-rousers on the Left, I always sustained that there was nothing particularly immoral or underhanded about our invasion of Iraq; however, I opposed the invasion on the rather quotidian paleoconservative grounds that it was being managed by idiots, that the objectives were unclear, that the probable benefits were slim to none, and at any rate it was much too expensive. This was the most commonsense position one could hold at the time, which is probably why it was shared by practically nobody.
That the war was largely a media creation none can now doubt. This is true for the obvious reason that relatively few American lives were directly impacted by it. If you were one of the 290 million Americans who were not in New York or Washington on September 11th, if your friends and relations made it through the day unharmed, and if you are not one of the several hundred thousand servicemen who have seen duty in Iraq or Afghanistan (or one of their kin), then your experience of the War on Terror has been something brought to you entirely via TV, news, and internet. Whether your personal opinion inclines toward supporting or opposing the war effort, it matters not; for in what meaningful sense can you support or oppose something that you have nothing to do with? The conclusion is that, for most Americans, the war nearly could have been forgotten (and would have been), were it not for the media’s constant reporting on it, and the manner in which it figured into the domestic policy debate. Important implications follow.
Let us take, for instance, the 9-11 “Truther” movement, execrable insult to good taste that it is. It was late in the year of 2004 when I first heard of them—on CSPAN of all places. I think I must have been flipping through television channels when I saw something that looked like an erudite policy debate. Since I happen to enjoy erudite policy debates, I tuned in for awhile. As it so happens, I caught maybe the last 10 minutes of what turned out to be some sort of blue ribbon Truther panel made up of engineers, professors, and other assorted wonks. Up until that time, it had never even crossed my mind to doubt the accepted version of the September 11th events. I’ll admit that I was intrigued, so I looked into the matter and thought about it carefully. However, I quickly decided that the entire Truther premise was ridiculous. It was so ridiculous, in fact, that one could not long hold to it without compromising one’s common sense. Why were so many “experts” in the natural sciences so willing to lend their names to something which quite clearly insisted upon the bastardization of their respective disciplines? I discounted the fringe benefits that would come from such a move, such as garnering instant popularity among a certain segment of the Left. It had to be some sort of higher-level game they were playing, or perhaps some deep psychological need that drove them onward.
Thus we come, dear reader, to the greatest catastrophe of them all: the general disengagement from reality which has marked this war from the beginning on both sides of the political spectrum. How could it be that tens of millions of Americans had already assumed that the US government was somehow responsible for the 9/11 attacks, scarcely before the dust from the collapsing towers had cleared? How could it be that such carnage, so obviously inflicted by a foreign enemy, could so rapidly be subtilized into a paranoid accusation flung at the heads of the reigning administration? Could it be because, deep down, we all knew that the attack was no more than a fleabite, and that it wasn’t going to make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things? Didn’t we sense (oh, the heresy it would have been to admit it!) that a great battle had been joined, only it wasn’t the Global War on Terror (which merely occupied the visible wavelengths)? It was the battle for political capital on the domestic scene: that was the real object of desire. America the Hegemon herself was on the table, and the victor would control her destiny. In other words, the immediate effects of the 9/11 attacks were of so little consequence that, as soon as everybody had caught their breath, they each begin to think of how to turn the situation to their advantage; and the prize they fought for was the possession of America, the only real prize left in the world.
This will be easier to see if we examine first the case of the Truthers, and analyze their processes of belief formation. Such an analysis (admittedly barebones), would go something like this: There are many people in this country who naturally suspect the government of every sort of foul and malicious behavior. The exact etiology of these beliefs is something which we cannot go into in great detail about here, but let us just say that there is nothing especially abnormal or defective about such people. They have normal human aspirations, unfortunately cathected to the wrong objects. The basic explanation is that their beliefs feel good to them, and provide them with a narrative structure and sense of control over their lives. The essence of this sense of control is freedom from responsibility. Consequently, these people have a very ambiguous relationship with authority, since authority is the embodiment of responsibility. They hate submitting to it always, they will seize it for themselves when they can, and they will wield it arbitrarily when they have it. All ordinary symbols of authority, particularly the Church and the State, become their hated adversaries. The more they hate authority, the greater becomes their sense of power, and the more eager they are to appropriate authority and twist it to their own designs. They are the quintessential liberals and revolutionaries.
You will inevitably find such people gravitating toward progressivist causes, all progressivist causes, whether they involve ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class structure, environmentalism, or what have you. They may be under the impression that they actually believe in such causes, but in reality they are simply drawn instinctively toward any political movement calculated to oppose the ordinary power structure. The numerous contradictions in their belief system do not bother them, for it is not truth they are interested in. The secret logic of power knits together all their multitudinous designs. The 9/11 attacks provided them with an opportunity which was too good to lose, from their point of view. For them, it was just as if an oil tanker had broken up on a reef, which event they would have used to pillory Big Oil; or as if a child had died of secondhand smoke inhalation, which they would have used to pillory Big Tobacco. As it so happens, the Ordinary Authority dropped the ball on 9/11, so they used that event to pillory Big Government. An observation of failure quickly became an imputation of incompetence, which became neglect, which became complicity, which became malice. With these key psychological elements in place, there wasn’t much work left to do. The rest of the 9/11 Truther narrative is just literature, just as Marxism and Gender Studies are no more than literature at bottom, unreal in their very marrow. The only thing that matters is the power structures which such literature takes for granted, the power structures that can unite a mass of humanity in a common revolutionary purpose. These books know their own, and their own know them. There you have the anatomy of a Truther.
But we must admit that the Truther movement derived a lot of its impetus from the failure of Ordinary Authority to handle the situation properly. The Neocons, too, had their dreams and their visions, and they were no less opportunistic than the Libs when it came to converting 9/11 into the MacGuffin for the rather bizarre screenplay that followed. The trailer for that movie would have gone something like this: Imagine a realm of marvelous technological wonder and achievement, where Kantian Republics bloom in what once was hostile desert. Where a law called the Bush Doctrine brought peace to a troubled planet, and men from every corner of the earth raised purple fingers skyward in pledges of endless brotherhood. On the day when the towers fell, a nation arose from its slumber; a nation that would become a religion, a religion that would transform a universe!
Such is a peek into the mindset of our Neocon brethren, who with Francis Fukuyama and Leo Strauss were already contemplating the End of History when the smoke alarms started going off in the Pentagon. “This calls for an end of history,” they said; and they found in themselves men admirably suited to play the role of the Ender. Some time they had had to look forward to this, and they had not been idle. Thus it was that they were able to roll out the PATRIOT Act in no time at all, and the preparations were already in place for the invasion of at least two countries. The Department of Homeland Security they established, ostensibly for securing the homeland; and the TSA they did also establish, to secure everybody’s underpants. Flag pins they wore on their swollen chests, and duct tape they gave for our windows. A coalition of think-tankers and hick balladeers was assembled to give the movement some much-needed cultural cachet; and the End of History, a World Federation under the auspices of American democracy, was ever twinkling in their eyes.
If you’ll forgive me for waxing lyrical, dear reader, what I’m trying to say is that the Neoconservative Establishment’s immediate response to the 9/11 attacks was not to bring the terrorists to justice as efficiently as possible, but to implement an orchestrated program of world-improvement for which 9/11 was simply the convenient excuse. To this end they massively expanded the federal bureaucracy, spinning off new departments and offices at a breakneck pace. They appropriated to themselves new powers to surveil and detain the civilian population. And when it came time to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, to the military objectives of the campaigns was added the program of “nation building,” the deliberate attempt to remake the cultural aspect of whole regions of the globe. It was a farfetched notion at best: the sort of “Teach the savages to speak Americano”-type idealism that one often associates with tired colonial powers whose leading men have gone soft in the guts. Not only was this spectacle draining to watch, but it placed in an awkward position those of us who thought that America’s defense was still worth fighting for, and who felt obliged to defend the Administration’s prerogatives on that account.
So we see that while the Truthers and the Neocons opposed each other in rhetoric, in style and in substance they were really quite similar. They each had a dream they were trying to sell, and within that dream was cloaked the desire to control America’s future. They each offered up some rather flimsy justifications for the changes they were wont to inflict on American life; and they each showed, by the bungle which they made of affairs when the desired power fell at last into their hands, that a true grasp of the situation eluded their comprehension, and exceeded their capacities. The Neocons, be it said, were much closer to the truth, while the ironically-named Truthers were far away from it. But the tactics employed by the Neocons opened up a chance for the Truthers to play their gambit. If there were ever any solid and believable reasons for expanding the government and invading Iraq, the Neocons never presented them. What they offered instead was a sentiment, and the Truthers’ sure instinct for power sensed that behind that sentiment lay a bid for domestic supremacy. The Truthers, not to be outdone, countered with an alternative version of reality, saying, in effect, “You have your sentiments, and we have ours.” While the Neocons had some inkling of the truth, they never justified it: They offered unjustified true beliefs. The Truthers responded with unjustified false beliefs. And if the Neocons openly accused the Truthers of having ulterior motives, the Truthers would just stare back at them across the table, knowing that the Establishment had ulterior motives of its own, and that they would never willingly throw down their own cards. Thus was a situation created which was tailor-made to prevent any facts from coming to light. The War on Terror became kabuki theater in the battle for domestic sentiments. For where there are no facts, dear reader, sentiment rules.
And so the long middle years of the Iraqi invasion rolled on…2004…2005…2006. These were the years when the news media really came into its own as the decisive factor in shaping the national mood. It was an era of exposé books and hit pieces in the major periodicals (think Fiasco and Seymour Hersh). It was the setting for a fierce, protracted duel between Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly, and the networks they represented. And above all it was the Age of the Blogger, the advent of the independent world-improver. For now a new contender appeared in the lists of battle to add to the confusion and the noise. Across the crackling channels of cyberspace there arose a mighty din, an endless stream of commentary and criticism which inflated the 24-hour news cycle to thunderhead proportions. Long had this mass been kept silent. Before the internet came, they had lain in smoldering resentment; for, unable to breech the corridors of official publication, they had had to content themselves with firing off the occasional letter to the editor. But now, empowered by easy access to data and at least a theoretical audience, they woke up and felt that they were strong. Wielding Excel charts and Google Earth pics, they charged into the fray with all the gusto of their long-repressed emotion. And for once, high up in their unassailable battlements, the powers of the mainstream media were shaken. Pressing, clamoring, and inexorable, the Peanut Gallery was on the march.
I’ll admit that I was seduced, dear reader. There was so much going on in this Brave New World that I, too, wanted to be a part of it. Persons who had hitherto labored in obscurity were out there making names for themselves, and I thought, “Why not me?” After all I had read a little history and philosophy, and I had thought long and hard about these subjects. I could turn a phrase reasonably well when the proper mood struck me, and in the past my essays had met with some attention in some not too inconsiderable venues. I began to think I had a future in policy analysis. I wanted to make some meaningful contribution to society and thereby resurrect my life from the doldrums to which fate had consigned it; I wanted to be where the action was; and above all, I wanted to exercise my dearly-bought Baudrillardian skepticism and get to the bottom of things. Surely there would be an appetite for that?
So when the Great Host of the Peanut Gallery (shall we call them the Pea-orns?) went marching by, I eventually joined with the assembly. But I needed more information, needed to stay abreast of things, so it was unavoidable that I started watching the news again. This I did with an enthusiasm fit to balance the scales against my previous media fast. Every day I tracked the financial markets, meditating deeply on the foreign exchange rates and the spot price of commodities (though I don’t have a penny invested in anything). The foreign news, too, I watched, Deutsche Welle and the BBC. I stayed glued to CNN, MSNBC, and even to Charlie Rose (an interruptive blabbermouth he is, but he seems to get all the good guests). And I worked over everything I saw with the highest degree of philosophical exactitude I could muster.
I tell you this because I am now slightly chagrined by it. When I look back at my writings from that period, I am heartened by my occasional flashes of brilliance; but I am also unnerved by the overwrought thinkiness of it all: World-historical implications attributed to events of transitory significance, a trifling federal interest rate fluctuation parsed in Heideggerian terminology—and all of it couched in a tone that not infrequently exhibited signs of an underlying mental disturbance. I suppose I could be forgiven for that, though. I was effectively fatherless; I had no real life and no prospects; I was desperate for recognition and very insecure about ever being taken seriously, so I poured all my energy into every little post and comment. Needless to say, I took disagreement quite personally. I wanted to stand as a beacon in the storm, to acquire prudence and to become a man. In the end it appears that I was not entirely unsuccessful, although my success came in a manner that I never expected. For throughout the long middle years of the invasion, I could never repress the intuition that I was wasting my time “getting to the bottom of it.” Amid all the media smoke and noise, all the policy and theory and analysis that so delighted my intellect, I was missing out on what was really important. The key to understanding any war is not to be found in the annals of strategy and correspondence; it is found in knowing where you stand and what you are fighting for—and I didn’t. Home and hearth, family and friends, God and grace—those should have been my concerns. Although I greatly wished to be relevant to the times, all the events and decisions were taking place far beyond my reach (by design), and I had no means to influence them. By this time my impression of the War on Terror was one of pageantry repeated ad nauseum. The talking heads had chattered their teeth down to the nubs, and the trumpets had blared too long. I didn’t want another drink of this draught, thank you. I was getting queasy, and I was sobering up. It was time for me to go home, dear reader. I’d had enough.
Apparently the country, too, had had enough. The 2006 Congressional Elections swept into office a wave of Democrats, and nobody could have honestly said they were surprised by the result. The tide had turned, and the opposition was starting to win the battle for US sentiment. It is interesting to note that the sort of wedge issues which traditionally serve as a proxy for registering increases in liberal attitudes—the legalization of gay marriage, for instance—went down in ignominious defeat at the very moment when the party long associated with liberalism was garnering its biggest electoral victory in decades. But the American people were not voting for liberalism; they were voting for a return to normalcy. What transpired in the interim was, I think, a nation-sized version of my personal transmigration from initial enthusiasm to toleration to disgust. For by now it had dawned, even among those directly engaged in fighting the war, that the matter had become solipsistic, completely captured by the exigencies of domestic party politics. The American people felt like they were not being heard, and they were tired of needlessly shedding blood and treasure on a campaign for which they were offered no clear exit strategy, but every convenient excuse. What’s more, the time had long expired when the average person could see how his contributions to the war effort were making any difference. Under such circumstances, it was inevitable that support for the endeavor waned. And it will not do to say, as so many Neocons at the time were wont to say, that the only reason why so many unpatriotic Americans were able to criticize the war effort in peace and comfort, was because valiant men were defending them on distant fields of battle, spilling their blood for the country that they (at least) still loved, un-thanked and unappreciated. The truth is only a few cranks ever dared to disparage the efforts of our soldiers. Indeed not since World War II had American servicemen been lauded with so much genuine fanfare. It was the American people who were unappreciated, dismissed, and lied to. It was they who had seen their freedoms confiscated and their national deficits balloon. And it was then, in the long middle years, that the realization set in, grim and irrevocable, that the American people were just an object, a source of votes and revenues for the bureaucratic coterie in Washington, who managed the affairs of the world with an eye toward their own preservation, and took but little notice of the restiveness brooding throughout the land. So it came to pass that in November of 2006, the American people, without much ado, and admirable in their restraint, turned up in astonishing numbers for a midterm election, and voted to go home.
Finally, it was no coincidence that the long middle years saw attention to the Iraqi campaign increase out of all proportion to its importance in the actual War on Terror, at least as far as the domestic policy battle was concerned. Iraq: the word will forever remain synonymous with the War on Terror, even though the only proper theater of combat, if combat there must be, was arguably in Afghanistan. Thus it was that Iraq became the real bone of contention in the ideological conflict which ensued, the target of the most blistering criticisms as well as the object of the most pompous defenses. Depending on the ferocity of the particular attacker, the Administration’s motives for embarking on the Iraqi campaign were adjudged to be either imprudent or base; and these attacks naturally elicited rebuttals from the Establishment which sounded more like obfuscatory rhetoric than reasoned explanations. The acrimony that was engendered by this is what drove the entire debate, and much that should have been done or explained was left to fall through the cracks. It was only rarely, and almost as an afterthought to the intense media focus on the Iraqi theater, that somebody would moot the fatal question, “Hey, whatever happened to that Bin Laden guy?” Perhaps that was why many of us just assumed he was already dead.
Looking back, it is easy to see how the Tide of 2006 adumbrated the political reversals of 2008; and here we must pay heed to something we overlook only at our peril. The Republican Establishment bears the blame for the sole American defeat ever suffered in the War on Terror: the election of Barack Hussein Obama, the greatest “man caused disaster” ever to befall the country, greater by far than 9/11 itself. I said openly at the time that it was “love” that caused his election; but it wasn’t the love of him, still less the love of the liberal policies he represented. It was love for the America we once knew, love of home and peace and normalcy. The Republicans, with their endless prevarications, their bluster and bravado and ham-fisted insouciance, had practically assured the election of a Democrat in 2008; and beyond that, they assured the primary election of the most liberal, most exotic, most machine-oiled Democrat the country could find. Here we are left to ponder the irony of the fact that a man whose mindset stands closer to America’s enemies than to America’s, had the fortune to be leading the country on the day when America’s War on Terror finally swept to its conclusion.
So it was that on Sunday, May 1st, in the year 2011, the third in the reign of King Hussein I, the country rejoiced to learn that Osama Bin Laden had been found and destroyed. Almost immediately, though, there was cause for misgiving. The initial reports were much varied and contradictory; the body was ceremoniously dumped in an unknown sea; and after some initial waffling, we were informed that no pictures of the corpse would ever be made public. “Don’t you worry,” our government reassured us. “We have the DNA evidence. We got him.” Yet many people have remained stubbornly un-reassured. I’ll admit that I, too, succumbed to some temporary Obama Derangement Syndrome. After all, he certainly doesn’t deserve to go down in history as the president who felled America’s Most Wanted. From what we know about his character, we cannot put it past him to lie about such an event, or at least to distort the facts beyond recognition in order to enhance his own popularity. But whatever the true events were, it appears to me upon reflection that at least the kernel of the story must be accepted as fact. Bin Laden was either killed last week or he was already dead. I doubt very much that he is still alive.
One thing, though, I do not doubt: the American people deserve better than this. Here at the conclusion of this long and nasty conflict, we deserve better than an Obama photo-op and a breezy assertation that all is well, and never mind the lack of evidence. Haven’t we had enough of that attitude already? Isn’t this, in fact, more of the very same attitude that needlessly prolonged this war, and caused so much heartsickness and division here at home? It is good that Osama Bin Laden is dead, but it did not need to take 10 years. It did not need to come at the cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. It did not need to involve such draconian changes to American society as we have had to endure. And it did not require us to sell out to the Pakistanis, as so many marginalized voices long warned us we were doing. Let us take stock of all that has transpired since 9/11, and ask what changes we can now demand of our government, now that the man who started it all has finally met his demise. Don’t we now have a good enough reason for pulling out of Afghanistan? I think we have at minimum a good enough reason for getting rid of the TSA. Surely we can expect some of these changes to take place. If they do not, it is proof that the war was never about Bin Laden. It was always about domestic policy, about Washington and who would control its wealth-absorbing power; and that is a pretty sad commentary on the state of affairs. I think, after all is said and done, that the American people are at least entitled to closure. Closure and freedom.
So you see, dear reader, for me this war has ended pretty much as it began, in a collage of media reports that cannot be absorbed or assimilated, in an overweening government that permits no one to peer into its mysterious doings. And if I may be permitted to append a personal request at the conclusion of this overlong remembrance, let it be a request that all Americans now strive to retake the freedom and dignity which we let slip away in the terror of darker days. Let not Bin Laden’s legacy be an America sickened and spavined and reduced to groveling at the table of nations, but stronger, freer, and self-reliant. Let all those things that once were good and cherished, be so again. And if war should ever menace our shores anew, let us not forget who we are, and what we’re fighting for.
The long war is over, my brothers. Let’s go home.
I can't believe I read it all.
I have to confess when you said you turned to Philosophy, I became more curious and my expectations raised about you. After all, it is the mother of all Sciences.
I'm deluded. You've drawned little from Philosophy.
Here's what I remember - some years later while trying to get firefighter certified
The first time I shouldered my Scott airpack, a self contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) and pressed the face mask and respirator to my face and mounted the ladder over the hotbox, I panicked and nearly fainted. My heart pounded; I couldn't breath! A sudden burst of air, however, from the release valve, relieved the feeling of suffocation, but drew a quick scolding from my firefighting instructor. Stop breathing in bursts, he said; remain calm, and follow your team leader.
At 56, never too old to learn, I was trying to become a certified firefighter.
Descending into the hotbox, a converted shipping container purposely set aflame and smoldering, I remained low and crawled to the source of the fire. One by one, the team of novices cooled the fire before retreating. Outside we breathed a collective sigh of relief, having passed the first test.
The other day I watched Fahrenheit 911 again, thinking I may have missed something in the documentary. Bravura filmmaking, especially the edited scenes at the base of the twin towers, particularly the scenes of emotionally stricken people at the WTC, the documentary only focuses on 9-11 briefly. Accompanied by music befitting the death knell of nearly three thousand victims, we see the shock, the stunned disbelief, and the impending death. Among the victims were more than 343 firefighters who stood a thousand feet below the fire and realized what they had to do. Knew what they were trained to do. Knew they had to shoulder their Scott airpacks and climb hundreds of feet, passing terrified people along the way.
In the film I watched a group of New York firefighters shoulder their Scott airpacks and move towards the towers. Did anyone of that group survive, I wondered?
Some people watching the film (with 20/20 hindsight) may have thought the firefighters crazy. Obviously the buildings were coming down. At least that is what the well-paid experts tell us today. What fools those firefighters were. Why would they rush into collapsing buildings?
Because skyscrapers had never collapsed before or since. No sizeable steel building had ever burned and then collapsed. Even the architects and designers of the Twin Towers had factored in an airliner, filled with fuel, crashing into the towers.
But this was no ordinary fire, no ordinary rescue, no ordinary series of tragic events. This was a manufactured terror event destined to have far-reaching and epic repercussions.
One objective observer, Wall Street Journal reporter John Bussey, described the collapse of the south tower from the ninth floor of the WSJ office building: "I . . . looked up out of the office window to see what seemed like perfectly synchronized explosions coming from each floor. . . . One after the other, from top to bottom, with a fraction of a second between, the floors blew to pieces."
Why We Fight
Had most if not all the 343 firefighters lived, had everyone escaped, had the buildings not collapsed, the firefighters would have been living heroes. They would have added their testimony to that of the working class survivors, firefighters with nothing to hide. Here is just a portion of testimony that utterly destroys the fraudulent official version of 9-11.
"I saw a flash flash flash [at] the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building?" said Assistant Fire Commissioner, Stephen Gregory. Now why would a top firefighting official like Gregory lie? And if telling the truth, why was no one listening?
"There was just an explosion [in the south tower]. It seemed like on television [when] they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions." Added firefighter Richard Banaciski. Once again, was Banaciski mistaken in what he saw?
These two quotes were only a sampling from a collection of 9/11 oral histories recorded by the FDNY at the end of 2001. Understandably, they were never publicly released until August 12, 2005. The testimonies suggested more than one explosion occurred in the towers. For example, FDNY Captain Dennis Tardio recalled: "I hear an explosion and I look up. It is as if the (south tower) building is being imploded, from the top floor down, one after another, boom, boom, boom."
Readers often ask me why we in the 911 Truth Movement bother to pose logical questions to the tragedy that took so many lives--and continues to take so many lives. People wonder why we fight, why we dissent, why we question the official story when so many so-called patriots remain quiet? Because a great crime was commited and never fully investigated. Because nobody can speak for the dead unless we do it.
Firefighter Louie Cacchioli entered the north tower lobby and saw elevator doors completely blown out and people struck by debris. "How could this be happening so quickly if a plane hit way above?" Debunkers claim the blast from the impact and subsequent fuel explosion destroyed the lobby, elevators and sub basement floors.
However, after Cacchioli reached the 24th floor, he and another fireman heard a sizeable, secondary blast. "This huge explosion that sounded like a bomb [and] knocked off the lights and stalled the elevator." Had Cacchioli simply heard the tower coming down at that exact moment, he would have been crushed before he escaped. Instead, after prying themselves out of the elevator, they heard "Another huge explosion like the first one... This one hits about two minutes later." Two minutes later? Once again, logically, had he heard the tower pancaking down around them, rather than a series of explosions, Cacchioli and his partner would have NOT have had time to escape from the tower to testify.
Thus exposing the government version of 9-11 events as an outright lie, an outright fraud, a house of cards composed of treachery and deception. Thus exposing, in no uncertain terms, the cabal of government experts and self-styled 911 "debunkers" as either unquestioning patriots, unwitting accomplices, or worse: willing co-conspirators.
Not until the credible testimony of those who actually experienced the controlled demolition of the WTC is given due weight, not until the testimony of those who witnessed and experienced the destruction from the inside and outside of the buildings is properly investigated, will justice be served. Until then we will continue to fight with the only weapons we possess. Dissent and dissemination of suppressed evidence. Until then America has witnessed the controlled killing of 343 firefighters without due process of law. Those brave men who shouldered heavy gear and marched to their doom were sacrificed. If the intentional murder of these trusting public servants is allowed to stand, this nation will weaken and fall. Because any nation that permits an unending series of crimes against itself cannot last long, nor does it deserve to.
My personal story- Alex CoJones / DAH
Why did .gov pay MILLIONS to each of the family members of the deceased in 9-11 WTC? I can't recall .gov doing that in any other catastrophe.
U.S. troops would enforce peace under Army study
by Rowan Scarborough - The Washington Times September 10, 2001
Edition: 2 Section: A Pages: A1, 9.
Peter Myers, October 3, 2001:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwS1tC9Mp00
Oh but you were.
The last 13 years of wasted money and lives could have been halted with this sentence on 9/12/01 -
"The Dome of the Rock and the City of Mecca is now on our targeting list."
Musilms all over the world would have stopped whatever they were doing and started killing the jihadis themselves.
Don't like it....give me a better idea.
a better idea would have been 2 nukes:
1 on Tel Aviv and 1 on Jerusalem.
At least you represent a dissenting opinion with a solution. The other 6 dickheads just down-vote and run.
Cut off yer balls so you won't breed more idiots like yourself.
You brainless monkey! How about less of an ad homen attack and rubbing what few nuerons you have together to give us your scenario for NOT having 13 years of unending war. Or perhaps you like to see the MIC just march on?
Funny Thing : You and I remember EXACTLY
Where we were when 9-11 happened, waking up to the "Attack."
And if you are really old like me (64) you remember where you were when you heard JFK was shot.
BUT GHW Bush claims he can't "remember" where he was when JFK was shot.
Some people claim he was on the steps of a certain building in Dallas that day.
Jus' Saying - Bush Crime Family.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, flies like a duck, and lays duck eggs, we would not say "it's a rabbit". But if we are behind on our credit card payments and our wife is pregnant and we have heard there are possible layoffs and the President says "you're either with us or against us, and we're saying it's a rabbit", then we might say, "well, whatever they say, then".
I think arguments over what brought the buildings down are irrelevant. Current efforts to blame Saudi Arabia, next on the Oded Yinon Plan/PNAC hitlist, are as predictable as the obfuscating and memory-holing of the links to Israel, Israeli spying, and Zionist agents.
If you can look at Building 7 fall and think anything but controlled demolition, nothing will convince you that the official narrative is palpable nonsense. You live in a world where office fires can weaken steel enough in a building built way above code can collapse - from the top, near freefall, and where floors low in a building, untouched by fire, collapse even as the load it has to bear lessens with each collapsing/meterial-ejecting floor above it....somehow the lower floors get weaker the less weight they have to support.
But honestly, even if you never studied much physics, even if you automatically think anything negative about Israel or the IDF or "Jews" qua group is automatically "hate" and devoid of merit...
The likelihood of Israeli involvement is as obvious as the forbidden nature of discussing it is alarming.
https://archive.org/details/MastersOfDeception
www.wikispooks.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/world/middleeast/extending-a-legacy-of...
Heck, if the freaking buildings were built from balsa wood they still wouldn't collapse like that. It's simple physics. The only way to collapse a structure symetrically is controlled demolition. Otherwise, no matter how weak the structure, it will collapse to one side or the other. Like a flowing river carves a path thorugh the least resistance, so will a structure collapse to the side of least resistance.
A prayer for peace in honor of 9/11
"For our scorched and blackened earth
Forgive us
For the scandal of billions wasted in war
Forgive us
For our arms makers and arms dealers
Forgive us
One: For our Caesars and Herods
Forgive us"
See the rest at
http://www.empireremixed.com/resources/litany-of-resistance/
How come shitheads like Michael Moore never attempt documentaries on something like the true events of 9/11? Rhetorical, I know. But it just drives me batshit crazy when these Hollywood do-gooders "expose" their favorite targets like guns, fast-food, American Capitalism, but run like scared children from anything having even a faint aroma of the truth.
How about it Michael? Interview some 9/11 firefighters; some architects; some engineers. Review the images of the Pentagon and the incredibly small hole created by a 757 impact. Interview some pilots and ask if a 757 could be flown at an altitude of 50' going several hundred miles an hour. And lastly, you could close your documentary masterpiece by building exact scale model replicas of the towers, set them ablaze with jet fuel, and watch them collapse (or not). You won't do it because you don't have the balls; or your puppet masters won't allow it.
Always hear people say that melting steel from the building shows proof that the building was demolished cuz fire can't melt steel.
First off fire DOES melt steel. how the hell do you think it melts??? FIRE!
However the melting "steel" could have been aluminum from the plane. thin metal tends to melt at high temperatures does it not?
also, people say that there were explosions in the basement whcih is where the orginal WTC bombers in 93 tried to bring down the towers. Why wouldn't they want to put them there again with the added benefit of planes crashing into them.
If one reads history and understands events most of this conspiracy crap disappears. People with PhD's are just as guilible as anyone else if not moreso. Just look how many believe the global warming hoax.
Happy Reichstag Day!
Wouldn't do any good talkin bout those con-spiracy theories, gold stolen, records destroyed. Nope, These days government is god and Father never lies.
Remember what Father said, they attacked us because we are soooooo free.
Now bend over ma'am, I need to ensure you ain't hiding something in your lower cavities before you can board the bus.Ohhhhhhh, Thank you SIR!
nice piece by Art. forgot how many drooling truthers infest this place.....
This infesting truther would like your highly regarded expert opinion on the reason WTC 7 imploded without ever being hit by a plane.
rejected-This infesting truther would like your highly regarded expert opinion on the reason WTC 7 imploded without ever being hit by a plane.
See my post below to bay of pigs and fester in logic.
Edit-"Remember what Father said, they attacked us because we are soooooo free."
Yes because the rest of the world wants you to be free and its only the USA that wants to enslave you.
Such a simple question but no answer. Come on buddy... your the one calling names.
Sure the building was pulled.... why. There was no structural damage. And does anyone think a building can be set up for demolition in a few minutes? Takes days/weeks. Which means people were working in and around a building rigged with explosives. And then why did Silverstein get paid? Go ahead, say your building is unsafe, blow it up and see what your insurance company has to say... while sitting in jail!
The whole thing smells. But then those wanting independent investigations are infesting truthers. I want an independent investigation of MH17,,, is that another instance of a rambling truther?
So you drooling government loving slugs can go to hades.
don't get them started on the moon landing. they'll never shut up
TRUTHERISM IS POINTLESS.
TRUTHERS WILL NEVER GET A FULL INVESTIGATION OF 9/11 , SAME AS JFK TRUTHERS.
THERE IS A MORE PRESSING AREA UPON WHICH TRUTHERS SHOULD FOCUS THEIR EFFORT.
PREVENTING AND EXPOSING THE UPCOMING TYRANNY OF THE U.S. MIC BY WAY OF DOMESTIC POLICE.
FORGET 9/11 TRUTHERISM---START WORRRYING ABOUT WHAT IS POSSIBLE, RATHER THAN WHAT ISN'T.
THE GOVERNMENT HOLDS ALL THE CARDS WITH RESPECT TO ITS OWN DATA AND SECRETS, THOSE ARE THE EASIEST THINGS TO PROTECT .
TRUTHERS NEED TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR AND STOP BEING SO DAMN INTENTIONALLY IMPOTENT.
YES YES 9/11 WAS A CONSPIRACY. SO WHAT IF YOU CANNOT DEFINITELY PROVE THIS FACT TO THE PUBLIC? WHAT CAN YOU DO?
+100 for a modicum of practical sanity.
Whatever parading on TV is falsehood. Let me quote:
"About the media you can sustain two opposing hypotheses: they are the strategy of power, which finds in them the means of mystifying the masses and of imposing its own truth. Or else they are the strategic territory of the ruse of the masses, who exercise in them their concrete power of the refusal of truth, of the denial of reality. Now the media are nothing else than a marvellous instrument for destablizing the real and the true, all historical or political truth (there is thus no possible political strategy of the media: it is a contradiction in terms). And the addiction that we have for the media, the impossibility of doing without them, is a deep result of this phenomenon: it is not a result of a desire for culture, communication, and information, but of this perversion of truth and falsehood, of this destruction of meaning in the operation of the medium. The desire for a show, the desire for simulation, which is at the same time a desire for dissimulation. This is a vital reaction. It is a spontaneous, total resistance to the ultimatum of historical and political reason."
— Jean Baudrillard, “The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media,” trans. Marie Maclean, New Literary History, vol. 16, no. 3 (Spring 1985)
Great piece by Art. No matter what conspiracy you subscribe to, please remember that innocents died on this day. Respect them and their families and fight your battles for "truth" later in a differnt forum...
Great piece by Art. No matter what conspiracy you subscribe to, please remember that innocents died on this day. Respect them and their families and fight your battles for "truth" later in a differnt forum...
What still blows me away today, and I don't think I will ever get over it,
is the rapidity that both tower 1 & 2 came down in. Both WTC buildings
just 'fizzed' down like a soda pop bottle when one shakes it too much.
The buildings evaporated in pyroplastic clouds of pulverized dust that
was like talcum powder by the time it made it to ground zero. Steel
with a tensile strength, and very high carbon content. I am formally
trained in metalurgy and this completely blows my mind still to this day.
The only thing that can pulverize steel is nano-thermite. Nano-thermite is the only explanation for these historic implosions of the first steel buildings to ever come down due to so-called 'fire'. The simple fact of the matter is that one cannot turn all that steel contained in the WTC buildings to dust in two 11 second implosions without extreme explosive pressures that have never been witnessed before in the history of steel building manufacturing, or within the steel industry itself. 911 cannot be explained by the physics that have been promulgated in the Official version of events. The Western world is living in denial of contemporary Physics and Mechanical Engineering. We all know that we will never see steel buildings come down like that ever again. People did not decide to move out of all the steel buildings in the world after the 911 Official version of events was disclosed in media. What we are experincing today is mass denail, and a collective unconciousness of an event that does not meet the criterion that most use to determine causality in the real world. 911 is a statistical abnormality that had never occured previous to 911. The world changed in terms of conciousness that day. Collectively, we have established that society does not believe
the Official version but is willing to go along with the denial that the ruling class has instituted to replace reality that we are well aware of. It is as though the powers that be became actors in a play or theater of fear/denail that day. We collectively went along with the explicit version of events that the White House promulgated at a cost to our collectively held notions of what is real or not. The Official version of 911 takes on new meaning each year as the ruling class sticks to the unreasoned version of events. Corporate Media is branding 911 on each aniversary of 911 so that society is being conditioned to reaffirm the initial denial that George Bush and the neocons wanted affirmed. Just as persons use denial as a protective psychological mechanism, so too do governments when they engage in false flag terrorism against their own people. What is perplxing to myself is that the ruling class could not possibly believe that we believe their brands of lies. The conciousness of the ruling class must be living in a constant state of fear because of the theater of denial that they are bound to live in due to the great money transfer of wealth from the 99% to the 1%. Psychologically, the ruling class has opted for the greatest degree of psychological denial that any subset of human beings has ever endured in the history of civilization. At some point they will eventually become completely neurotic and then insane with fear. This is just a matter of time.