Living in Infamy (Part III)

Someone reading through the two previous posts might want to ask, “OK, so how do _you_ feel about the events of 9/11? What do _you_ think happened? 'Cause you seem to have an opinion about just about everything else.” Well, as I've said, the “cui bono?” approach, while not logically air-tight, is nonetheless quite useful – call it the equivalent of circumstantial evidence. If we have means and motive on the one hand, and an actual outcome on the other, connecting the two might not always lead to the correct answer, but it will do so much of time – especially if the means and motive are things of long standing and if the outcome continues to bear fruit (for those who had the means and motive) for years afterward. So, even though it's a common thing for people to describe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as debacles, failures, a massive waste of resources, etc. -- they have, in fact, been spectacularly successful for some people and organizations. We should also recall that the notion of invading Iraq – of “regime change” -- predated 9/11 by quite a bit; it was a foreign policy accident waiting to happen. As usual, we had taken sides in the Iran-Iraq war because of our hurt feelings about the embassy takeover. So in that sense, Saddam Hussein was our creation, as were the Taliban. Then we decided that, although it had seemed like a good idea at the time, we could no longer live in the same world as Saddam, so he had to go. (I wonder how many other current regimes are biting their nails, just waiting for us to get tired of them? They know that once the honeymoon with the U.S. is over, it's _over_, baby. The irony is that we wind up treating our traditional “enemies”, like Cuba and North Korea, better than our former “friends”.)

Then I'll say again that we are stuck to the tar baby called “Israel” as a result of what, IMO, was the diplomatic/foreign policy blunder of the century – and we really should have known better... and maybe we did, but nothing could be done. So we have been paying the “Israel bill” ever since – and 9/11 is just the most prominent single item on that ever-expanding bill.

So when you look at everyone who benefited from 9/11 – and continues to do so – is it even remotely possible that, for them, it was all just dumb luck, and that no one had the slightest hand in the business? I just can't accept that. Once again, check out the Internet on this subject. There are so many layers of intrigue involved... so many plots and sub-plots, so much deception, so much maneuvering, so many intriguing (and otherwise wildly unlikely) connections... and so many people dedicated to either the cover-up or suppressing all doubts and skepticism... that I find it hard to believe that the official version is all there is to it. An innocent man typically does not march into court with an army of lawyers, the way O.J. did. Likewise, if the official story were true, and not seriously open to doubt, would there be an army of people employed full-time to ward off anyone who suspected otherwise? Does the Regime have confidence in its own expressed position, or in its ability to defend it? Apparently not – since its functionaries squeal like stuck pigs every time anyone dares question the position. The hypersensitivity alone should give one pause.

Then we have the common argument of, “How is it possible that so many people can keep that big a secret for so long -- for the rest of their lives, if need be?” Well – the truth is, it's quite possible. There is nothing quite so delicious as having, and keeping, a secret that you know few other people are in on – it provides a power rush... a feeling of specialness, of superiority. Look at how few people ever “squeal” on the Mafia. Or the CIA. Check out the vast conspiracy – seldom cracked to this day – re: the JFK assassination (some of the most compelling evidence to date coming from “deathbed confessions”). Think about Pearl Harbor... or the atomic bomb... or the Gulf of Tonkin... or the USS Liberty. And how about the Freemasons, the prototype for all subsequent conspiracies? No – secrets are easier to keep than people think, and the bigger the secret, the easier it is to keep. People who doubt this are either amateurs in the secret-keeping business (in which case, they'll never be given any secrets worth keeping) or they simply don't know any really big secrets outside their own family's dreary and predictable variety – like why Cousin Minnie had to go live with relatives in another city for a few months back in 1950.

So to sum up, we have motive, means, and all that has happened since in the way of both benefits and cover-ups. This tells me that things are not the way the Regime wants us to think they are. Consider also that, for a guy who wanted to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan ASAP when he was on the campaign trail, Obama has developed a strange new respect for war. Consider also our total impotence in the face of Israel's high-jinks in Gaza and the West Bank. Obama, just like his predecessors, reached the “sell-out point” back during the campaign, and had to decide – either he remained a candidate, or he stuck to his principles and went back to community organizing in Chicago. For the typical politician, this is not a hard choice to make – sadly. And Obama, just like his predecessor, surely doesn't have “the whole story” -- simply because he doesn't have what is termed “the need to know”. All he needs to know, really, is that his political future is on the line, and that he'd better pay very close attention to what certain people are telling him. They'll take care of the rest – like the guy who says, just sign on the dotted line and I'll fill in the amounts later on (heh heh). But the funny thing is, a politician who turns, overnight, into an exploited dupe still winds up holding the bag; they have no authority and no responsibility, but still have all the accountability – and this is, of course, the usual strategy – call it a sophisticated form of blackmail if you like. They start to get fewer check marks in the “credit” column and more in the “blame” column – but by then it's too late... and eventually they slink off the stage, like Carter and George W. Bush, still wondering what happened, and what went wrong. “I coulda been a contenda”, and all that. But who, these days, knows enough to fight back? Certainly no one who is allowed to become a presidential candidate; they are picked for their malleability above all, and for their willingness to live in a hermetically-sealed White House and trust only the “advisors” who have been hand-picked by... well, certainly not by them. We wonder about “advisors”, and “kitchen cabinets”, and “shadow cabinets”, and so on, as opposed to the people with official, Constitutionally-arguable offices and titles. The fact is, the latter are all “faces” -- they're like TV “anchorpersons”, picked for curb appeal and nothing else. The real power in any administration flows down from the Regime through all the unelected, unconfirmed people who are, in effect, jailers who keep the president locked up in a gilded cage.

(This may, in fact, be a clue as to how Obama managed to come out of nowhere, basically, and defeat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination -- she was just a bit too feisty for the powers that be... too much of a handful. They weren't sure she could be fully... "trusted" when the chips were down.)

So I think that, yes, something happened, and someone was involved, far above and beyond the official line. But once that premise is accepted, which model do you adopt? Which particular cluster of evidence, or non-evidence, do you focus on? And how important, or vital, to the narrative are events like the WTC 7 collapse? Were there really Israeli intelligence agents celebrating and giving each other “high fives” across the river in Brooklyn while the WTC towers burned? There is strong evidence that there were. And what about all the strange stock market manipulations that occurred in the days leading up to 9/11? Coincidence? People are buying and selling stock all the time. It's like proving that a given person was part of the JFK assassination conspiracy because they eventually died. Well yeah... that does tend to happen to people. But so many of them died “mysteriously”. Yes, but they also had, let's say, “high-risk life styles”. And so the debate goes on. The challenge for any conspiracy theorist is not to simply connect all the available dots, but to discern which ones merit connecting and which ones don't. I liken it to the situation with regard to psychosis. Psychotics typically fall into one of two major categories, in terms of perceptual/cognitive functioning – either the person is making way too few connections, or way too many. The “way too few” variety would characterize the totally out of it, or vegetative type... whereas “way too many” would characterize the paranoid type, where not only is everything related to everything, but it's ultimately all about them. “Normal” people, on the other hand, fall within a mid range when it comes to connections – kind of like Goldilocks – not too many, not too few, just right.

So if you want to get on the conspiracy train, which seems immoderate by definition, there is still a wide range of possible positions. You still have to decide how far, and how deep, to go... which connections are meaningful and which ones aren't... and hopefully come up with a position that can be described, at least within that context, as “moderate”. You have to make decisions, every day, as to the quality and credibility of various pieces of evidence, as well as to the quality and credibility of their sources, and the possible agendas that those various sources might have. Objectivity, in other words, is well-nigh impossible to come by – as we learned to our dismay back when the Warren Commission Report came out. That was supposed to be a cool, calm, and collected summing-up of the JFK assassination narrative... but about five minutes after it was issued, it was described as a “cover-up” and a “rush to judgment”. And of course no “report” or “investigation” by any part of the establishment will ever be believed, or accepted, by its skeptics and critics... and their points of view, and questions, and doubts, will never be given a fair hearing by the establishment. That's just the way things are, and have always been – it's what you might call the “metaphysical/epistemological divide”, or fault line, in any society – the “official version” of events versus all other versions. Of course, when a regime is overthrown, occasionally an official version -- narrative, myth, or "text" -- can be dragged out and exposed to light of day, and shown to be fallacious. I mean, how many Germans today still subscribe to “Mein Kampf”? (Maybe I don't want to know.) And if you really pressed them on it, how many Chinese today still carry Mao's Little Red Book around the way American Evangelicals carry the Bible? Mao's moon face still peers down at them from the walls around Tiananmen Square – but iconography does not necessarily equal belief. I mean, people still file into the National Archives to ogle the Constitution – but how many believe in it? Very few, is my guess. (And the ones who do are probably stopped by the security staff on the way in.)

So my strategy when it comes to 9/11 is to keep an open mind and a willingness to consider all the possibilities – while, nonetheless, exercising as much discernment and logic as I'm capable of; I think mistakes are being made on both ends of the continuum. But this in itself could be considered a subversive act, since it reflects an unwillingness to simply swallow whole the pronouncements of the Regime – to be, in other words, an “authoritarian”, that personality type that every collectivist or totalitarian regime values so highly. But whose fault is that? Is it mine, for suspecting that our government, as presently constituted, has turned out to be “no better” than any of its historical predecessors or contemporaries? This, of course, is heretical since it violates the premise of “American exceptionalism”. And when it comes to exceptionalism, no amount of actual data can sway the mind of the typical American who was brought up on the public school diet of “social studies” (or “civics”, for the older generation). In a sense, the American myth that we're superior because our “ideas” are superior is actually more damaging than the more traditional style of patriotism – the “just so” version that says, basically, “we're the best”, no explanations given. By which people typically mean, “We're the best because we are who we are, living where we do, with the faith that we have.” Blood, land, and creed – as old as the hills. And I agree that those are all things worth believing in, and fighting for! But no – for Americans that's not good enough... nowhere near. For one thing, we are a “deracinated” people for whom blood ties have become thinned out almost to the point of non-existence... and we are also a restless, migratory people whose loyalty to the land – any land -- is a poor imitation, at best, of the feelings enjoyed by so many elsewhere on the globe. (Can you imagine, for instance, the idea of “American refugees”? We're _all_ refugees!) And as to creed – well, check out the Yellow Pages under “Churches” sometime. I rest my case. We are, when all is said and done, a non-people who live nowhere and believe nothing – at least in the traditional senses. So what do we adopt, and use, to fill this gap? Why, “ideas”, of course – you know, things like “democracy” (American style), “freedom” (ditto), “choice” (ditto), and so on. And these become things that are not only worth fighting, and dying, over for our own sake, but for the sake of others – including people who couldn't care less! Not only that, but those other people should be willing to fight and die for our ideas as well – or if not fight, at least die without complaint. How many Iraqis called “Operation Iraqi Freedom” by that name, for instance? I'm betting that the usual term (translated from Arabic, of course) was “Operation Oh Jeez, Here Come Those Damned Americans”. And how many goatherd villages in the Hindu Kush appreciate our ultimatum, either you give up your culture or we'll keep bombing your weddings? Yeah... that's the reductio ad absurdum of our obsession with “ideas”.

Another problem with any discussion of 9/11 is that the event – like so many others in our history – was “absolutized” by the Regime – i.e. it was taken out of historical (some would say “relativistic”) context and made into an instant icon – a golden calf of sorts, before which we must all bow down and worship, and heaven help the skeptic who refuses to do so. You see, when this is done it conveniently cuts the event off from not only all context, but from all skepticism, all doubt, and all rules of evidence. It also means that not only the direct employees of the Regime, but the entire populace, are mobilized in the defense of the official story – we are all turned into inquisitors who are expected to erupt with indignation every time we hear the slightest doubt being expressed, and start pointing fingers and denouncing the offending party.

As an example, I have only to refer to yesterday's paper, which describes how a Monroeville, PA councilwoman (talk about “high office”!) has gotten into hot water for – just like Van Jones! -- signing a so-called “9/11 truther” petition. She was “outed”, in turn, by a fellow councilman – in the best Bolshevik tradition – after he saw her name on the web site while “researching news reports about Jones”. Right, sure -- he “stumbled across (her) name” out of “thousands” on the site. And you're telling me he didn't have any help? So we see that it doesn't matter how trivial a person's position is, or how far down the totem pole they are – they are in jeopardy if they have ever gone on record as being skeptical about the 9/11 narrative. And by the way, the councilwoman says “she does not buy into the conspiracy theory [this seems to assume there is only one] but wants a more 'balanced' examination of the terrorist attacks.” But that's the entire problem! There is no possibility of a “balanced” examination, because any position other than the strictly orthodox one has to slide into the “conspiracy/evil government” mode. There are no gray areas, in other words – you are either “for” the official explanation, or “against” not only that, but America itself – and all that is true, and good, and patriotic. And this is precisely the dilemma the Regime wants to put us in – either believe, or be considered a traitor. And this, in turn, is the earmark of all totalitarian regimes down through history -- keep your doubts to yourself and shut up, and everything will be fine. But say anything in a public forum, and the swarm attacks. Plus, unlike in previous eras of history, we also have the “mental health” card to play against skeptics – that card that was so effectively played for so many years in the Soviet Union. Not only are they unpatriotic and dangerous, but crazy as well. (Notice how this card is starting to be played against “global warming” skeptics.) And of course, we know what's best for crazy people – lock 'em up, without benefit of trial. That way they won't upset anyone and we can all continue to sip the Regime's Kool-Aid undisturbed.

And I have to add that this defense of an essential narrative is very similar to the way the Holocaust narrative is defended – as an absolute, an event that occurred, in some mysterious way, outside of normal history, for completely arbitrary reasons – and which, in turn, gives the victims (in the collectivist sense) carte blanche to do whatever is necessary to insure that it “never again” occurs. And you'll notice that apologists of the Dick Cheney stripe emphasize this more often than anything else – the fact that we have had “no further terrorist attacks on American soil” proves that all the government measures in response to 9/11 – domestic and foreign – were fully justified. And not only that, but any attempt to “historicize” the events of 9/11 meet with the same response that attempts to put the Holocaust into historical context meet with – violent opposition and defamation.

So if 9/11 was “the American Holocaust” we can expect its effects to linger down through the years, decades, and generations for a long time to come. And we can, likewise, expect the position of the government – and any administration – to become even harder and less tolerant over time. How long until we have laws prohibiting “9/11 denial”, for instance? Hey, it could happen. But as I've pointed out before, a lot of what is termed “Holocaust denial” is not denial of the events so much as of the narrative, and mythology, that came out of them. We already have a well-developed 9/11 narrative and mythology, and a vast array of means by which to promulgate it and suppress any opposition. But hopefully, the accumulated force of all the “still, small voices” on the Internet will continue to serve to shed some occasional light into the newest, and darkest, of America's dark corners. And if it does, the victims will truly not have died in vain.