I waited until all the hoopla about 9-11 died down for a reason. The messages that I would like to share about that day are easily ignored by those who are single minded, "patriotic", still mourning and/or delusional about not just what happened ten ten years ago but our responses to it. Like an egg beater in the ocean, I have whirred, flailed about, writhed and done my best to stir up elements of truth in the ocean of deception that surrounds not only the myth of 9-11 but the wholesale mortgaging of basic human potential that has come about because of this discreet and unique event. The proliferation of memorializing and the term "never forget" assume that the truth of what went on that morning is known, understood and that we are "protected" from this sort of thing ever happening again. The fact that the hijackers were all on terrorist watch lists but yet were allowed to all board just four planes at virtually the same time begs the questions, "Why had this sort of attack not come sooner?" "What on Earth were our anti-terrorism experts thinking?" and "Why have all the other "failed attempts" to create havoc been conceived and carried out by what seem like inept High School students in comparison?" The fact that our own inept security establishment is to blame for the event never seems to have come up.
There are those who, with various credible evidence, believe that the whole thing was staged for maximum political capital, social control and corporate greed. I'm not enamored with this position, but only because I would like to think that our leaders can be trusted to do their best.Without 9-11, we would have saved over a trillion dollars of money, billions of hours of human potential, wasted on "security" operations perpetrated on law abiding citizens, and hundreds of millions of opportunities for constructive endeavors would have presented themselves for those who are engaged in the new layer of security that we pass through daily. I have not yet run the numbers on the post 9-11 build up of security related systems, personnel and seemingly infinite reach of the police state into our lives, but my gut feeling is that the current economic malaise is, in large part, a result of our knee jerk reaction to fallout from 9-11.
Frequent and unrelenting reminders of our "dangerous" world serve a dual purpose. For the weak of heart, they incapacitate. Like a deer in headlights, they wax apoplectic, unable to think, reason or act. Those who maintain their composure and understand the dangers of buying into this fear and insecurity can easily be labeled conspiracy theorists, or at least unfeeling, callous, unpatriotic and cold. Without a groundswell of public opinion against suspension of habius corpus, invocation of the War Powers Act, or revisionist approaches to carving our history in the minds of a nation. Tools of subjugation have become evermore debilitating, evermore deftly wielded by our oppressors and evermore misunderstood by those who are controlled by them. We have not yet surfaced from the last wave than another tragedy washes over our sensibilities, brought to us in living color and the immediacy that the 24 hour news cycle demands. That is why the hows, whys and therefores are completely ignored by the media. They are not immediate enough to be seen by the camera. The depths and subtleties of events are glossed over for the sake of immediacy. Getting into too much detail on any subject might estrange viewers. Bring up difficult questions or cause folks to get involved in solving the problems that lead up to the catastrophes that are the stock and trade of the media.
What is needed in our time is a renaissance of citizenship that realizes that freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes, but the responsibilities that fall to those who are truly free are commensurate with that liberty. We cannot beat the drum of freedom and democracy if we simultaneously deny it to out own citizens. Vast outlays of capital that are designed to protect the ultra wealthy with funds raised off the backs of the working class amount to the same unjust political systems that we rebelled against in the Revolutionary War. If not for the elaborate tapestry of "current events" we might be able to see the tsunami that is rushing toward the American Dream. The fallout from the real estate boondoggle, the jobless recovery, the destabilization of climate are all rooted in the same wrenching schism. Without a committed minority devoted to telling the truth in this age of lies, we cannot hope to avoid cataclysm. I have recently become enamored with the natural history of the salmon. They go with the flow for seven years, waiting for nature to give them some mysterious signal. No one can say what the nature of the change is, but once they are 'turned on", they fight their way home to where they were born and will not stop until they either become bear or people food, procreate, or die trying. They may not understand the spiritual aspects of their laboring against all odds for the benefit of the next generation, but we can surely learn a lesson from their fighting against all odds to do what is necessary to assure their species survives into the future.
There are those who, with various credible evidence, believe that the whole thing was staged for maximum political capital, social control and corporate greed. I'm not enamored with this position, but only because I would like to think that our leaders can be trusted to do their best.Without 9-11, we would have saved over a trillion dollars of money, billions of hours of human potential, wasted on "security" operations perpetrated on law abiding citizens, and hundreds of millions of opportunities for constructive endeavors would have presented themselves for those who are engaged in the new layer of security that we pass through daily. I have not yet run the numbers on the post 9-11 build up of security related systems, personnel and seemingly infinite reach of the police state into our lives, but my gut feeling is that the current economic malaise is, in large part, a result of our knee jerk reaction to fallout from 9-11.
Frequent and unrelenting reminders of our "dangerous" world serve a dual purpose. For the weak of heart, they incapacitate. Like a deer in headlights, they wax apoplectic, unable to think, reason or act. Those who maintain their composure and understand the dangers of buying into this fear and insecurity can easily be labeled conspiracy theorists, or at least unfeeling, callous, unpatriotic and cold. Without a groundswell of public opinion against suspension of habius corpus, invocation of the War Powers Act, or revisionist approaches to carving our history in the minds of a nation. Tools of subjugation have become evermore debilitating, evermore deftly wielded by our oppressors and evermore misunderstood by those who are controlled by them. We have not yet surfaced from the last wave than another tragedy washes over our sensibilities, brought to us in living color and the immediacy that the 24 hour news cycle demands. That is why the hows, whys and therefores are completely ignored by the media. They are not immediate enough to be seen by the camera. The depths and subtleties of events are glossed over for the sake of immediacy. Getting into too much detail on any subject might estrange viewers. Bring up difficult questions or cause folks to get involved in solving the problems that lead up to the catastrophes that are the stock and trade of the media.
What is needed in our time is a renaissance of citizenship that realizes that freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes, but the responsibilities that fall to those who are truly free are commensurate with that liberty. We cannot beat the drum of freedom and democracy if we simultaneously deny it to out own citizens. Vast outlays of capital that are designed to protect the ultra wealthy with funds raised off the backs of the working class amount to the same unjust political systems that we rebelled against in the Revolutionary War. If not for the elaborate tapestry of "current events" we might be able to see the tsunami that is rushing toward the American Dream. The fallout from the real estate boondoggle, the jobless recovery, the destabilization of climate are all rooted in the same wrenching schism. Without a committed minority devoted to telling the truth in this age of lies, we cannot hope to avoid cataclysm. I have recently become enamored with the natural history of the salmon. They go with the flow for seven years, waiting for nature to give them some mysterious signal. No one can say what the nature of the change is, but once they are 'turned on", they fight their way home to where they were born and will not stop until they either become bear or people food, procreate, or die trying. They may not understand the spiritual aspects of their laboring against all odds for the benefit of the next generation, but we can surely learn a lesson from their fighting against all odds to do what is necessary to assure their species survives into the future.
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