by Mentalgongfu » Sat Jun 24, 2006 3:02 pm
My 9-11 moment:<br><br>I can’t put my finger on exactly when I became sure of government involvement, but I had a keen sense something was wrong right away, which was solidified as I learned about PNAC, stand-down orders, and all the myriad strands of intrigue surrounding Sept. 11, 2001. <br><br>I was in college at the time. I woke up right before class, about 9:15 Central time, but as I headed out the door a friend stopped me in the common area of the dorm and asked if I had seen the news. I hadn’t, and he told me to sit down in front of the TV. I don’t remember the exact sequence of events as portrayed on television, but I do recall after the 2nd tower was hit, or maybe it was the Pentagon, saying to my friend what a crazy day it was going to be and that I expected shit to go down all over the country. I imagined planes crashing or bombs exploding from Pittsburgh to Seattle. After all, America was under attack, the TV said. But nothing else really happened . . . and the mainstream news kept droning away, and people were glued to their screens, and everyone was pumped up on fear and anger and shock. I was generally accepting the 19 hijackers story, though I doubt it now. I didn’t even think about how all the ‘evidence’ and photos was gathered so quickly. I remember my girlfriend at the time was enraged. She was kind of a fundamentalist Christian, which is far from where I am, and she was going on about the stories of Palestinians (or other feared Muslims) celebrating in the streets. I pointed out the hijackers probably believed they were doing the right thing in the name of God and would go to heaven, and she got really mad and said, “Well, they’re wrong. They’re going to burn in Hell.” <br><br>That moment summed up pretty well what I saw happening. Everyone was angry and self-righteous and unquestioning, and that attitude still carries on today among a large segment of the population.<br><br>I didn’t go to any classes that day. Later, got drunk with my friends and sang songs. That night and days later, you could still taste the tension in the air. A communication professor, one who helped me quite a bit in the study of rhetoric and propaganda, kept saying things like “you’ll remember this time for the rest of your lives” and remarking vaguely on the importance of what was now happening. He’s a smart guy and former anti-nuclear power activist. I wonder now if he was alluding to something most of us didn’t then see. <br><br>I was a columnist for the college paper, and I wrote an article on my thoughts shortly thereafter. It was kind of a Vonnegut-inspired fictionalization which was blatantly obvious as a description of current events. It was intended as a series, but I never finished it. If I have a “9/11 moment,” it’s probably the end of this column, as I saw the event being used to bring the public into an orgiastic war frenzy and launch American military “intervention” into strategic Middle East nations. <br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br>Published November 14, 2001. <br><br>Mother, should I trust the government?<br><br>-It’s all about perspective-<br><br>Long ago and far away, in a parallel universe on the edge of a galaxy there was a planet ruled by two-legged creatures. On this planet was a great and powerful nation which so large that it touched two oceans. <br><br>The leader of this state was a bit on the dumb side. In fact, he was a bumbling idiot. The rest of the world did not understand how such a powerful nation could have such a clumsy, dim-witted leader. He was always bumping into coffee tables and pedestals and knocking over expensive imported glass lamps as he stumbled around his castle. Whenever he spoke in public the people laughed at his funny made-up words like “relevelationciveness” and “conjimminny”<br><br>On top of his stupidity, some people didn’t believe the Leader had been elected fairly, and they doubted his ability to rule effectively. But he did have hundreds of highly intelligent folks working with him at the Round Table. He lowered the country’s tariffs, so people generally liked, or at least tolerated him. <br><br>Things had gone relatively well in the nation for a long time. They had ups and downs, wartime and peacetime, but many had prospered over the years. There were a significant number of dirt-poor citizens, but few ever gave them a chance or a care. Most were too busy to think about the less fortunate, or just chose not to. It was amazing that they could ignore serious problems like starvation but could drone on endlessly about the complexities of their meaningless lives. <br><br>This was partially because they were conceited, and partially because they were really screwed up. Pretty much everyone suffered from severe emotional problems brought on my major childhood trauma. <br><br>Everyone used drugs. People ingested caffeine for energy and took pills to give themselves erections. Children took drugs that made them behave. People drank themselves into alcoholic stupors. Some drugs were illegal, even though almost everybody used them, including the government, and much of the population was imprisoned for possessing them. <br><br>There was a lot of greed in the nation. The poor and downtrodden resorted to crime because they had nothing to eat and nothing to live for. The rich and powerful stole and killed because they wanted everything. Many religions were practiced, but in truth the most oft worshipped deity was gold. <br><br>The nation was in a very troubled state indeed. It was rich in wealth but unhappiness blossomed from the seeds of its money. <br><br>Despite the lengthy list of problems, the nation and the majority of its people got by with a decent living and a general satisfaction with life. Sure, they bitched and moaned a lot, but they knew they had it pretty good. Then came the day that the bad thing happened. <br><br>A tribe of militant seafaring rebels led a surprise attack on the coastal city of Norkwey. Early in the morning as a heavy fog rolled across the harbor, three warships took position. From their ships they fired enormous cannonballs that leveled the Village Market in the center of town. The townspeople awoke to the thunderous roar of cannonballs and chaos and were sorely scared and confused. <br><br>That day the Leader sent out a proclamation across the land. It read: “Many of our people have been killed in this heinous and cowardly attack. Its wrong to kill, and the perpetrators must be punished. Therefore we will retaliate by cannonballing our enemy back to the Stone Age.” <br><br>It seemed true that the nation could not be passive, could not simply wait for another surprise attack. But trading cannonball for cannonball was not likely to bring peace and would certainly cause more destruction. When ignorant people began to question the value of a counter-attack, the Leader decided to add a sentence to the proclamation so that even a child could understand it.<br><br> It read: “P.S. Don’t forget, They started it!”<br><br>So it was that the nation entered into a new war. <br><br>To be continued. . .<br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><br>Of course, I never continued the story, but the Bush administration, or the PTB if you prefer, continued the plan for “Pax Americana” regardless . The hypocrisy of America’s “shoot first, ask questions later” foreign policy has been recognized and pointed out by greater minds and nimbler tongues than mine, but the orgiastic war frenzy prompted by 9-11 and the constant fear of terrorism is itself a form of mind control. I sensed it washing over the country then, and these days it has become a normal hum in the background. BTW, whatever happened to that color-coded terror alert thing? Haven’t seen it in a while, but election time is coming up. <br><br>As a sidenote, I had a plan to turn the above piece into a story of soldiers who eat the hearts of their enemies. It was to be a four-part series, I believe. Wrote some outlines, but never pulled it together, though I continued to write columns for each issue of the paper. <br><br>In a bout of synchronicity, I later heard a report somewhere (NPR, probably) of another author who had written a similar story line, that is, about soldiers eating the hearts of their enemies in bizarre rituals. <br><br>As Homer Simpson might say, "Mmmmm, metaphorical . . . " <p></p><i></i>
