A friendly sage told me that she was going to ignore all the 9/11 ten-year anniversary hoopla.
Oh, that I had heeded her advice. But then I read “Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult.” I can’t find any substantial point in this article, written by Mike Lofgren, that I disagree with. Lofgren writes (speaking about Republicans):
For people who profess to revere the Constitution, it is strange that they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is the material expression of the principles embodied in that document. This is not to say that there is not some theoretical limit to the size or intrusiveness of government; I would be the first to say there are such limits, both fiscal and Constitutional. But most Republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested in the effective repeal of Fourth Amendment protections by the Patriot Act, the weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public hysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the United States has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth.
Of the many things that have changed since 9/11, it’s that bit about the Fourth Amendment and the Patriot Act that I find particularly disconcerting. Consider this story about over-zealous law enforcement at Mall of America (over here). God help you if you’re not white and accidentally leave your cell phone behind.
Et voilà—I started reading 911Truth.org.
It’s commonly accepted that ‘conspiracy theorists’ are basically nut jobs who want to find the meaning of major events in unrelated facts, who want to make a case for a grand unified explanation when in reality no such big plan/big picture could actually exist. According to Timothy Melley, author of Empire of Conspiracy, “Conspiracy theory, paranoia, and anxiety about human agency…are all part of the paradox in which a supposedly individualist culture conserves its individualism by continually imagining it to be in imminent peril.” In other words, conspiracy theorists are paranoid…though even Melley admits that “…they are difficult to dismiss as paranoid in the clinical sense of pathologically deluded.” But never mind that—in modern media and general public opinion, they are.
Call me a nut job, but there are cogent reasons why people I doubt the government’s version of the events of 9/11. Pointing out inconsistencies doesn’t make you a fringe lunatic or unpatriotic.
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, who could hardly be confused with a rabble of untreated psychiatric patients, have a new video out about World Trade Center Building 7. Considering that this building wasn’t hit by a plane, it is rather remarkable that it collapsed at all.
Yes, Ed Asner’s tone may be over the top, the music may be a bit much. But science is compelling stuff.
West Coast Grrlie Blather 