There is only one thing to write about on this dismal anniversary. Twenty years ago on this date, September 11, 2001, a terrible crime was broadcast to the whole world in order to shock all viewers and lead them to believe a fantasy of revenge to support a global war.
No, the horror of the World Trade Center disaster was no fantasy. It was a real crime: some 3000 innocent people were murdered as we all stared, stunned and terrified while the 110 story World Trade Centre towers 1 and 2, struck by two airliners (we were told they were airliners, we watched as the second airliner struck!) one after the other self destructed from the top down at free fall speed into piles of rubble. We were so shocked we almost universally believed the account we were told even as the buildings were burning, that it was the airliners impacting the buildings that caused them to “collapse”. At that terrible moment words like “collapse” and “Al-Qaeda” were imprinted on our vulnerable minds. A shocking moment like that makes a human vulnerable to be imprinted, conned, implanted with the black magic of trauma-induced mind control.
The crime of the destruction of these buildings and these innocent victims was also a magic show. Our folklore of rationality so deeply established by 3 centuries of Enlightenment and Science makes us superficially wise enough to laugh when the magician disappears a pretty lady or a pitcher of beer and we call it a “trick”, which of course it is. These days of modern technology have retired some venerable tricks, no more fake legs and false bottoms of top hats concealing rabbits. These days the show people we call “magicians” are doing tricks that almost revive the old wonder and we half believe there is something beyond the rational world. But we are safe behind the mental bulwark, the sense we have of normal reality, so we laugh, so self assured.
That’s the hidden trap of rationality. It makes us believe we know all about things because we see the physical reality, like the reality of that front door we have a key for. But the assurance that we know everything is normal has become something we desperately need. And it can dissolve just like turning a key. We put the key into the lock but it won’t turn. We start to panic. What has happened?! This is our home, surely, It must be! A stranger opens the door and then police arrive as we panic more and more. They tell us we are mentally disturbed, senile or drunk… the world of reality has collapsed. We had no idea how fragile our sense of normality could be.
The fragility of the sense of normality can be exploited for more evil purposes than a magic show. We all know that individuals can become mentally ill, lose their memories, lose their orientation. But that can’t happen to normal people, we think. Wrong! All that is needed is to make the magic show big enough and threatening enough. It can happen to us all. And it did twenty years ago today.