What I mean by that is that I don’t see everything as orchestrated or part of a secret global plot. I believe accidents can happen and that people can do terrible things unaided or completely of their own volition. But, all that said, I also believe that the rule “never let a crisis go to waste” is not an invention of Rahm Emanuel.
Political opportunism is rampant on all sides. And then there’s the just plain letting something bad happen to use for advancing agenda.
What I’m about to detail is all verifiable facts and not conjecture. I’m just going to lay it out then let you reach your own reasonable conclusions. I’ll also prime this topic with a response to 9/11 that has made less sense in retrospect and that is the invasion of Iraq that followed. Saddam Hussain was not at all involved in the attacks. The war cost the US trillions of dollars, 4,419 Americans lost their lives, 31,993 wounded, and that is not to mention the Iraqi losses. We traded that much blood and treasure for claims of there being WMDs—which our government knew were mostly or completely destroyed.
So what was the actual reason for regime change in Iraq?
But, before we answer, let’s get to some of the facts on 9/11. And, again, I’ll stick only to what is verified and not speculate beyond what is very easily corroborated with videos and news articles from the time. This is all things known according to official records, eyewitness accounts, and confessions on foreign television.
While the rest of the country watched 9/11 unfold in horror, five men were seen filming the burning World Trade Center towers from a white van, they were seen high-fiving, and appearing jovially celebratory from the New Jersey side. Their behavior was so totally alarming, and in contrast to what one may expect seeing the US under attack and with people literally being forced to jump to their deaths that a concerned citizen reported it to authorities.
Trump said Muslims were celebrating in Jersey City. Not true. What he should have said is Mossad.
Later in the day the van was stopped by the police and these five men, Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner, and Omer Marmari—dubbed the “Dancing Israelis”—were arrested.
These Israeli men were employed by Urban Moving Systems, a company that was also owned by Israeli national, Dominik Suter, and the men possessed items like $4,700 in cash stuffed in a sock, they carried multiple foreign passports, maps highlighting New York City, and a box cutter like those used in the 9/11 hijackings, further FBI searches of this firm’s Weehawken offices uncovered a fraudulent operation with minimal evidence that it was a legitimate business. Add to it, 16 seized computers, and reports of anti-American sentiment among staff, including boasts about subverting U.S. media. Suter’s abrupt flight to Israel just before a second FBI interview, abandoning the premises with client property and phones left behind, only amplified suspicions.
Perhaps most damningly, in a 2001 Israeli TV interview on LaHadashot, one of the five men, Oded Ellner, chillingly stated they were placed in the U.S. specifically “to document the event,” a strange phrasing implying their prior awareness of the impending attacks. Which the FBI could not conclusively prove or disprove despite the months of detention and polygraphs, such led to the speculation—backed by a 2002 Forward report citing U.S. officials—that at least two of the five Israelis were Mossad operatives using the firm as a front. And officially to keep tabs on Arab extremists. I’ll let you judge if that is just a cover story or the truth.
Why we would ever believe him again, after the Iraq WMD lie…
Enter Benjamin Netanyahu. The day after the attacks, he was quoted in the NY Times as saying “it was very good” before he corrected himself and explained what he meant is that it would “generate immediate sympathy” that would benefit Israel. And it was a year to the day after this that he was pitching a war with Iraq to Congress, calling himself an “expert witness” and warning the legislative body of something that sounds so awfully familiar:
“There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, is working, is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons—no question whatsoever.”
Netanyahu continued his case:
“If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.”
There was zero evidence found to support Netanyahu’s dire warnings about WMDs. I will let you decide if regime change in Iraq was an amazing success that has only led to peace and prosperity for the region. But 9/11 was used as an excuse to invade Iraq and Netanyahu was cheering this on—much like the Dancing Israelis. None of this says for certain that Mossad had foreknowledge or withheld vital intelligence so the attacks could continue and draw the US into Israel’s conflicts. But we did spend trillions for a war that did absolutely nothing to advance our national security interests.
Many of these men may do it all over again, but would they if they knew what they were actually fighting for?
And then there’s October 7th. Netanyahu has called this Israel’s 9/11 and maybe this an admission. Recently, before his untimely death, Charlie Kirk made an observation in a discussion with Patrick Bet-David about the incredible security perimeter around Gaza and surveillance, expressing disbelief that it could be breeched and openly pondering if an order given to stand down. This, wasn’t just speculation. Israeli intelligence had the Hamas incursion plan a full year before and didn’t act, according to the New York Times, and on the night of the attacks former IDF guards have said they were told not to do their routine patrols.
So was the terrorist attack on 9/11 allowed to happen to generate sympathy to later be exploited to further Netanyahu’s agenda as far as Iraq? And as an order given to stand down on October 7th, likewise, benefits the ultimate aim of Likud which is written in the original 1977 party platform, “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the first Israeli Prime Minister born in what had been called Mandatory Palestine, was assassinated by a radical Zionist settler for seeking a peaceful resolution.
Maybe some see terrorists. I see a mother and a child, their lives as important as any other.
The recurring exploitation of crises like 9/11 and October 7th, paired with a history of deceptive hasbara, casts doubt on the credibility of official explanations, urging us to further scrutinize the manipulative tactics of those who may prioritize self-serving agendas over truth.
It has been twenty-four years since 9/11. I recall working in town, for a painter, hearing for the first time—and right after seeing the image of smoke pouring from the WTC and the airliner striking the second tower. The tenant of the house where we were working let us watch on his television. This was a moment of great uncertainty about what would happen next. By the end of the day my car battery drained from the radio blaring so I could hear the reports while we worked on the house exterior.
Much has changed since that surreal day in the fall. I went to college, and have worked various jobs—left the Mennonite tradition—got married, became a dad—witnessed the birth of my daughter and many things that twenty something version of me could not have imagined. And while I still drive Ford products and vote for the same party (albeit grudgingly), my worldview and perspective have evolved dramatically since the fateful day in September 2001. Many things I once thought were impossible are now possible and even likely.
I decided to write this reflection partly for anniversary and partly because Facebook has been flooding my feed with pictures of 9/11 and it is weird. It’s as if some bot farm is tasked with putting this in the forefront of our minds and one can only imagine why. It is most likely an attempt to feed availability heuristic, to keep the 9/11 attacks vivid in our minds—and possibly for the coming war with Iran. A propaganda campaign of those who understand that many Americans have blamed all Muslims for what happened on that day. Maybe the powers that be want to squeeze just one more war out of this day America stood still?
Maybe it’s just that I tripped the algorithms by responding to too many of the repeated claims about melted steel?
We live in the post-information age—a time when we may very soon not even be able to believe our own eyes due to advancement in AI technology, where our institutions have failed us and no source can be trusted. The mistrusted is earned. But the feeling can be misdirected and counterproductive. At the very least we should not just believe a claim we have heard because it fits our narrative. We may never know the full truth. However, we can do a better job forming our theories by employing a broader base of scientific understanding or real world experience to calibrate our judgment.
There is no doubt that the 9/11 attack was a conspiracy, we simply disagree on the full scope and nature of it. It was clearly used as an excuse to pass the Patriot Act and to invade Iraq. There’s evidence that Mossad knew in advance with the “dancing Israelis” reports and suspicious shorting of airline stocks before the attacks. However, it is as clear that Osama Bin Laden planned these attacks as a response to US wars and that—from an engineering standpoint—nothing is inexplicable about the events of 9/11 being caused by fuel-laden commercial jets.
The Conspiracy Condensed
Typical 9/11 conspiracies center around a mix of claims about melted steel, witnesses who heard explosions, an insurance policy bought before the events, or asking about how three buildings collapsed despite only two being hit by the 767s. They’ll claim all of the buildings were rigged with thermite and explosives, even that the aircraft were holograms. There is simply no way for me to address all of the theories and claims being made. There are excellent resources that provide detailed analysis and in-depth explanations. This list below is intended to only address a few engineering or physics related claims, not to make a complete and comprehensive response to all questions related to the 9/11 attack.
“Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams”
This meme, used as part of the controlled demolition conspiracy narrative, is the very definition of a strawman argument. Nobody has ever said the buildings fell because the steel beams completely melted. But what can happen is that steel, heated by an intense fire and with heat protection material knocked off, will lose significant tensile strength. Ane a little bit of deflection—especially to a structure that was already severely damaged by an enormous jet hitting it—is all that is needed to explain a cascading failure and collapse.
“Buildings don’t collapse from fire”
This is not only another strawman, but it proves that most people repeating these claims don’t do any research nor do they think things through. High rise buildings have collapsed without fires, from design flaws or unaccounted for loads, and the list includes the 2012 spontaneous collapse of the Vieira Fazenda office block—which was due to unauthorized renovations that had removed key support columns and failure. Interestingly, two adjacent buildings, hit by debris during the collapse, likewise were reduced to piles of rubble. Then we have Edifício Wilton Paes de Almeida, also in Brazil, that fell from just fire in 2018.
So, yes, buildings can collapse from just fire alone. However, in the case of the WTC, fire alone is not a requirement. Clearly the Twin Towers were struck by commercial airliners prior to the collapse, this doing an immense amount of structural damage, and that the reason why raging fires brought them down in the aftermath. As someone who works in an engineering related field, this is not hard to understand, we deal with sheer loads and also see the results of loads not being fully accounted for. There are no totally indestructible buildings, all are designed for a certain set of requirements and will collapse once the limits are exceeded.
“Empire State Building got hit and didn’t fall”
Next up is the comparisons by those who are clueless about structural engineering and failed physics. Back in 1945 a pilot, who was lost in the fog, slammed a B-25 bomber into New York City’s most iconic skyscraper. It didn’t bring down the tower and this fact is used as proof that the WTC couldn’t fall due to being struck by a much larger faster aircraft.
Different size, speed and building designs more than explain the results.
This, of course, is absurdity akin to saying that since a bicycle can’t go through a brick wall nor can a semi truck. Or that if you can catch a falling baby you should be able to catch a full-grown man.
I’ll let Grok explain:
In 1945, a B-25 Mitchell (35,000 lbs, ~272 mph) struck the Empire State Building with ~86.6 million ft-lbs of kinetic energy, causing localized damage due to its small size and modest speed. The World Trade Center was designed to withstand a Boeing 707-320B (336,000 lbs, 180 mph) impact, delivering ~3.64 billion ft-lbs, assuming a low-speed accidental collision. However, the Boeing 767-200ERs used in the 9/11 attacks (395,000 lbs) hit at 470 mph (Flight 11, ~29.2 billion ft-lbs) and 590 mph (Flight 175, ~46.0 billion ft-lbs), producing exponentially greater energy—approximately 8 and 12.6 times the 707’s, respectively—due to their higher speeds and slightly larger mass, compounded by massive fuel loads that caused devastating fires and structural collapse far beyond the WTC’s design capacity.
Do people really not understand that there’s a difference between the force of a baseball tossed and one thrown at 100 mph? Randy Johnson exploded a bird with a pitch and it wasn’t because the ball was rigged with C-4 or thermite. What is amazing is that these towers withstood the impact and stood for nearly an hour afterwards. Furthermore, a relatively small bomber hitting a completely different kind of structure is absolutely not a valid comparison. The WTC and Empire State Buildings rely on completely different designs—a 1957 Chevrolet and a brand new Toyota Prius are both cars, but do we truly expect them to act exactly the same in an impact?
“So, what about Building 7?”
What about it? The smarty-pants response to the analysis above is to bring up Building 7 which was never hit by an airplane. This is yet another case of half-truth. Sure, there was never a direct hit by a fuel-laden airliner and yet there was an impact of a collapsing tower and a resulting fire. Due to inoperable sprinklers and because available firefighting assets were pinned down elsewhere, there were fires on four different floors that raged out of control for almost seven hours. This, obviously, goes well-beyond any scenario a typical building is designed for. It really isn’t a big surprise that one fire heated structural column would buckle and lead to a chain of nearly simultaneous failures throughout the building. Once one goes the others (having also been weakened by fire) given weight is shifted to them by the failures down the line and as fast as the load is transferred.
Thermite is silent. The conspiracy theories contradict each other. And this is another frequent problem with these theories and points to motivated reasoning rather than honest inquiry or an unbending quest to find truth. So the so-called truthers who claim thermite was used and then cite the sound of explosions as proof are incoherent and unwittingly debunking themselves.
When all else fails just make stuff up, right? And that’s what conspiracy theory truthers do. Nevermind the eyewitness testimony or the actual videos, they’ll just say that those airliners don’t exist and no debris was ever found. That’s just false.
But first an anecdote.
Kee Bird, a B-29 Superfortress, was left in the Artic during the Cold War after making an emergency landing in 1947. Decades later, in the 1990s, a team of enthusiasts decided to dig this intact WW2 relic out of the ice and bring it home. Unfortunately, nearly ready to fly, catastrophe struck their mission, a space heater was tipped over and a fire started in the hull. The aluminum beast melted in half and the recovery effort doomed. It was the first I thought about the fact that such a big heavy thing could just melt away into a puddle.
Kee Bird Saudia Flight 163Fire can rip through and completely destroy an aluminum aircraft.
Airliners are big, but they are also made out of lightweight materials. After velocity took them through those outer steel structure of the impact zones, they were most likely as smashed as a crushed soda can. Much of the structure likely stayed within the burning buildings and was then melted away in the intense heat. But some of the heavier parts did go through, like the landing gear and an engine found scattered below. Commuters saw an airliner flying into the Pentagon and it clipped poles coming in, but of course not much remained recognizable as an airliner after it hit a reinforced concrete wall.
A few large pieces, engine, landing gear and a chunk of the fuselage went all the way through.
“But what about the passport found?”
They say fact is stranger than fiction and a passport of a hijacker being found may fit in that category. This has been used as proof of conspiracy and yet this is the least likely thing someone would come up with fabricating a narrative. Seriously. If they were pulling off a false flag on this scale I am fairly certain they would do better to make the details of their investigation seem plausible. The key is, nobody has ever said this is all that was found and in the violence of the collision it is possible that parts of the aircraft severed off and came through relatively intact. It is similar to straw found stuck in trees after a tornado. Yes, it is counterintuitive, but weird enough that it is unlikely to be part of a cover-up lie meant to convince us of nothing suspicious in the attacks.
“You forgot about the molten metal”
One of the frustrating aspects of rebutting a conspiracy theory is that regardless of how thoroughly one refutes various claims, the conversation will always be circular. This is because the evidence is not actually what matters. With conspiracy theory thinking the theory is what comes first. Evidence is accepted or rejected entirely based on if it fits the overall theory rather than the other way around. And thus when every point is answered there will always be yet another anomaly found. There’s simply no way to answer everything all at once: “A man who is convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”
One of these small items and yet helpful to demonstrate a point is what appeared to be molten metal that was dripping from one of the towers before it fell. This goes back to the controlled demolition theories involving use of thermite. And just shows how such endless possibilities exist in a scene so big to come up with the unexplained. Looking at the WTC towers from the outside they do not look complicated. And yet, within them were many utility spaces and even electrical transformers to keep things running. There are many possibilities to explain these drips coming out the window that do not require a controlled demolition—perhaps an airliner made out of aluminum that became lodged within the structure?
This stream is assumed to be steel by truthers, but likely from the aluminum of the aircraft—see video link above.
One of the things being claimed by truthers is that aluminum doesn’t glow orange when molten. This is possible to keep their favorite theory alive after someone pointed out the obvious. But, while it is true that aluminum silvers when poured in small amounts or is white at the temperatures where it initially becomes molten due to reflectivity, there is a red glow becomes visible as more heat is applied and it pours red like any other metal when there’s enough heat or volume. So it is misinformation. An inferno from burning office furniture doused with tons of jet fuel will produce more than enough heat to cause an orange glow. So again the theory is based on incomplete knowledge and on pre-drawn conclusions rather than an open inquiry or honest pursuit of the truth.
“Bu-but explosion sounds…”
But eyewitness testimony and description is certainly evidence that can’t be dismissed—so what about the sound of explosions?
First, though, as a child I had witnessed an in-flight breakup of a twin engined airplane and from the ground it was really hard for us to interpret at first what exactly we were seeing above. Initially we heard the sound of what had appeared to be a laboring pair of small aircraft engines. Then, as we had started to observe like inquisitive boys do, what happened next didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The engines wound out and what was one airplane appeared to be two stunt planes doing acrobatics. It wasn’t until we saw papers raining down on the highway as we drove home that we understood the full weight of this horrific circumstance.
All that to explain that it is hard to find the right words for an experience way outside of our ordinary. I mean it’s absolutely nutty to think that a building owner saying “pull it” to the firefighters can mean anything other than an acknowledgement of the risk of this building—with uncontrolled fires raging on four floors for seven hours—may also end up collapsing. No, we’ll just pretend that a co-conspirator would just blurt this out for all to hear it. More likely is the obvious, he was saying to pull out those trying to save the building.
Finally we get to the sounds described as “explosions” in interviews. Going back to confusion about what we saw and heard the Sunday an overloaded airplane came apart over us in the church parking lot—we sometimes just don’t have the most correct or precise technical language. And, while there are theories on aluminum explosion, what is most likely is that people heard the incredible sound of the tons of steel and concrete smashing floor by floor. What is an explosion sound other than a pressure wave—a pressure wave which can easily be caused by the compressed air being forced throughout as the floors collapse one into the next?
All that steel and concrete would make such an incredible sound
The Johnstown flood was said to have had a sound like a “thunderous rumble” as a 40 high wave of water and debris flowed down into the city through a valley where the dam once stood. We wouldn’t assume that they heard literal thunderclaps any more than we would assume thunder is actual claps. The vocabulary for such large and catastrophic events just doesn’t exist. The scale of 9/11 was incredible, a size that was far outside anything else most of experienced, booms, pops or bangs don’t even come close to the noise this would’ve made.
Conclusion: Questioning Wisely in an Age of Doubt
In the shadow of 9/11’s enduring impact, we’re left navigating a world where truth is increasingly elusive, shaped by distrust in institutions and amplified by algorithms that exploit our biases. The “jet fuel can’t melt steel” slogan, while being as catchy as a fire on jet fuel soaked office furniture, oversimplifies complex engineering realities and distracts from more plausible questions about the events—like the foreknowledge suggested by suspicious stock trades or the “dancing Israelis” reports. These deserve scrutiny, but not at the cost of credibility through ungrounded claims of holograms or silent thermite. It’s not that we shouldn’t question the official narrative; we must, but in a way that anchors our skepticism in reason and evidence, not sensationalism.
The real conspiracy may lie not in secretly rigged explosives, but in how 9/11’s trauma has been leveraged to justify policies like the Patriot Act or deadly wars that reshaped the Middle East. By focusing on half-truths, we risk playing into a cover-up that thrives on distraction—and aid our corrupted institutions which very much love to paint reasonable objections together with kooks—we’re also missing the broader, more probable truths hidden in plain sight. Let’s instead honor the pursuit of truth by questioning wisely, and ensuring our doubts don’t undermine the very clarity we seek.
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Anaïs Nin
In today’s world, discerning what is real from what is manufactured is a formidable challenge. Suspicion abounds, particularly among the political right, that groups like Patriot Front—openly fascist—are not grassroots movements but rather orchestrated operations, possibly by federal agencies. The MAGA base can’t even spell the word “fascism” let alone embrace it as a guiding philosophy. Yet, this suspicion fuels the leftist “anti-fascism” narrative, which is wielded as a justification for aggressive tactics and bullying.
Fear is a potent tool for control, and political operatives exploit it to manipulate public sentiment. When voter turnout wanes in critical demographics, staged provocations—such as groups wielding tiki torches to “Unite the Right”—can galvanize a larger, more powerful group into action. These events often attract a few genuine extremists, but their true purpose is to provoke a broader reaction.
A pony motor.
This strategy mirrors the “pony motor” in early diesel engines, where a smaller gasoline engine was used to heat and start the larger one. Similarly, false flag operations—whether orchestrated or permitted—serve as catalysts for sweeping agendas, such as justifying military invasions of countries or enacting restrictive laws. While I’m not convinced that 9/11 was a government-orchestrated plot, evidence suggests some knew in advance and that it was exploited to advance a wishlist of wars against unrelated nations and to pass laws that would not have prevented the attack. This reflects the mechanics of how to “manufacture consent” in our modern democracies—where fear is leveraged to unify and control populations.
The creation of a common enemy is a time-tested method for fostering unity. During the Cold War, the specter of communism was used to rally the public. After the Soviet Union’s collapse, Islamic terrorism became the new focal point. The 9/11 attacks, likely executed in part by Osama bin Laden’s organization, were real but were exploited to amplify fear. Domestically, this pattern persists: Democrats emphasize the threat of right-wing extremism, while Republicans fixate on “wokeism” and DEI initiatives. These are deliberate strategies, rallying points designed to consolidate support. Even more effective is provoking hatred from opponents—forcing one’s base to fight for survival and justifying the consolidation of power.
What do you think the point of The Handmaid’s Tale really is?
We Create Our Own Enemies
This dynamic extends beyond politics into cultural and religious identities. Jewish identity, for example, is partly shaped by what’s known as “Masada syndrome,” a collective memory of the Jewish defenders at Masada in Roman Judea (later renamed Syria Palaestina in 135 CE), who chose suicide over captivity. This narrative of the siege mentality is reinforced during the Passover celebration with texts proclaiming to the faithful, “In every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us.” Such beliefs foster an “us against the world” mentality, where hatred is seen as inevitable, reinforcing group cohesion.
Similarly, in the Anabaptist tradition that I grew up in, the reading of Martyrs Mirror cultivates a persecution complex. Likewise, Kanye West’s controversial remark about slavery—“When you hear about slavery for 400 years… that sounds like a choice”—touches on a deeper truth about locus of control. As my mother would say, “You can’t stop a bird from landing on your head, but you can stop it from building a nest.” Paranoia and defensiveness can alienate others or invite their suspicion, while believing you’re inherently excluded can lead to antisocial or even criminal behavior. It’s as if we seek to validate the fears that define our identity.
This pattern is evident in contemporary conflicts. Hamas, for instance, was probably willing to sacrifice innocent lives in Gaza to highlight the Palestinian plight—anticipating Israel’s brutal and disproportionate response. Yet, why does Israel fall into this trap? One possibility is that it aligns with certain political goals. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, facing corruption charges, may benefit from war as a distraction. The Likud party’s vision of a Greater Israel—encompassing Palestinian territories, Jordan, and parts of Saudi Arabia and Egypt—could also be a factor. Some speculate this violence is a deliberate provocation to unify Jews through fear, and possibly tied to messianic expectations.
Netanyahu is a Revisionist Zionist, this is their long-term plan.
This self-fulfilling prophecy is reflected in online discussions, such as an Israeli subreddit where users lament being hated globally. They attribute this to irrational antisemitism, dismissing the role of the Israel Defense Forces’ actions, such as killing children, which fuel international outrage. This mindset—“They’ll hate us regardless, so we might as well give them a reason”—makes them vulnerable to exploitation by corrupt leaders like Netanyahu.
Breaking the Fear and Control Cycle
The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, that one may turn away from the snares of death.
Proverbs 14:27 ESV
We must guard against siege mentalities like Masada syndrome. By convincing ourselves that the world is inherently against us, we risk acting in ways that bring about the very persecution we fear. Focusing on external threats to define our identity can lead us to become what we dread, fulfilling a prophecy of our own making due to our own unacceptable actions.
Breaking this cycle requires rejecting fear-based narratives and fostering a sense of agency over our own actions and beliefs.
To guard against exploitation, we must shift our focus from the fear of man to the fear of God.
Human fears—stoked by manufactured enemies and self-fulfilling prophecies—keep us trapped in cycles of division and control. A reverent fear of a perfect moral agent beyond us offers a higher perspective, grounding us in principles of justice, compassion, and accountability. By prioritizing a divine wisdom earthly manipulation, we become less susceptible to the provocative tactics of those who thrive on our fear, fostering a resilience that unites rather than divides. Establishment of this spiritual foundation empowers us to reject their deadly paranoia and act with clarity, so we break free from those divisive narratives that political systems use exploit to consolidate power.
This level of consensus is chilling, arguably surpassing the public support for such policies in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. The roots of this sentiment can be traced to the founding of Israel itself, where Zionist militias employed tactics of rape, murder, and terrorism to expel Palestinians from land they had inhabited for centuries. This violent dispossession undermines any claim to respect for property rights—a principle often championed by those who defend Israel’s actions.
The hypocrisy is particularly stark among American conservatives, who in one breath decry property taxes and champion the sanctity of life—down to the frozen embryo—yet in the next, justify the deaths of Palestinian women and children as “deserved” because 2% of Gaza’s men resisted occupation. This contradiction mirrors the selective outrage of a nation founded on the cry of “no taxation without representation,” yet which now supports a cruel occupying colonial power denying Palestinians self-determination and basic human rights.
The erasure of Palestinian identity is a key tool in this moral failure, with many Zionists claiming Palestinians “never existed” despite historical evidence to the contrary. Palestine is referenced as far back as Shakespeare’s Othello (1603): “I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip.” Early Zionist cookbooks, from the 1920s (to teach European settlers how to use local spices and oils unfamiliar to them) have “Palestine” in the title acknowledging the region’s distinct cultural heritage.
This ongoing effort to remove inhabitants echoes a biblical story of greed and injustice:
Some time later there was an incident involving a vineyard belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite. The vineyard was in Jezreel, close to the palace of Ahab king of Samaria. Ahab said to Naboth, ‘Let me have your vineyard to use for a vegetable garden, since it is close to my palace. In exchange I will give you a better vineyard or, if you prefer, I will pay you whatever it is worth.’ But Naboth replied, ‘The Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my ancestors.’ So Ahab went home, sullen and angry because Naboth the Jezreelite had said, ‘I will not give you the inheritance of my ancestors.’ He lay on his bed sulking and refused to eat. His wife Jezebel came in and asked him, ‘Why are you so sullen? Why won’t you eat?’ He answered her, ‘Because I said to Naboth the Jezreelite, “Sell me your vineyard; or if you prefer, I will give you another vineyard in its place.” But he said, “I will not give you my vineyard.”’ Jezebel his wife said, ‘Is this how you act as king over Israel? Get up and eat! Cheer up. I’ll get you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.’ So she wrote letters in Ahab’s name, placed his seal on them, and sent them to the elders and nobles who lived in Naboth’s city with him. In those letters she wrote: ‘Proclaim a day of fasting and seat Naboth in a prominent place among the people. But seat two scoundrels opposite him and have them bring charges that he has cursed both God and the king. Then take him out and stone him to death.’
1 Kings 21:1-10 NIV
This evil plan succeeded, and Naboth was murdered for his land with the complicity of a manipulated mob. The parallels to modern times are striking: Palestinians are dehumanized as “wild,” “barbaric,” or “terrorists,” just as Naboth was falsely accused to justify his execution. In the West Bank unarmed Palestinians are being driven off their land—even a US citizen was recently beaten to death by settlers. Jezebel and Ahab eventually faced divine judgment, but not before their treachery destroyed an innocent man. Today’s leaders, spurred by similar greed and power, rely on a complicit public—modern “useful idiots”—to enable ethnic cleansing and cultural erasure.
Suspicion surrounds the events of October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a devastating attack on Israel. Reports indicate that IDF guards were ordered to stand down from their normal patrols an hour before the incursion, despite Gaza being one of the most heavily surveilled regions in the world. This raises questions about whether the attack was truly a surprise. Historical parallels, like the shorting of airline stocks days before the September 11 attacks, suggest insider knowledge rather than direct orchestration. While there’s no concrete evidence that intelligence agencies planned the October 7 attack, circumstantial factors—such as the “dancing Israelis” linked to Mossad during 9/11—fuel speculation that Israel’s intelligence may have known of Hamas’s plans and allowed them to proceed. Unlike conspiracy theories that overcomplicate events, the simpler explanation is that the attack was permitted to serve as a pretext for escalating military action.
This pattern of exploiting crises is not new. The 9/11 attacks, carried out primarily by Saudi nationals, were used to justify the invasion of Iraq, despite no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the plot. The invasion served special interests seeking to eliminate a regional rival, much as Israel’s current actions align with the Likud party’s long-standing goal of a “final solution” for Palestinian territories. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had covertly supported Hamas to weaken Palestinian unity, likely saw the October 7 attack as an opportunity to galvanize public support for extreme measures. By allowing Hamas’s unprecedented success, he manufactured consent for policies that would otherwise be unthinkable.
The world’s leaders rarely let a crisis go to waste. Through propaganda, they direct public anger to serve their agendas, erasing the humanity of the oppressed in the process. Just as Naboth was slandered and killed for his land, Palestinians face cultural erasure and violence, enabled by a global audience too quick to accept the narrative of their dehumanization. To learn from history, we must discern the truth and reject the lies that justify such atrocities.
Conspiracies happen all of the time. It is not a surprise that people plot evil schemes and would be more strange if they did not. But it doesn’t mean that everything that happens is a conspiracy. Being old enough to recall the black helicopter theories and warnings of imminent UN takeover. Who can forget the FEMA camp claims and those pictures of ‘coffins’ Barack Obama’s administration would soon be loading us into? Strangely many dates come and go, but none of those who push these wild global plots come forward later and say, “You know, I may have been wrong about JFK being the Antichrist… “
Wild conspiracy theories are about political ideology more than evidence. It is oftentimes a product of those who feel disempowered and seek uncomplicated explanations. The left, for example, hallucinates nebulous things like systemic racism or white privilege. Not entirely claims without any merit and yet if it is used to explain every outcome—if you see it lurking behind everything people do—then stop, get some help! The fringe right likewise, turns to fantasy when reality is too hard for their simple minds to understand. Inflation can’t just be about the Fed printing trillions of dollars devaluing currency, no it must be fires at food processing facilities!
There is always a motivated misunderstanding of evidence that is involved beneath this kind of claim—a misuse of statistics and facts to form grandiose theories.
The common thread of conspiracy theories is that they can’t be disproven. They are all established on faith, firm belief evidence connecting all the dots can be found and can shape-shift as needed. If one part can be disproven they can simply move the goalposts or deny the evidence is legitimate. If someone does not want to believe that the moon landing happened you could show a Saturn V rocket, introduce them to one of the astronauts, thoroughly explain all of the alleged irregularities they see and they’ll still believe that it was faked.
It is a matter of political orientation, not facts or plausibility, and stems from assumptions and a general mistrust of the system.
To the conspiracy-minded folks, everything becomes a conspiracy, there can never be an accident, or a lone wolf attack, no such thing as coincidence in their world. Sandy Hook couldn’t be a deranged (drugged out) Adam Lanza. No, to Alex Jones it must’ve been a false flag with the casualties being crisis actors rather than real people. And some of those hunch I understand, this is what happens when every tragedy is treated cynically as an opportunity by control-freak politicians.
The real issue I have with Q-Anon, where all is a hidden criminal plot (and everything is going according to the plan) is how it sucks the oxygen out of the room for discussion of real observable corruption. The far-flung theories, worse, are used to discredit those reasonable concerns about the expansion of government power and proliferation of unaccountable agencies. We should be far more concerned with what those with power are ‘legally’ doing in plain sight—and not giving them cover of cockamamie theories they happily use to dismiss us all as crackpots.
That’s the irony here, the conspiracy theorist is aiding the conspiracy. For example, fact-checks of “Covid is a bioweapon” were used to strawman the reasonable questions about a possible Wuhan lab-leak. This is why we couldn’t have a serious conversation.
So why do the kooks need to speculate so far beyond the evidence? Why can’t they stick to what is known or factual, the most plausible explanation, rather than always having to gallop to the craziest possible conclusion? In some cases it might just be stupidity, that they simply aren’t very good at tracking normal human motivation. But in many cases, it is just a form of resentment, they are unserious people—with a massive inferiority complex—who both need to distinguish themselves and also discredit those who did attain more.
It is basically the working-class equivalent of pulling the race-card.
And yet this is not entirely without cause.
They’ve endured globalism, they have seen their jobs outsourced, prices rise and wages stagnate. This was not the America that was promised to them. A place where their own dreams would be the limit. They see things going the wrong way, opportunities drying up for people like them, as a flood of new faces replace the familiar. There has been a sort of conspiracy against them, but not in the way they imagine. Yes, in many ways, they have been screwed over by their betters—so perhaps that is where the deep suspicion originates?
Visiting the site of the Twin Towers again has revealed how much my perspective of the has changed over the past few decades since the attacks. The World Trade Centers, built in the 1970s, had once dominated the Financial District of Manhattan and represented both the pinnacle of engineering and the economic might of the American empire.
Like the Pentagon struck the same day, they were symbols of American dominance. Pillars of a system that, prior to that sunny September day, had seemed invulnerable. The United States had won the Cold War, demonstrated unrivaled military might in the Gulf War (all but erasing the bitter aftertaste of Vietnam) and the 1990s felt almost as if it was the ‘end of history‘ with the final victory of liberal democracy over the world.
The NYC skyline is impressive even today, yet that September day the delusion of being untouchable had been wiped away and the trust of the system has continued to degrade as more are seeing the truth:
1) Our government can’t keep us safe. Many forget now that 9/11 was not the first attack on the World Center twins. In 1993 a truck bomb had been detonated in the parking garage of the South Tower and could’ve taken down the towers had it been better placed. But despite this, despite the billions we spent on intelligence agencies, the US had missed multiple opportunities to take down Osama Bin Laden. All of our military strength was useless against a small group of dedicated men using box cutters and airliners.
2) They made us bleed. While many around the world were horrified at the images, there were others who danced with glee as shock and awe covered Manhattan in dust. It was a propaganda coup for those who opposed US hegemony as much as anything else, it proved that there could be repercussions for our policing and globalist policies. Sure we would go on to kill Bin Laden. But he more than accomplished his goal. Not only did he bring down the towers, and strike the Pentagon, but he also goaded us into spending trillions on a fruitless war on terror.
But, beyond this, in the past twenty years, I have gone from being an apologist for the second invasion of Iraq to now being very deeply disillusioned. And I’m not alone. The world is no longer what it was in the 1990s where the US leads the way to a new age. Rather many are starting to see through the shiny facade and realize that the system in its current form serves a few at the top. But our banks, our government, and corporations routinely conspire to rob us. There is no free market or true representatives of the people, it is a rigged game and the ‘house’ always wins.
Walking past Wall Street I remarked “This is the heart of the beast” and it is. The money flowing through this place is the lifeblood of a nation, the very center of the current world order, and what enables the endless wars of our political regime. The towers were not random targets. Nor was the attack because they hate freedom and democracy, but rather it was a response to the imposition of US policies on their countries and the never-ending presence of our military in their own backyard to serve US economic interests that they resented.
As wrong as it was to murder 2,977 people, this ‘collateral damage’ has long been a part of war, many Americans have no moral qualms about nuking the cities of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and the US has killed hundreds of thousands of non-combatants. So why is it such an outrage if others in the world employ a similar total war strategy against us?
If America once represented an ideal, that is fading due to relentless attacks by the left and the growing disillusionment of everyone else. There has been a transition, over the last few decades in particular, from the time when athletes would wrap themselves in the flag to this time it has become controversial and even contemptible. Even conservatives no longer trust national institutions and have embraced a myriad of conspiracy theories—including many about the 9/11 attacks.
Personally, I do not believe that the official narrative is entirely a lie. I believe a group of men, funded by Al Qaeda, hijacked four fuel-laden airliners, two of them were flown into the towers, one struck the Pentagon and a fourth crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. I do not see a need for a controlled demolition to explain why the buildings collapsed. No this is not to say that our government didn’t know more prior, opportunistically exploit or even facilitate the attacks. There’s simply a better explanation of everything that happened that day and since.
The fragility of our world order…
As a young person everything that was had this feeling of permanence. My parents and other adults were fixtures in my life. It all felt robust and unchangeable. But as time went on, grandparents passed away, trends came and went, seasons changed and I began to learn that nothing is forever. Even concrete will degrade in strength and eventually, it will crumble away into dust. Institutions are no different, they tend to have a lifecycle, at the very least require constant maintenance, and all these systems we rely upon to create order in our world are surprisingly fragile.
The New York City skyline has a robustness of appearance. It is built off of the bedrock, the skyscrapers seemingly carved out of a single piece of polished granite. This is by design. The architects and engineers who built these monolithic-looking structures do want them to feel secure and safe. And, for the most part, or under typical conditions, it is true—they are reliable.
However, they’re not indestructible.
The Word Trade Centers, while massive and certainly marvels of engineering, under that shiny metal and glass veneer, were as flimsy as a stack of cards. What made them great also created unique vulnerabilities. Unlike the Empire State Building, a grid of I-beams and tapers in towards the top, the enormous twins had a center trunk section with long clear spanning trusses that were supported by the outer ‘skin’ of the buildings. This had given them a large and unobstructed office space. This was practical, but in retrospect became a fatal flaw in their design.
The WTC design was innovative, unusually lightweight construction with wide open floor spaces supported by trusses.
The impact of the airliners removed some of the structure. No, this was not enough to cause a collapse, yet this was enough to add strain and reduce the load-carrying capacity of the buildings. The towers, despite getting hit by aircraft larger than the 124-ton Boeing 707, had exceeded expectations and absorbed the impact. It was only after fires raged, out of control, that the heat had reduced the tensile strength of the steel enough that the floor trusses would deflect and could no longer hold the upper floors—at which point the top of the buildings began to fall into the lower—smashing one floor at a time until nothing but a cloud of dust and pile of rubble remained.
The popular meme “Jet fuel can’t melt steel” is clearly ignorant of the reality that you do not need to turn steel into liquid before it will fail. An inferno of jet fuel mixed with office materials is more than enough to weaken a structure to the breaking point. There is no need to explain this as controlled demolition or building 7, where there was damage to the structure, fires burning on ten floors, and the sprinkler systems disabled due to water main breaks.
Still, many Americans have a huge problem accepting that these symbols of our strength could be taken down by a handful of zealots with box cutters. It makes us feel insecure. We want it to be more. And thus it must be some kind of massive concerted effort, with an enormous cover-up, right?
This is, ultimately, a form of denial.
Most Americans know that manufacturing jobs have been continually outsourced. But many do not fully comprehend the economic reasons why the US has gone from the nation that won WW2 with industrial power to the current situation nor how much they have benefitted. It is the status of the US Dollar as the world reserve currency and the Petrodollar arrangement that give US consumers the edge. Basically, in order to buy their oil from Saudi Arabia, other countries around the world needed to get their hands on our money and for this reason would sell us goods they produced at a bargain price.
The manufacturing backbone no longer exists.
The “new world order” George HW Bush hypothesized was never to be. Bin Laden had answered and won on multiple fronts. He caused us to question our own American identity, whether our leaders actually represent our good, and if their endless wars truly benefit us—which they don’t. More importantly, he penetrated the illusion of permanence and strength that kept us blindly pulling the weight of empire for our masters. Even 9/11 truthers, in their rejection of the official narrative, are part of this new anxiety undermining the tower of world dominance built in the post-WW2 era.
After two more wars where only the defense contractors and their political proxies came out as victors, after bailouts for the “too big too fail” and current institutional protection of the hedge fund billionaires against retail ‘Ape’ insurgents, more are waking up. How the elites and political establishment gang up on populists, like Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders—brazenly rigging the DNC primary in 2015 and the Big Tech election interference this past cycle—has damaged faith in the democratic process. And, lastly, having endured the Covid lockdowns, more question the notion of us being exceptionally free people.
Even if enough Americans remain under the spell and continue to support the collapsing regime, the rest of the world (at least beyond Western Europe and Australia) is not fooled by our propaganda. After decades of BS and bullying, like those WMDs never found, many are rejecting the monopolar order and ready to work on plan B. China, India, Middle-Eastern and African nations do not want to be perpetually subject to US economic threats and warfare. And, after the Ukrainian sanctions, they’re taking steps to protect their own sovereignty against this imperial aggression. BRICS is here and the supremacy of the Petrodollar, which is what has enabled the half-century US reign, is being challenged.
The pillars upon which the US economic might was built are now shaking and yet nobody seems to be focused on shoring up this foundation. The tower sways, but hubris blinds those who could prevent the collapse.
From confidence to doubt…
Bin Laden knew his 9/11 attacks would lead to massive overreach. He understood that the arrogance of our leaders would lead to a flailing angry response. No, the attacks were not enough to bring it all down but they did put the cracks in the base of this order and the future is no longer as certain as it was prior to that moment of horror and disbelief—when a bustling city and the most powerful country in the world was brought to a standstill.
Those feelings of horror and helplessness and disbelief remain, like those abyss-like holes in the ground where the towers once stood. We have all seen the writing on the wall. The party may have continued, on the surface, but something has fundamentally changed underneath it all, the ground has shifted—as has our perception of our own untouchable position in the world.
History is not an end, the new world order is starting to look as frail as those geriatrics who rule us afraid to die and desperately cling to their power.
The juggernaut of the US-led world order, which had briefly appeared to be an impenetrable fortress, is now unraveling and all it took is a little push.
Apparently, these Americans, reveling in a terrorist attack, are unable to differentiate between Saudi Arabian hijackers (Sunni Arabs) and Iranian civilians (Persian Shites) mercilessly gunned down in Tehran. I guess to them terrorism is only bad when American and European people are the targets?
What’s worse is the missed opportunity to defeat a common enemy (ISIS) and also to bridge a divide between two nations that should have never happened in the first place. This is probably because we have selective memory and remember the Iran hostage crisis of 1979 (when 52 American diplomats were taken hostage) yet not the decades of meddling by our government that led up to it.
Americans forget that we drew first blood in the conflict with Iran when our government (via the CIA) participated in the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran in 1953. It was called “Operation Ajax,” it was intended to serve British oil interests and ended with our installing brutal monarchial rule under Mohammed Reza who was called the Shah (or king) of Iran.
With all the outrage over alleged Russian interference in our election and our own history of revolution against kings, it should be easy to understand what came next: The Iranians took their country back, the Shah escaped to the United States to avoid accountability, our government refused to send him back to stand trial in Iran, and in response, they took some of our diplomats hostage.
The great irony here is that the only Americans harmed were the eight US servicemen killed and four wounded in a helicopter crash during a bungled military operation to rescue the hostages. That’s not to mention the one Iranian civilian, who was guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and was killed by an Army Ranger’s shoulder-fired rocket.
Yet, despite our own casualties being self-inflicted, since then the U.S. government has made it their policy to do harm to the Iranian people. For example, there is a reason why some in our government knew Saddam Hussain had chemical weapons: we enabled him to use them against the Iranians.
The Iran-Iraq war started in the 1980s when Iraq invaded Iran, was a bloody conflict that cost more than a million lives. In response to the carnage Henry Kissinger, a former U.S. Secretary of State, smirked, “it is a pity they both can’t lose.”
It is little wonder that the Iranian leaders would seek a nuclear deterrence given our past (and present) aggression. From their perspective, it is simply a matter of survival given that U.S. leaders regularly threaten. For example, long-term Senator John McCain thought singing “bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran” was funny and praised the leader of a Marxist terrorist organization that has murdered thousands of Iranians.
McCain actually met with the leadership of Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to express his hopes that they would someday rule in Iran. The thought of this is horrifying to a secular Iranian friend of mine. My friend, while not a fan of the current Iranian government, says that she (and most other Iranians) do not want the MEK in power and are shocked that a prominent U.S. politician would openly support terrorism.
How quickly the American public forgets that our government (including McCain) also gave support (direct or indirect) to Osama Bin Laden when he was fighting a holy war against the Soviet Union. Of course, they do remember the blowback when the terrorist we helped to create turned his attention on us as a result of our meddling in his own part of the world.
Talk about karma.
And, no surprise, U.S. interventions (supported by then-Secretary of State, Hillary “we came, we saw, he died” Clinton, and none other than John McCain) have also resulted in the formation of ISIS. It is obvious that our leadership never learns from the blowback and the American public—putting it too lightly—is woefully ignorant of the misdeeds supposedly done on their behalf around the world.
Any slight hope that the Trump administration would take a more sensible approach has pretty much disappeared when they responded to the terrorist attacks with political opportunism rather than solidarity against ISIS (who claimed responsibility for the attacks in the Iranian capital Tehran) and, in the process, we are driving further away many Iranians who once looked upon America as great despite our numerous violations of their sovereignty.
We put a travel ban on Iran who has never once attacked the American homeland and has only fought in defense against the attacks of the U.S. and our regional allies. But then no travel ban is applied to Saudi Arabia or any of the other countries where the 9/11 hijackers came from. It is absurd that we are still signing weapons deals with a nation that doesn’t allow women to drive, uses beheadings as punishment, funds the spread of Wahabbism worldwide, and backs ISIS, while opposing a nation merely fighting to keep us out.
Given our inability to admit hypocrisy or even to recognize our own mistakes, it is likely only a matter of time before the next group of U.S. supported “dissidents” and “freedom fighters” accomplish their objectives and then turn their bloodthirsty eyes on us, like Bin Laden did, and make their mission putting a permanent end to our hegemonic ambitions.
Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it. We are still sowing the wind, covertly killing anyone (including the murder of civilian scientists) who stands in the way of our global dominance, supporting terrorism against those who do not want to be our puppets and will likely reap yet another whirlwind as a result.
I believe awareness is often good. If a person is about to be hit by a bus on their current trajectory, then it is generally good for them to know this and adjust themselves accordingly.
On September 11, 2001, as hijacked commercial airliners heavy with fuel became missiles, the American public became acutely aware of a threat and looked for a solution to the exposed vulnerability.
The threat had existed prior to our awareness, but now became real with images of burning buildings and stories of thousands of lives snuffed out. The attack worked as intended, it hit Americans squarely in their emotional centers and produced fear. People wanted a strong response and got it.
It was used as justification to expand government power, as excuse to settle unfinished business and as reason to move earth and heaven to get those responsible. The cost of trillion(s) of dollars and many thousands of lives, in retrospect, seems unjustifiable.
“You are going to die…”
How we react to that statement in the quotes above probably depends on who is saying it. I believe our reaction to that would be quite a bit different depending on the circumstances. If it was said with a gun in your face it would likely be interpreted differently than if it was said by a friend and finished with “someday.”
Awareness of a problem, when we have the luxury of time, needs to come with appropriate deliberation and proper restraint of fear. Overreaction and panic can create bigger problems than the circumstances that triggered them in the first place.
Awareness of an issue, if not contextualized or if over-applied, can build stereotypes, feed prejudices and skew us away from better judgment. Jumping to avoid a bus and directly into the path of a freight train is unwise and especially if the bus is still a mile away. Awareness of a problem is not a solution.
My social media news feeds are too often jam packed with messages from well-intended friends. I am warned of ‘knock out game’ violence, told of police brutality, Ebola coverup, conspiracy, wars on women, gun rights being stolen, Sharia law, beheadings, and a myriad of other fearful things that apparently should be demanding my immediate paranoid attention.
In many cases those with the bullhorn in hand don’t know the whole story, hyperbolize what is actually known and assume what isn’t known. The dramatic headlines, the terrible anecdotes, wild speculation and strong rhetoric too often blow things out of proportion and eventually many simply tune out.
So, regarding threats real or perceived, how can we be aware without being paranoid, being reactionary and disproportional in response?
Irregular Ideation 