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9/11 In Retrospect—Collapse of the New World Order

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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.

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Four Mennonite Sons

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There was, one hundred years ago, a Mennonite family with four sons. They lived near a small rural village on the outskirts of a bustling city, with their three sisters, and two parents. Life was simple. They would get up early, milk the cows, then clean the stalls, before heading in for a hearty breakfast at mom’s dining room table, then out for the fieldwork or to cut firewood. The seasons of planting and harvesting were busy times, but there was always plenty of work year-round. There were community events, almost always involving donated labor, to raise a barn or help some struggling neighbor harvest their crops, but life revolved around the daily chores, tending to the animals, the repetitive cycles of the crops, occasional trips to town and church attendance.

In their spare time, evenings before going to bed or after dinnertime on the slower seasons, these boys would read. They had a keen interested in history and current events. The books gave them a window into the world beyond the horizon, beyond the slow pace of his agricultural lifestyle, where great men made important decisions, tales of war, of how his Anabaptist ancestors had suffered intensely for their faith, stories of missionaries traveling to exotic locations, reports the new technology that promised to change everything, and all of this captivated these young men. Their 8th-grade education and sheltered agrarian lifestyle may have left them in wide-eyed wonderment—like the first time they saw that WW1 surplus Jenny JN-4 biplane flying over the family farm—but this did not make them ignorant or lacking in intelligence.

The eldest son, Joseph, was the spitting image of his father, he had seen the farm grow, had participated in the hard work and toil right from the beginning, this simple lifestyle was as ingrained in his heart as the dirt was ground into his calloused hands. He had his dad’s work ethic, would never complain about physical labor, and he had that wiry strength common to farm boys. It is said that once, as a teenager, one of the town boys seeing this naive Mennonite, tried to pick a fight, even landing a blow, before John gave his antagonist a big bear hug, repeated “I don’t want to fight” and then put the stunned bully down. That bully would go on to be the mill owner, a friend, who would always tell that story, but John would laugh and claim that it was exaggerated, a tall tale. John, who had basically inherited his father’s farm, would continue to implement new techniques, was very successful, a respected member of the local community, married his sweetheart and they faithfully attended the church of his childhood.

The second oldest, the ever-inventive Henry, found a way to improve a farm implement, he started manufacturing in the shop on his dad’s farm, but soon outgrew the shop and purchased some land nearer to the city where he built his first factory. By following his passion for business, employing his hardworking heritage, he became very wealthy and could afford to treat his child to luxuries he could not have even imagined at their age. His life was always full of activities, parties, baby showers, vacations (his wife loved the beach, how could he say no?) and, of course, the daily grind of running an industrial production schedule. His life was dominated by the clock, by the calendar of events, the sports teams, politics, etc. He loved technology and one day brought home a brand new cabinet radio/record player that he had purchased at Sears. But, as busy as they were, and despite leaving his father’s old-fashioned church behind, religion still played an important role in the life of his family and he did his best to instill conservative values, his charitable giving (not for attention) made him a noteworthy character and admired amongst those in need.

Hudson was the third of the sons, said to be named after the famed Protestant missionary to China (although it may have been the automobile of the same name), was the more earnest of the four sons. One day an evangelist came to town, despite attendance being discouraged by the church elders, he (with his brothers) was in the audience. The message tugged at his sensitive heart, he rose to his feet shaking, walked the sawdust trail, and had a “born again” experience. Now, truth be told, he had never really been that rebellious, he had had some terrible guilt about seeing some female peers taking a dip in the pond and spending an extra moment observing, but he had always been thoughtful, considerate, and conscientious sort. But now, freedom from his sin, he was determined to serve. He taught at the newly formed Mennonite high school, eventually became a founding member of Mennonite World Aid, an outreach of the conference created to appease those longing to be missionaries, and even did a stint in post-WW2 Europe. He raised his large family to be Anabaptist (although he saturated them with fundamentalist literature) and was followed everywhere by his adoring perpetually pregnant wife.

Then there was Clyde. Clyde was the black sheep of the family, saw John as naive, not too interested in technology like Henry (other than his camera) and certainly far more cynical than Hudson. He didn’t have much appreciation for the farm life. He soon realized that his church was taught by ignorant rubes who got their “ordination” by seeming sincere enough to nominate and then picking up the right Bible. He at first decide to do the Mennonite missionary thing, but he was more or less there to observe and take pictures, and then headed off to university to satiate his hunger for knowledge. Yet, beneath all of this ‘liberal’ smugness, was a compassionate and caring heart. He would go on to write books, people loving to hear about his experience growing up as a traditional Mennonite (although things had really changed significantly before he was old enough to remember) and he was eventually hired as the pastor of the big conference church. Unlike his forebearers, he used his pulpit to spread about social issues, encouraging diversity, reprimanding the “ethnic church” for not caring enough about minorities, the poor, victims, etc.

All of the sons remained Mennonite. And yet all, besides John, had dramatically changed what it meant to be Mennonite. Even John’s life became more chaotic and cluttered than that of his father’s, some of his sons gave up farming (land was too expensive) and worked at his brother Henry’s factory, others (also smitten by an emotional ‘revival’ preacher” carried out Hudson’s vision, but all remained active in their congregations. Henry’s sons embraced the comforts of modern life, they drove muscle cars, listened to popular music and were a little wild before settling down. Of course, Hudson’s sons, all home-schooled (a necessity on the mission field) were a mixture of sheltered and exposed, they all thought of their father as sort of saintly character and were determined to spread ‘Anabaptism’ to the corners of the world. Then there was Clyde’s only child, an avowed feminist, decrying the patriarchy, privilege, police brutality, and basically indistinguishable from the other trust-fund babies who shared his far-leftist views—to him Jesus was basically a political tool, a means to shame his more practical cousins, and a philosopher superseded by Karl Marx.

Nothing about the new generation was the same as their grandfathers. Horses had been long replaced by tractors, the suburbs had encroached on the farmland inheritance and the influence of the ‘liberal’ cousins was having an impact on Joe’s old Mennonite orthodoxy that had been unquestioned for decades, more and more switched from farming to carpentry or manufacturing as economic realities pressed into their communities. More of Henry and Hudson’s descendants (who still crossed paths as conservative Mennonites) became disenchanted with the status quo, some looking for a more lively worship experience, others being disillusioned by the Protestant influence started to question the foundation of their religious tradition, some were angry about hidden abuses, and there were special conferences held to discuss the “Anabaptist identity” crisis. The trappings of modern life had slowly but surely crept into their lifestyle, smartphones were prevalent, pornography caused anxiety amongst many and the austerity of the past would have been appealing if they had the time to stop and think about it.