The day after 9/11 I started a journal. It didn't last long, but it captured something immediate in the air that I knew I would never be able to summons on my own ever again. However, there was plenty of stuff that happened during that week that I never jotted down, or blogged about, or even mentioned to anyone... not because of any explosive content, but because I am the type of person who actually keeps confidences and secrets when asked.
One of the first things I did that week (that didn't make it into the journal) was e-mail a friend of mine from high school. He and I used to hang out and talk about political stuff all the time. Now he was working at the Pentagon, which of course was one of the targets of the 9/11 attacks but certainly not the center of as much focus as Ground Zero or United Flight 93.
Still, it was a thrilling exchange of replies to each other, completely off-the-record and uncensored, although to be fair it's not like he worked with any classified information and it's not like he told me anything that could be called a typical "bombshell". I mean, it's not like he got a confession out of President Bush admitting that 9/11 was an inside job, but he also didn't completely own the official story (as it stood at the time) on certain levels.
But at least he was there, and his opinion matters more to me than anything I have read or heard since, whether it be online, in print, on TV or from the mouths of anyone else who was not there. Because he was being honest with me, and he also knew who he was speaking to: an open-minded person with a fascination for conspiracy theories-- real or imagined --who also had the capacity to keep his fool mouth shut and not try to milk any inside information for all it was worth.
I don't have immediate access to the printed copies I made of our e-mail chat (they are back in California, in storage, with the rest of my voluminous writings) but over the years I have had the opportunity to pull them out every now and then and compare notes with the contemporary zeitgeist regarding September 11, 2001. Over time, that very zeitgeist has most notably produced what is being called the Truther Movement, but we've also seen the birth of a new phenomenon that is actually just a 21st-Century off-shoot of some tried-and-true human absurdity: seemingly everyone nowadays has become a journalist, activist, or investigative reporter by virtue of the Internet.
I'm all for new information, and I think the Internet is great for connecting the lives of people who may never have gotten together had it not been for the World Wide Web. Ideas get exchanged, and it is very liberating... to a point. Then, after a while it becomes schlocky, and sometimes even serves to alienate people from loved ones even as it draws them closer to complete strangers.
Over the years, I have yet to read or watch anything that resembles my e-mail exchange with my high school buddy, who no longer works at the Pentagon and has a relatively normal life now. That's because nowadays all people are interested in is sensationalism, and frankly the discussion we had via e-mail (although it did have some lively moments and a few prescient morsels of info that have played themselves out rather well in the public arena) didn't contain enough extreme material.
In other words, it was somewhere firmly in the middle of what is the Official Story on 9/11 (Osama bin Laden and 19 al-Qaeda members hijacked jet airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon) and the Official Conspiracy Theory (9/11 was an inside job, a controlled demolition, enacted Reichstag-style in order to take away Americans' civil liberties and start a war in Iraq). But because our exchange didn't cleave too wildly towards either extreme, it would not even be considered a worthy topic of discussion in the most fact-based forum thread these days. It would contain no pizzazz, pep, or piss-and-vinegar; there would be no villains and no apparent heroes, and it would not change anyone's life nor would it cause outrage in anyone living comfortably in their Matrix-style cocoon. It wouldn't rock the boat, so to speak.
It would, in short, be boring.
In my experience, I've found that the truth often lies somewhere between fact and fiction. I'm not saying what I know about 9/11 is The Truth... but I am saying that it lies somewhere between fact and fiction, and that I trust that information much more than a link to a You Tube video that, for all I know, could've been posted by a bored housewife or perhaps a CIA disinformation expert.
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Call me crazy, but I have this tendency to want to get to the actual source, and not just take things from second or third-hand gossip. And fortunately for me, I have been the beneficiary of many first-hand accounts in my life, mostly because I seem to work with or go to school with the right people. I myself am not a Mover or a Shaker, but everyone else around me seems to be, and being that I aspire to be a Writer, it's fitting that I have this God-given ability to get unique perspectives from people who happened to be in the right (or wrong) spot when the shit went down.
Of course, these people could all be liars. And that's always my first thought in these cases, and it might be a valid point if it weren't for the fact that I know these people as close, trustworthy friends and not just as strangers I met in a chat room.
But back to what I was saying about 9/11: I worked with a girl who was in one of the towers on that fateful day. I didn't know about this until recently, and to be honest I haven't had the nerve to ask her about it because, frankly, who would want to re-live a day like that, even if it was for the benefit of a former co-worker? She probably would tell me all about it, because we were more than just colleagues: we jammed together on music for a short spell, and I was also friends with her future husband with whom she eventually moved to New York.
Although she hasn't spoken to me about 9/11 (and I did mention that I knew this about her in a recent blog post) I do have the opportunity to see what her opinions on world affairs are, thanks to a social media website whose name I will not plug. She used to be a little more moderate, but now she is firmly to the right politically... and considering that she survived 9/11, I don't really blame her for becoming more conservative. Look what it did to Dennis Miller.
Sure, she and I differ on a variety of political topics, but I would still value her testimony in regards to 9/11 over anything I read from a website or news article. Just because she became more right-wing does not mean that the personal story of her ordeal is invalid. In fact, I would think that it would make it more valid. Like I said about my e-mail correspondence buddy earlier: she was there. She lived through it.
If this were a game of Big Bank vs. Little Bank (in this case, Big Data Bank vs. Little Data Bank) then she would certainly trump most, if not all, comers and pretenders. But funny thing about people who were actually there and not just playing a game of Internet Telephone: they never feel the need to prove anything, and usually have the sense to not exploit it for all its worth.
But I bet if some of my silly acquaintances who send me retarded links to 9/11 theories from all sides of the spectrum ever sent her a link, she'd give it to them with no mercy. And she'd be justified. And despite some of the things I know about 9/11 that she might not know or care about, I would take her far more seriously than the majority of people out there who have "opinions" about what happened that day.
That's because I have a suspicion that what she has to say would lie somewhere between fact and fiction. And if she asked me to not share it with anyone, I wouldn't. But I won't ask her to share because that's tacky. I guess I'll have to wait until one day she decides to spill the beans to me, of her own accord.
That is not as unlikely a prospect as it seems.
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I've had insider tips from all sorts of people on any number of controversial topics, from the O.J. Simpson trial (I worked with someone who'd been subpoenaed to testify on the stand) to the Rodney King verdicts (talked to people who knew both the cops involved and Mr. King) and almost everything in between. In every single one of these off-the-record conversations, I am amazed at the participants' willingness to reveal to me the type of information that could prompt someone of lesser character to write a book, or go online, start a website, and exploit the fuck out of these tidbits for monetary gain or merely for attention.
Every now and then, even I will have to ask aloud to someone giving me the inside dope, "Why are you telling me all of this?" And they will invariably answer: "Because I trust you."
That's the story of my life, by the way: people trust me, because they find me to be completely honest. And while it may be true that no one is ever 100%
completely honest, I will toot my own horn for a moment and say that I am more honest than most. To put it bluntly, I am so honest that sometimes I reveal too much information because I like to talk. So the fact that, on occasion, I can stick to my guns and never say anything about a particular topic is remarkable.
Shit, I feel guilty right now just blogging about it. I'd like to deliver the good, really. I'd love to give up all the juicy details. But I won't. I know it seems like a tease, or like I really have nothing to impart but want to make it seem like I do. However, I felt compelled to blog this because I'm just sick of everyone who thinks they have an opinion trying to tell me shit that I already heard from more trusted sources, or people with NO CLUE as to where their information is coming from telling ME that I am apathetic.
Since the 21st Century is all about redefining things like Political Activism and Journalism, allow me to redefine Apathy for the new millennium.
APATHY is when you don't have any sensitivity or respect for the experiences of others, and will cherry-pick and selectively highlight only the tidbits of information that suit your own needs. APATHY is when you ignore the first-hand testimony of people who actually lived through certain events and instead go with wild speculation from anonymous or unknown and unverified sources.
In short, APATHY is being clueless to what's really going on, simply because you have your own agenda to fulfill.
As for me, I have no agenda. I have no ulterior motives. I'm not out to impress anyone, don't care if the Truth is ever known (because odds are it never will be) and certainly know enough about humankind to know that even if the Truth revealed itself today, most people would scoff at it or wave their hands and dismiss it.
It's tempting to call me apathetic, because I have settled down in the Midwest with a wife, a child, and a 9-to-5 job with good benefits, if not spectacular pay. But then again, I was never really a crusader to begin with-- I just happen to know a lot about things because people say "Psst! C'mere" and tell me, without my having to ask. I've done some things I'm proud of, some other things I'm not proud of, and there's been times when I took the money instead of standing my ground, just as much as I've resisted the carrot and suffered the consequences of not selling out.
But it's also real easy to be left-wing when you live in a Blue State. Now that I'm living in a Red State, the need to be Blue is stronger than ever. And more challenging. In order to keep that focus, I can't be bothered with petty bullshit, dumb lies, and bad logic. I need to be on my toes, even if I'm not out on the front lines participating in Occupy Indianapolis.
So don't bother me about fluoridization of water, the moon landing hoax, ending the Federal Reserve, or any number of silly topics designed to keep our minds off of the real shit going on. And certainly don't bother me about 9/11... not because I can't handle the truth that can be found on thousands of badly-designed websites, but because you can't handle The Truth as I know it.
Besides, 9/11 is old shit. Why you gotta bring up old shit for? Read my last post if you wanna know how I feel about it.
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