An author asks, “What is history?” and goes on to answer as follows:

“History is a nation’s (or a people’s) conversation about its past. Therefore, this book is an invitation to think about and discuss the development of our society through time. Surely you will accept this invitation, for who wouldn’t like to know more about their ancestors? How did our great-grandparents live? What were the great problems of their time? What did they do to solve them? What were their values and attitudes? What did their dreams, aspirations and plans consist of? What were their major thoughts when they made an important decision? To find answers to questions like these it will help us to understand where we come from and who we are. Moreover, it will motivate us to reflect on the consequences of our own decisions on the lives of our descendants.”

The above begins a kind of preface, titled “Secrets of the Trade.” The author is a historian. The book is a history of the author’s own country. It isn’t ours, but its history intersects with the history of the United States. The questions are universal and relevant to the purposes of this blog. They stimulate other questions U.S. residents and citizens might ask, including about the legacy we leave to our descendants.

Among them: How do certain conversations about the present and the past get started? What are the roles of academia and the communications media (including books, magazines, newspapers, the content of TV and radio shows) and organized religion? What determines the elements of those conversations? What will our descendants including our great-grandchildren think about our generations and what ours did to solve our (perceived) great problems? What are our great problems? What are our values and attitudes? How are they shaped? What are our dreams, aspirations and plans?

This elemental approach may help break down some barriers to access to factual whos, whys, hows, whats, whens and wheres, which barriers allow people — or a people, or a nation — to avoid realities that are, in a globalized world, apparent to other peoples and nations. Que bono? is a Latin phrase meaning “Who benefits?” Does it benefit us in the United States to be systematically shielded from all kinds of facts and realities because the shielders say, in effect, “You don’t want to know”? 

These are good questions for today, Presidents Day in the United States, for the rest of Presidents Week, and for all time. Let’s start some new conversations.

— Mark Channing Miller

The day of the Super Bowl, last Sunday, I came across this quote:

The rewards of the difficult life of honesty and dedication to the truth are continual growth, effective intimate relationships, and the knowledge that one has served as a source of illumination and clarification to the world.

It appeared in M. Scott Peck’s 1978 book, The Road Less Traveled, and again in a 1993 collection of quotes from that and Peck’s The Different Drum, published in 1987. The collection (referred to in this blog earlier) contains 366 quotes, one for every day on a leap year, and that one was for Feb. 7 of any year.

At least some parts of the quote fit a lot of truthers, who are people who don’t necessarily swallow the official narratives of a given event or situation, or any number of events or situations, and don’t want to shut up about it. The event this blog talks about most is the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, known collectively as “9/11.” But truthers on one thing tend to be truthers on other things, and they (or at least I do) notice all sorts of patterns common to official coverups adopted by a society, in large part owing to owners and managers in the news business.

Enough for now about that, except to say that I don’t follow those quotes of Peck’s every day, but when I come across that little book somewhere in the house, as I did last Sunday, I look for the quote for that day.

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Leslie E. Robertson died yesterday at 92. He was one of the structural engineers involved in the building of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center, which came down into their own footprints 20 years ago this coming Sept. 11 during the terrorist attacks—like Building 7 nearby. An obituary appeared in today’s New York Times, by Fred A. Bernstein, with contributed reporting by James Glanz and Alex Traub. Times subscribers can read it HERE. The same obituary appears in artnews.com HERE, and can be read by nonsubscribers to the Times. Others are also online.

Because things have seemed quiet lately regarding 9/11 truth and Anthrax-attacks truth, before considering anything further about them it’s worth considering what has not been so quiet.

There’s a new Administration in Washington and a new Congress — the 45th and the 117th, respectively.

In the United States alone there has been (a) the huge, complicated hullabaloo regarding the outcome of last November’s presidential election, (b) the Georgia runoff elections on Jan. 5 for two U.S. Senate seats, both won by Democrats, (c) the usually ceremonial counting of Electoral College votes in the Capitol the next day, Jan. 6, (d) then-President Trump’s speech that morning encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol to dispute what he called the stolen election, (e) the “storming” of the Capitol with attendant deaths, injuries, and vandalism, (f) the inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Harris on Jan. 20 to a greatly reduced audience in attendance because of Covid-19 restrictions and with National Guard troops on hand for extra security, (g) nominations and approvals of new Cabinet members, (h) House of Representatives vote impeaching former President Trump, (i) the House vote to strip new U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., of her two committee assignments, and (j) the matter of whether to bother with a Senate trial of the former president for inciting insurrection, and (k) current preparations for the trial.

Not to mention (l) a national economy ravaged by Covid restrictions, (m) the size of the latest stimulus package and who gets what, (n) arguments over the wisdom of it, (o) the questioning and defending of the restrictions, (p) the questioning and defending of the vaccines to quell Covid infections, (q) the accuracy of the toll of deaths attributed to Covid, (r) the rollout of the vaccines with attendant challenges, (s) the new strains reported entering the country, (t) the massive lawsuits by Dominion and Smartmatic against Rudy Giuliani … and, yesterday, (u) the welcome distraction of Super Bowl LV. 

All of that omits state- and local-specific concerns. It omits concerns that are personal, including keeping a roof over one’s head, the electricity and fuel coming, food in the refrigerator, keeping from going crazy from isolation. 

There’s always something.

If the subject of the September 2001 attacks comes up, the plentitude of worthy subjects competing for attention is a big factor in belittling “9/11” and the barely remembered Anthrax followup attacks. 

“Are you still going on about that?” 

“That’s been settled.”

“What’s Nine Eleven?”

“Do you mean Nine-One-One?”

Life goes on. New generations are born. Old generations die. The quiet, persistent, dogged, unfashionable work of “truthers” goes on. More about which tomorrow or the next day, here.

— Mark Channing Miller

It’s about who the hell we are as a country. — President Biden, Feb. 3, 2021

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The quote above did not pertain to dispelling the lies cloaking the terrorist attacks of September 2001. It was part of a Washington Post story, HERE, by Erica Werner and Jeff Stein, about the president’s sense that Washington needs to act fast on changing Senate rules to pass by a simple majority the administration’s $1.9 trillion package for Covid-19 economic relief.

Still, an Associated Press photo by Evan Vucci of a meeting in the Oval Office showed what appeared to be a bust of Sen. Robert Kennedy (1925-1968) near the wall behind President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris; he had been U.S. attorney general and a principal adviser to his brother, President Kennedy (1917-1963). Also at the meeting were Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Harris. 

(Harris was a district attorney in California and then the state’s attorney general before becoming a U.S. senator in 2017. Leahy, currently chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had been a state’s attorney in Vermont earlier in his career; he and then-Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., Senate majority leader from 2001 to 2003, were apparent targets in the anthrax attacks that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Schumer served eight terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from New York State before becoming a U.S. senator in 1999.)

And by a 145-61 vote, U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., remains as the House Republicans’ third-ranking leader as her party’s members “overwhelmingly rebuffed a rebellion by hard-right conservatives,” while new U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., faced a vote today in the House that would remove her from committees “for her online embrace of racist and violent views and bizarre conspiracy theories,” according to THIS story by AP reporters Alan Fram, Steve Peoples and Brian Slodysko.

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Hilton Valentine, founding guitarist of the English band The Animals, died last Friday. THIS AP story by Pan Pylas has some details about Valentine and The Animals. Links to two songs performed by the group containing his playing are HERE, HERE and HERE.

The third of the three paragraphs below is from pages 52 and 53 of the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck’s most popular book, The Road Less Traveled,* which has been translated into more than 20 languages. Dr. Peck was born in 1936 and died in 2005.

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Una vida de completa dedicación a la verdad significa, también, una vida en la cual una persona tiene una buena disposición a ser desafiado personalemente. Aceptar y hasta sentir gratitud por desafios a nuestros planos de realidad nos permiten crecer en la sabiduría y eficacia.

Une vie totalement dévouée à la vérité signifie, de plus, une vie dont on est prêt toujours à être defié personnellement. Accepter, même accueiller, les défis à nos cartes de réalité nous permit à devenir plus sages et plus efficaces.

“A life of total dedication to the truth also means a life of willingness to be personally challenged. Accepting and even welcoming challenges to our maps of reality allow us to grow in wisdom and effectiveness.”

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* And also from the Feb. 1 entry in the 1993 book Meditations From the Road, a collection of 366 quotes from The Road Less Traveled (1978) and The Different Drum (1987). 

Today for a change a little poetry. This is by Salomón de la Selva (1893-1959). An English translation follows the poem as it was written in Spanish. // Hoy un poco de poesía, para variar. Esto es de Salomón de la Selva. (1893-1959). Una versión en inglés está después del poema como fue escrito en español. — MCM

Prisioneros

Son gente.
De eso no cabe duda.
Gente como nosotros,
que come, que duerme, que se entume, que suda,
que odia, que ama.
Gente como toda la gente,
y sin embargo diferente.

Como los hemos arrancado,
todos los botones
caminan agarrándose
los pantalones,
y llevan el cuerpo doblegado.
Pudiera ser el cansancio,
pero no es eso.
Pudiera ser la vergüenza…
El fin, que nos importa:
¡Son nuestros prisioneros!

Está prohibido darles cigarrillos.
Bien. Se los dará a escondidas.
Alguno de ellos debe haber leído
a Goethe; o será de la familia de Beethoven
o de Kant; o sabrá tocar el violoncello…

Prisoners

They are people.
Of this there is no doubt.
People like us,
who eat, who sleep, who get stiff, who sweat,
who hate, who love.
People like all people,
yet different.

How we have torn from them,
all their buttons,
so they walk grabbing hold
of their pants,
their bodies doubled over.
It could be they’re tired,
but that’s not it.
It could be the embarrassment…
Well, what’s important to us:
They’re our prisoners!

It’s forbidden to give them cigarettes.
OK. They’ll get them on the sly.
Some of them must have read
Goethe; or are related to Beethoven,
or to Kant; or know how to play
the cello…

Links Left Out of Thursday’s Entry: An Associated Press story by David Bauer on Tom Brokaw’s retirement announcement last Friday is HERE. A New York Times story on Marty Baron’s announcement of his retirement from the Washington Post, by Katie Robertson and Marc Tracy, is HERE (but accessible mostly to Times subscribers only); it’s headed “A News Giant Earns a ‘Breather.’” Robertson and Tracy followed up the next day with THIS story about “a generational changing of the guard … coming to the news industry.”

‘MLK/FBI’ Director Sam Pollard Interviewed: Robert Scheer talks, HERE, with the director of the popular 2020 documentary on the FBI’s surveillance and harassment of Martin Luther King Jr. HERE, reviewer Odie Henderson calls the film “superb, infuriating.” Other reviews online are from Rolling Stone and The Atlantic. Earlier this month this blog reprinted, HERE, Richard Krushnic’s 2014 account of King’s assassination.

Tom Brokaw and Marty Baron announced their retirements from the news business last week and this.

You know Brokaw, the most trusted TV news anchor since Walter Kronkite, especially since his blockbuster The Greatest Generation (1998) about how our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents won World War II. (Although Dan Rather and Peter Jennings were up there.)

You probably don’t know Baron, who is barely known for his Pulitzer-garnering leadership of news operations at the Miami Herald, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. But you may have seen “Spotlight” (2015) or any of the movies (among them “Citizenfour,” 2014, and “Snowden,” 2016). If so you were introduced to the Catholic Church’s long coverup of priestly pedofilia and NSA spying everywhere; and perhaps know that Baron played supporting roles in bringing these topics to light.

At any rate, a Brokaw-Baron partnership could similarly expose the corporate media’s virtual ban since 2002 on common-sense reporting and commenting on details of the crime of the century — the September 2001 attacks known as 9/11 — effectively burying the topic and making this the news industry’s worst generation.

However unlikely such an alliance of stars may be (Brokaw is 80 and has cancer, but Baron is only 66), it’s an example of what may be needed to further the work of “truthers” who have plugged away mostly, thanks to the ban, in obscurity.

— Mark Channing Miller

This nation  and the rest of the world are headed into new territory. While the launching pad for this blog in April 2018 was a walk across Massachusetts appealing to citizens and government alike to insist on the truth about the crime of the century — the attacks of September 2001 known as 9/11 — continued search for truth in other realms is necessary as well.

‘Our Story’ is the title of today’s meditation by Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation. Click HERE for it after reading to the end of this entry. Sunday’s and yesterday’s Rohr meditations are HERE and HERE. Rohr, a Franciscan friar, asks readers to ask themselves “What is real?” You’re not “religious,” so you can skip his thing? OK. You are free to go about navigating reality as anything you like.

‘Our Town’ is the title of a 1938 play by Thornton Wilder millions of present-day Americans have probably seen. In 1938 there was still plenty of agriculture being practiced at the local level. (Manufacturing too.) Much more food was local and organic than today. The interstate highway system had yet to be built (or perhaps even conceived — Eisenhower was still in the Army). Frequent travel in jetliners was unknown. Ditto credit cards. Let alone the Internet via which people are reading this. That’s the kind of world James Howard Kunstler, whom I first came across as a “peak oiler” 15 or so years ago, says we humans are returning to, like it or not. Kunstler, who strives to be hip and profane while commenting on current affairs and trends, has been a Trump apologist in the last year or three but seemingly has shifted, at least in part, to earlier enthusiasms. He titled his blog entry for yesterday “Flying Blind.” Chunks of it could have been taken whole from The Long Emergency (2005) and other works of his; they’re about the past and maybe the future.

‘Our Democracy’: The pull-out quote from today’s column in the New York Times by Bret Stephens is “A dissident is to a dictatorship what a bald fact is to an edifice of lies.” (The complete sentence finishes with “… the revelation of which causes the whole thing to crumble.”) Naturally, this jumped out because although Stephens’s column is on foreign policy, the sentence applies to what truthers focus on, namely that much of U.S. foreign and domestic policy since late 2001 is based on an edifice of lies, enabled by news media corporations’ failing to challenge unscientific and implausible elements of the 9/11 narratives. Given that this nation was founded on the idea that Americans should be able to get the truth from their news media, and given that Big Tech is starting to rein in alternative news and opinion sources, democracy in the United States is in question. This week newspapers are running a column by E.J. Dionne Jr. of the Washington Post headlined in one newspaper “Biden proclaims a New Democracy,” emphasizing “the dishonesty of the Trump years” as if that’s the only executive branch dishonesty that matters now that Biden is president. But the Bush and Obama administrations both upheld the Big Lies of 9/11, and if the new president’s “call to national unity” is founded on unifying around lies with cover from the news media and Big Tech, that’s a losing proposition for democracy. It’s an enticement into a dictatorship of falsehood. Call it “our democracy” if you like.

— Mark Channing Miller

The calm in the United States and the world is almost palpable. I’m not aware of a tweet from the new president. Our copy of The Epoch Times arrived today; I thought it was early, but it was dated Dec. 30. A page 1 headline, “Car Caravans Forming for ‘Historic’ Protest in Washington,” was about the demonstration to happen during the Jan. 6 Electoral College vote to confirm Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s victory at the polls last November. History will record that that vote was interrupted by rioters who stormed the Capitol, thanks in part to the seeming ineptitude of the Capitol Police and whoever guides them.

The honeymoon of President Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden (the first first lady who will continue in her previous job, teaching in a community college) and Vice President Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, continues, although the news media are allowing them to get some rest and do what they have to do in private while members of the press corps get some rest as well. (Some of the new president’s initiatives must have been prepared in the months after the November election, when critics were wondering why there was little visible activity on his part.)

Many headline writers preparing the front pages of last Wednesday’s morning papers had one written for them by the then-president-elect. “Don’t tell me things can’t change,” he said Tuesday in Wilmington, Del., before leaving for Washington. What it means time will tell. It sounded promising.

Leonard C. Goodman is not sanguine. In a column written for Economy for All and released on Inauguration Day (Wednesday), Goodman, a criminal defense lawyer, says big corporations run the show in Washington and will continue to—they simply want continued control in a more decorous Washington. Headlined “Trump’s Second Impeachmentment Shows the World the Power That Corporations Have Over American Politics,” the piece provided context missing in most of the news media. Click HERE for it.

And for those scratching their heads over the success of the “Stop the steal” protesters in breaching the protection for the impeachment vote, Goodman notes similarities between the security failures of 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the 2021 storming of the Capitol.

“An investigation into the failures of law enforcement before and on January 6 is critical,” he wrote. “Especially since [then]-President-elect Biden has already announced plans to pass a new Patriot Act to combat ‘domestic terrorism.’ In other words, just like after 9/11, our government wants to reward its own incompetence by expanding its powers. History teaches that agencies like the FBI will use their expanded powers to hunt down and neutralize the left. In the 1960s, the FBI used programs like COINTELPRO to harass civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., and to crush the Black Panthers, the Socialist Workers Party, and the American Indian Movement, all under the guise of weeding out ‘extremism.’”

Goodman included a link to his Dec. 18 column headed “Democrats and ruling by fear,” written more than two weeks before the riot at the Capitol. In it he casts a wary eye at the new president’s choice for secretary of state, Antony Blinken. I recommend reading the two columns chronologically, starting HERE. 

What will President Biden’s “domestic terrorism” act look like. Once the news media gets a deserved rest, readers and viewers and listeners may look into it. The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 was enacted when fear gripped the nation following the attacks blamed entirely on Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and the seeming incompetence of U.S. national security elements. The Republicans, one could conclude, were ruling by fear as they took advantage of the attacks and the anthrax attacks.

The feared violence in various state capitals last Wednesday at the hands of pro-Trump extremists didn’t happen, thanks in part to preparedness on the part of governors’ having National Guard troops at the ready. So some things can change.

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This morning’s edition of NPR’s “Weekend Edition” had an interview with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who called for a “thorough and fair investigation” of Senate colleagues (among others) for stridently alleging, without evidence, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Presumably those accusers, who include Sen. Ted Cruz, will advocate a bipartisan investigation to try to turn up irrefutable evidence that it was. 

And at some point Congress may demand a thorough and fair investigation of the 9/11 attacks (in 2018 the Senate unanimously passed a resolution asking declassification of considerable evidence being withheld by the FBI and the Department of Justice about the 9/11 attacks).   

— Mark Channing Miller

p.s. Many Sunday papers carried this Associated Press story by Jonathan Lemire, headed in one of them “Biden gets to work as problems loom.” (Added Sunday evening.)