'Most people prefer to believe that their leaders are just and fair, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which he lives is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.'' - Michael Rivero
It all started for me in 1959 when I was born, I mean the way I've been lied to through mainstream media. One of my earliest memories was sitting in front of the TV with my family after JFK was assassinated. My mother and grandmother weeping uncontrollably, my father and grandfather - avowing that this was a "good man" and it's "always the best who get taken so young". I had no idea what was going on, being just four and a half years old - but that moment solidified like crystal in my mind - my first big "frozen moment". (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
A few short years later we were all sitting there again in front of the TV at 3am watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, uttering those prophetic words. I'll never forget the neighbour beside us, this old Italian guy who was saying that the entire lunar mission had to be a hoax, we were a bunch of suckers for believing it, it couldn't be true. Everybody I knew thought he was nuts, myself included. I was busy having my head filled with such grand thoughts about the nobility and goodness of mankind, and like my family and almost all my neighbours, I was once again willing to believe in my heart that whatever these icons of the public trust on TV told us was the absolute truth - after all, these were the same folks who gave us the news every night, every single evening around the dinner hour, so we could find out what's happening in the world, what to think about, how to judge those people over there, over here, anywhere. I'll never forget how proud I was watching man walk on the moon, my 10 year old heart bursting out of my chest, feeling so lucky to be alive at that time and watching it on TV. This was a huge "frozen moment".
There are other mental snapshots which of course remain quite vivid in my mind. Robert Kennedy & Martin Luther King assassinations, the war in Vietnam that spanned my entire childhood, the Nixon Watergate hearings, Iran Contra. It could not enter our mind that anything we saw on television could be any less than the gospel truth, because we live in the Western hemisphere, the best, most noble hemisphere on this planet. Just ask Walter Cronkite, or Dan Rather, or Ronald McDonald, or Barney the Friggin' Dinosaur - any talking head that props up in a medium shot while occupying the standard 4 by 3 aspect ratio, mind-inhibiting confines of this ribald human invention. They must be telling the truth - gotta be real, after all, "I saw it on TV".
I'm sitting in my office when a news bulletin flashes on my computer screen and I'm alerted to the 9/11 attack in NYC. As if by some secret homing mechanism, my workmates also wander outside of their respective cells and converge in the communal coffee area - and so it starts, we immediately begin parroting the official myth fed to us by the news media about this event. Talk is about Osama and the crazed 19 Muslim hijackers. Ooh boy, those rag-heads are goona get theirs, those bastards are sure to pay - I hope Uncle Sam really nukes them back to the stone age for what they've done, and on and on we chattered for days and weeks, all the while being spun and manipulated as always. The biggest "frozen moment" of my life so far.
I'll never forget that day and the horror of watching those planes hit the towers, or the people falling to their tragic deaths, and like the other "shock and awe" moments, I can literally close my eyes and transport myself to that situation, just like I was there at that very moment. And when I remember, the images and ideas as portrayed to me by my lifelong companion the television are there in my mind, with the pictures, movies, sounds - Nay, it isn't really there with me - it IS me. I'm nothing more, at those times in my life, than a biological download mechanism that will barf up all the crud it's been fed by the societal teat from which I'd been trained to suckle on for all my ideas and opinions since birth.
And so another 5 years will elapse, almost every single day - let's catch some news and see what's happening, let's tune in before bed and follow that story, let's wrap our life around this version of reality, which is hardly any reality at all. But I still didn't know that, not until 5 full years after 9/11.
"Doubt is the vestibule which we all must pass through before we can enter the temple of truth" - osho
Awakening
Thank you 9/11.
Once I saw the truth about this event my life changed forever, and ultimately for the better. It didn't happen all at once, nor was it easy or very pleasant at all, this process demands so much of you, and unless you are the kind of person capable of a paradigm shift you won't get there. Doesn't matter how smart, how much money, how high you can jump - not everyone is able to look objectively at their social conditioning, step outside of themselves and honestly analyze their programming, fiddle with the knobs and make an adjustment. I remember this "moment" as the biggest, most life changing of all - that exact instant when I "got it", and it wasn't just the getting of 9/11 that was realized at that pivotal moment. It was so much more, for I knew in that nanosecond that I had apprehended a truth - I could now define a mechanism of which media was only but an important part. This gigantic contrivance that could so easily promulgate these lies was now revealed to me, and deserved my faith in their impartiality and honesty for the last time. I had depended on them for more than 40 years of my life, and it turns out they are quite willing to not only lie to everyone, but even more important - I realized that there are so many things they are willing to not tell us at all.
"We won't get fooled again" - the Who
That moment of illumination occurred while I was listening to a lecture by Dr. David Ray Griffin, he was explaining why the official account of 9/11 could not be true - the logic irrefutable, the proofs incontrovertible, the evidence overwhelming, but what struck me most was the grace and dignity of this man, able to manifest such a positive aspect in the revealing of truth, all the while dealing face to face with such an ugly, disgusting reality. Probably the last "frozen moment" I will ever experience.
"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself." Galileo Galilei
And so I sat atop this long slope looking straight back down at my life which ascended upward like one side of a pyramid, the slant provided to me by my once trusted patriarchal friend the media, it was time to say goodbye. My existence was different from that moment on, and so was my relationship with the world, like when you find out that your best friend has been sleeping with your girlfriend for the last 2 years and everybody's been lying about it to your face. I vowed to myself at that very moment that I would refuse to accept any more lies in my life, and I would take responsibility for my own opinions. I made a promise to no longer listen to BS without calling to account those responsible for the lies and hypocrisy. At the very least we should stand for something worthwhile in our lives, like truth.
It was too convenient to settle on the official explanations for 9-11 at the time, and I forgive myself, and you too if you still believe them. It would simply be unreasonable for me to be at odds with anyone just because they occupied a temporal reality where I once stood.
I have yet to meet an ignorant man whose roots are not embedded in my soul. - Kahlil Gibran
If somebody came to me a year before I was open to the truth, I would have probably got angry and turned them aside. The best we can hope for is to present people with anomalies regarding the official narrative, and let each person face the myriad incongruities and come to their own conclusions. You see, some people figured it out right away, but finding out the truth is not any indication of how intelligent you are - that judgement comes later. It took me 5 years, not because I couldn't understand it, but rather because I was unaware of it, and didn't even consider that what I was told was false.
