We have learned to "negatively hallucinate," that is, to not see the obvious, when it contradicts our beliefs. We have been raised and bred in institutions and families where the very persons preparing and conditioning us for the "real world" have hidden their own skeletons in our closets. Without our realizing it, their shames, secrets, and fears become our inheritances. While it is all right to hate Bush and company for being liars and idiots, we stop short of believing they could be evil and powerful enough to have actually organized and pulled off the 9/11 attacks.
We were hypnotized on 9/11. Some of the strategies used to bring about a hypnotic state include shock, repetition of phrases and images, and exploiting people's sense of vulnerability so that they relinquish their previously held beliefs and endorse something formerly untenable to them. The Bush administration has employed what hypnotists refer to as a "yes set" in order to bring us under its spell: The towers were hit. Yes. People died. Yes. The world is unsafe. Yes. We know who did it. Yes. We must react now. Yes. If you are not with us you are against us. Huh? The towers were hit. People died. Yes. And so on until all the answers are the desired "yes."
After the shock and the deepening of our fear reactions through repetitive imagery and continuous intimidation and lies, we found ourselves in a state of disorganization and simulated ego disintegration. Consequently, we have been thinking with our reptilian brains rather than our frontal lobes, which means that we haven't been THINKING at all. (The reptilian brain stem is only capable of fight or flight responses, not reasoned ones).
Opening our minds to the revelations described on websites like 911research.com forces us to confront our deepest, survival-based beliefs: it is almost impossible for us to accept that something so extreme could happen here.
Can you imagine that when Hitler was coming into power, the general public believed the rumors? Who would have taken seriously such nightmarish images as concentration camps replete with huge ovens? Who ever had heard of such a thing? The first people who were on to it were, no doubt, dubbed "conspiracy nuts" by the public (They were, interestingly, referred to by the Third Reich as "terrorists.").
In time, the truth comes out. The world had to face the ugliest truth, and when it did, it said, "Never again." But how closely now are we watching over our freedom? Are we unknowingly protecting ourselves from highly upsetting truths in order to protect our unconscious, infantile need to believe that this is a democracy and a country devoted to our well-being?
Our tendencies toward denial are also enhanced by the messages from the commercial world that constantly bombard us: "Don't get excited." "Take a pill." "Soft, easy, quick." We have been raised as a country of addicts brainwashed into finding a way out of feeling pain. The longer we delude ourselves and try to avoid our pain, the greater is the infection we that we create within our collective psyche.
The movie The Truman Show features a character who has been set up all his life to believe in a fake reality in which he was being tricked and used. He finally rejects this reality, choosing to enter the unknown and face possible death over living a lie. Why have we been afraid to imagine the worst when there is ample reason for suspicion? Are we afraid of the anxiety such a disruption could evoke in our minds? This is what the protagonist of The Truman Show had to face. Like him, we need to become willing to give up our sense of false security in order to stop living a huge lie. Otherwise, we will remain, like children of alcoholics, afraid of our feelings of powerlessness.
Of course it is difficult to confront our fears and insecurities. But the good news is that facing reality is the way to become empowered. Do we fear that if we discovered the worst, we might explode with anger? Or implode with despair? Who ever imagined that we'd have to worry about rigged elections? Heck, that's one of the criteria for fascism, and we hold the true ideals of democracy close to us. The psychological weakness in our collective consciousness that has allowed George Bush to abuse his power needs to be deeply examined, in order for these dynamics to change.
