by Zbignew Zingh

copyleft 2006

What do we really know about an alleged plot to blow up 10 airliners in flight over the Atlantic? Not much – only what government authorities tell us. Maybe the threat was real. Maybe not.

Do you trust the sources of these news stories? What is their track record for truth-telling? As we read the story, did we think, 'oh my God, here we go again', or 'oh my God, here they go again?'

Were you sucked into the vortex of fear generated by the story? Was your fear legitimate or a conditioned response calculated for maximum impact? Are you, am I, being manipulated, or just being informed?

Was it time to re-inoculate airline passengers with fear, that horrible desperate fear of strangers, of the unknown; fear of the peculiar-looking passenger sitting next to you bearing, what, water bottles of some strange liquid? Was this another peculiarly manufactured “plot” to blow up the Sears tower in Chicago? The sinister conspiracy was allegedly unraveled with the invaluable assistance of the Pakistani intelligence service? Pardon me, but them again?

Was the story overblown, whipped into a hysterical frenzy? Or was the story a hoax designed, once more, to agitate and manipulate us? Who knows? The story broke just as the Iraq War was again gaining traction as an election issue, just as the Amer-Isaeli invasion of Lebanon was turning world public opinion against the aggressors, just when Bush's favorite Democrat, Joe Lieberman, had been tossed out on his war-mongering ear, just when the Administration had offered a hand to get him re-elected as an “independent” Republican, just as the Democratic Leadership Council had bemoaned the “leftward” slide of the Party back into “Mc Govern” territory. Was this “plot” uncovered just in time to side-track everyone again, to distract us from the horrors committed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, to distract us from our economic and energy woes, to avert our eyes from climatic changes, to manipulate our politics and our elections, to luff our sails once again, for the umpteenth time and time again. Are they all crazy... or are we?

I will never know the truth and neither will you. We will live and we will die in uncertainty.

We are now in a surreal age where you cannot be sure of anything your hear or read about, except that which happens right in front of your own face. Even then, in the face of social pressure, you, standing all alone, will also start to doubt your own knowledge. Two plus two equals five. How to you know otherwise, Winston Smith, if everyone else says it's so?

Some anthropologists suggest that what distinguishes homo sapiens sapiens from the “lower animals” is the human animal's ability to deceive. Hunting, fishing, and even finding a mate, are, to a greater or lesser degree, all exercises in deception. For certain, deception is the signature of our times. This is not the Nuclear Age or the Industrial Age or the Age of Petroleum. This is the Age of Deceit.

Indeed, deception is the currency of all modern civilization. From religion to money, from industry to nationalism, from capitalism to diplomacy to war, from Enron to Exxon, from Congress to Wall Street, the name of the game is getting the most people to believe wholly and unquestionably in the deception perpetrated by those who know better. If we are to be harangued into becoming a “faith-based” community, it is because the population must be trained to become “believers”. This is because we live in times when no rational person can believe in anything. They who will blindly accept religion as a matter of faith, those who will reject evolution and imagine that they, the hairy, war-mongering apes, were made in the image of an almighty and righteous deity (what sacrilege, conceit and temerity!), are also likely, as a matter of faith, to blindly believe in authority figures such as presidents and politicians and generals and business executives. Like eternal children dependent on their benevolent parents for solace, nourishment and protection, those who can be made accustomed to believe in fairies, ghosts and angels will also believe in witches, monsters and Terrorists.

These are hard times to be a skeptic. These are hard times to be a disbeliever. In Europe, during the Dark Ages, for fear of being burned to death for heresy, the rationalist would not dare to doubt out loud that Earth was the center of the Universe and Heaven ten feet above his head. Galileo knew better, but he was bullied into recanting the truth by authorities who also knew better. It was for the 'good of the people' that the Church forced Galileo to confess the 'errors' of his science. It is for 'the good' of a stable society that a people learn to believe in the few who would deceive the many.

Lebanon. Iraq. Cuba. Vietnam. Gaza. Venezuela. Bosnia. Iran. Afghanistan. Haiti. Puerto Rico. China. 911.

I do not know what to believe but, until proved otherwise, I chose to disbelieve what I am told. I challenge the orthodoxy. I declare myself unwilling to accept anything on faith alone. I declare myself a rationalist. I declare myself unfaithful. I declare myself free from fear and hysteria.

Provide me with your proofs; convince me with your evidence! The Earth is not flat. Two plus two equals four. I do not believe in fairy tales. I believe in Evolution if only in the hope that there is time sufficient for Nature to evolve some better dominant specie. I hear no angels twanging lyres above my head; I hear only liars ranting on the television.

Prepare your stakes and fires; I declare myself skeptical and free.