Jesus often said, “Fear not,” a contradiction to today’s invitation to “Be afraid, be very afraid.” The distinction between the two is a form of spirituality. Those who have the courage to affirm a faithful vision of a future that can heal our past are heroes; those who continually play on the fear of others, or on the fear of fear, take us into the dark side, into the underbelly of shadows and secrets and dirty deeds.
For Christians this is the season of Lent, a spiritual time when folks are encouraged to do a relentless moral inventory of their lives, to go down into the basement, to clean out the cobwebs, to open the windows, to bring forth the light. This Lenten season, a group of us invite you to venture down into the basement of America’s deep politics. We want to look more deeply at the events of 9/11. We want to re-examine the beginnings of our now 14-year slide into permanent war, economic pillage and the spirituality of fear embodied by the Bush-Obama fusion of plutocratic militarism. Or, in Dick Cheney’s words, we want to examine the implications of “working the dark side.”
When it comes to 9/11, there are two tales to tell. My take on the government’s version is that 19 ill-trained perpetrators, somehow vaguely connected with Al Qaeda, managed to outwit our domestic and international military, security and intelligence operations, on just the right day when there were multiple war-game scenarios being played out, thus causing chaos. These 19 souls magically performed several miracles, including the free-fall demolition of three buildings with two planes, the disintegration of all passengers in yet another plane crash and the destruction of parts of one of the world’s most protected buildings — again, luckily, on the side of the building that contained the fewest employees. The official story that is basically accepted by most of our traumatized citizenry relies on faith utterly disconnected from fact.
The other theory is that the events of 9/11 were an inside job. That is, what came to pass was well known and orchestrated by elites that function as a shadow government that transcends the window dressing of politics and policy. The events were an attempt to radically transform America into a terrorist state that rules the world, otherwise known as empire. For three Mondays in March, we’ll delve deep into Cheney’s dark side and examine theories through a series of videos. And then we’ll break into facilitated groups to spiritually examine the role of fear in the politics of our time.
The goal is to expose our trauma to truth, to illumine the dark side with light. Join us.
“Working the Dark Side: The Deep Politics of 9/11” at the Common Good Conversation Café, 1415 43rd St. NE, 7 p.m., March 2, 9 and 16.