Tracy Riddle Wrote:Has anyone else been reading this excellent series by Frances Shure? It's currently up to Part 18.

http://www1.ae911truth.org/faqs/821-why-do-good-people-become-silentor-worseabout-911-.html

Albert Doyle Wrote:There are people who could seriously blow open the lie.


There's no doubt 9-11 was orchestrated by the same evil government powers that killed the Kennedy's. The people who did it depend on the ignorant/corrupted faith of true American believers as their most important tool. America is supposed to be a shining example but the truth is it is a Machiavellian nightmare and West World artificial set.

The reason they did 9-11 was because the Reagan years succeeded in CIA's plan to pre-emptively establish an invulnerability to American politics where they were unquestionable and infallible in advance. This was achieved through corporate fascism and the ostracization of free thinking individuals under the guise of recovering from the 60's. They were basically cowards, who, because they lost the Viet Nam War, decided to attack the American public domestically.

Good loyal Germans protecting their great nation from the assaults of liberals, terrorists, and now - conspiracy theorists...

Dawn Meredith Wrote:

Tracy Riddle Wrote:Has anyone else been reading this excellent series by Frances Shure? It's currently up to Part 18.

http://www1.ae911truth.org/faqs/821-why-do-good-people-become-silentor-worseabout-911-.html

Good question. Yesterday an old friend called me. He is a Phd and considers himself very politically astute. But when the subject of 9-11 came up - in reference to the wars that I said were for a lie- he became extremely defensive. He has done ZERO research on the truth about 9-11 yet insists that the cover story IS the truth. When I tried to explore the subject further, asking if he's ever watched even one 9-11 truth video he became hostile and said he has better things to do. Finally that he just "does not care". He's also from NY.
Very frustrating conv.

In addressing the question in the title of this essay, the May 2015 segment, The False Self and Excessive Identification with the U.S.A., drew from developmental psychology, explaining that all of us reside somewhere on a continuum from a fully authentic self to a completely false self. If a person has a prominent false self, and if this self-image includes a strong identification with America as a country of unequivocal goodness, then the evidence presented by 9/11 skeptics demonstrating that the official story of 9/11 cannot be true will seriously challenge that self-image. For this reason, these people may never be able to accept new information about 9/11, no matter how convincing the evidence.Here, in the June 2015 installment, we continue Ms. Shure's analysis with Part 18: American Exceptionalism and Nationalist Faith.

"I wouldn't want to live in a country where such a thing could be true!" exclaimed an acquaintance upon hearing some facts about 9/11 facts that cause skeptics like me to dispute the official account of that infamous day.She was not only horrified that I and a growing number of people around the world are convinced that 9/11 may have been an "inside job," but she also found itinconceivable that any leaders ofAmerica could have participated in such an atrocity.After reading an article1 in a local newspaper addressing my reasons for not being silent about 9/11, a reader sent me a lengthy letter in which he wrote:I am 65 and grew up in Washington, D.C., and spent 7 years on active duty in the Air Force. Even though I knew about all the lies we were told about Vietnam (I was stationed there for a year), Watergate, COINTELPRO, the CIA's operations in the U.S., etc., I could not bring myself to believe that anyone in the United States government could be callous or crazy enough to do something like this. I felt this way for years, but something was always nagging at the back of my mind, especially as I read more of what these people were saying.

Then I read that David Ray Griffin was coming to speak here [at the University of Colorado, Boulder] in October 2007. I knew that he was one of the leading researchers and determined that I would definitely hear him. His presentation2 convinced me hands down….I am reminded of the journalist I met at a street action who said, "I am aware that our government does bad things, but not this! Not those towers! They would not be that evil." (See Part 1: Preface and Introduction.)One of the core beliefs that American culture inculcates in us is that our history, values, and political system are uniquely good. Because of this perceived exceptional character of our nation, citizens, by and large, believe the United States of America is entitled and destined to play a positive role on the world stage. Therefore, whatever the U.S. does on the world stage is, in the final analysis, good for humankind. For example, this belief gave support to the concept of Manifest Destiny, an American attitude of the 19th century that the United States had a nearly divine mission to expand across the continent and, in later years, into the rest of the world.3"American Exceptionalism" is the term used to describe this belief another "sacred myth" of our culture.4According to theologian and scholar David Ray Griffin, most citizens of the U.S. believe that America is "a fundamentally good nation . . . never deliberately doing anything terribly evil." If citizens also deem it a sacrilege to question the belief of American exceptionalism, then their belief has taken on a greater level of conviction and can rightly be called "nationalist faith."5 "From the point of view of this faith, the claim that 9/11 was an inside job simply cannot be true," explains Griffin.6To further clarify this blinding faith, Dr. Griffin quotes preeminent theologian John B. Cobb, Jr.:The response of most Americans [upon hearing the recitation of facts that indicate 9/11 was an inside job] shows how powerful is the hold upon them of their nationalistic "faith." They do not want to hear that members of their government may have deceived them on a matter of such importance. They do not want to examine the evidence. They "know" in advance that the questioner is out of line. They "know" this because the alternative does not fit with their "faith."7But, Griffin asks, most Americans "know that the Bush-Cheney administration lied us into the war in Iraq," so why is it such a leap to consider that 9/11 was a false flag operation?

Dr. Cobb offers this insight:The answer may be that deception about matters of who has what weapons can be tolerated. We can understand that the real motives for fighting a war are often different from the announced reason. But to believe that high officials in an American administration of whatever party or affiliation would organize a massive attack killing thousands of American citizens would deeply wound the American sense of the basic goodness of the nation, a conviction which belongs to the depths of our national faith.8

[B]EMPIRE, EXCEPTIONALISM, AND BLINDNESS[/B]

It is patently true that many other societies, past and present, have subscribed to their own brand of exceptionalism, as well as their own brand of nationalist faith. If these societies are imperialist nations, the citizens within them have, for the most part, become blind to the suffering of those who have been subjected to their nation's arrogant ambitions. Unfortunately, the United States has fallen in line with this unenlightened historical course of empire, exceptionalism, and blindness.Since critical thinking skills are largely absent in American homes, churches, social clubs, and educational system from elementary school through college the vast majority of Americans have given little thought to the historical precedent for their country's hegemonic behavior. Much less have they been taught to question the creed of American exceptionalism.Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University, lists five beliefs that most of us have internalized:

• There is something exceptional about American exceptionalism.
  
• The United States behaves better than other nations do.
  
• America's success is due to its special genius.
  
• The United States is responsible for most of the good in the world.
  
• God is on our side.12