How many people sneer with contempt at those who play lotteries as people who are “bad at math,” while insisting that the official account of 9/11 is true, even though the odds against it make the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot seem reasonable by comparison?

And while I do not question the idea that people in other parts of the world have valid grievances against the US, I question the blowback hypothesis because it seems that there are plenty of other people in the world with equally valid grievances who simply seek to find a place on the master’s porch instead of biting him on the ass like he deserves.

Likewise, while I applaud the criticisms of organized religion put forth by Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, the argument that Mohammed Attah and his alleged accomplices were religious fanatics is easily debunked by their lifestyles, devoted to drinking, gambling, strippers and other vices that would clearly be anathema to any genuine Jihadist.

The old standby argument that people in the US government or military would never cause the deaths of 3000 people in their own country seems naive upon even a casual review of the casual brutality imposed on unarmed, peaceful people by agents of the state. The convenient compartmentalization of government agencies, combined with the culture of secrecy, would make it very easy for a few dozen personnel to carry out an action like 9/11 and still sleep easy at night.

As for the ever-popular cop-out argument of “incompetence,” I would just ask why it isn’t the much more competent and capable people running the goddamn show.

Much of what is being sold as 9/11 Truth today is highly suspicious and poorly founded. Steve Jones who reached a generous settlement when he retired from BYU– and the originating and chief proponent of thermite/thermate demolitions theories is at the center of the largest faction of truthers who have been systematically enforcing their own orthodoxy of how the twin towers came down. I carefully followed the events that led to the split of James Fetzer’s 9/11 Scholars– largely over the issue of whether to allow alternative arguments. (Many of them, particularly no-planes and alternative weapon theories are looking increasingly plausible). The Steve Jones camp has tried to sell 9/11 Truth as a progressive cause which understandably can be very offensive or at least suspect to anyone who really cares about social justice– and truth. That surely includes Garcia who is no racist and who has long defended those who have suffered at the hands of the powerful.

I believe Garcia reacted in an inflamed manner against the truthers because he believed his moral convictions, and not his findings were being challenged. They were not, at least not from me.

I do believe that when he was enlisted to give his qualified assessment of the physics involved when buildings were destroyed on 9/11 he was out on a limb and in over his head–

But who who has investigated it has not been there?

As much as I deplore how important writers and thinkers have retreated from asking questions about 9/11– that doesn’t make me automatically think they are left-gatekeepers (though the thought comes up). Sometimes I think the chief difference between those that can agree that there are fundamental problems with “the system” can be explained this way:

Some believe we need to pull the curtain and expose the wizard that makes us wear the emerald spectacles… others think simply that change will happen when we take our spectacles off to see things as they really are.

It’s those that tell us to keep things as they are, or to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain that have me bothered.