American Miasma
Looking back on what was created and revealed in the Post 9/11 World.
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between
[Sometimes, there are historical moments in an individual’s life where a paradigm shift in their world outlook occurs. Some examples would be the JFK assassination, the end of the Cold War, or maybe the measures taken during Covid-19.
The September 11th 2001 attack was a catalyst that started an altered mindset on how things worked in the world, especially regarding my ideas of what perspectives and narratives meant in the 21st century.
Note: This is not a grand theory of everything, nor a thesis on the entire cause of America’s Miasma. Put simply, an essay of recollection and thoughts.
Enjoy. -Arthur]
Guam International Airport — Fall 2002
A feeling of excitement and nervousness went through me as I arrived to the airport that morning. I was going back to America. Land of the free. I checked in at the ticket counter and quickly fell into the long line in front of the newly installed security checkpoint. The last airline flight I went on had been in the summer of 2000. A uniformed officer walked up to where I was standing.
“Please step out of line, sir.”
I complied with the airport security officer instructions and was led to a white square drawn in tape on the carpet. A graphic outline of two feet looked as if one should stand at attention. I set down my backpack and went to the center of the square. A few people in the crowd looked on at the scene unfolding in front of them.
“Raise your arms, please.”
The officer completed his inspection of my person with a metal detecting wand and gave me a smile.
“So, are you changing duty stations, or just going on leave?” he asked.
I told him I was heading to my next command, then asked why the extra security check. I wasn’t rude, just merely curious.
“Oh, it’s a random check. We do that from time to time. Just part of enhanced security protocols.”
Oh.
I went back in line to continue the process of getting to my gate for the flight home. I had spent nearly three years away from America, and this was the first encounter with the new Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration. (TSA)
While boarding the plane, a thought kept gnawing at me about this TSA intrusion. If I, an active-duty serviceman was “randomly” picked for an extra security check, just how effective were all these measures urgently rushed into existence post 9/11? Was singling out the tallest American amongst the (mostly) foreign passenger group a good sign of “enhanced security protocols?”1
Bluntly stated, a U.S. military man would be the last problem on a freedom bird flight to America. The TSA agent wasn’t going to be on the plane, nor was there a likelihood of a US Marshall tagging along incognito. Barely a year after 9/11, my attitude was to kill any SOB that happened to stand up on my flight and yell “Aloha Snackbar.”2 The illusion of airport security theater quickly reached into multiple facets of life as we knew it.
Things happened fast
Think of the PATRIOT ACT that was passed mere weeks after the carnage in NYC. A normally gridlocked Congress suddenly able to pass a ready-made 300+ page piece of legislation that granted unheralded surveillance powers for law enforcement agencies. Many legislators admitted not even reading the entire bill before voting to pass it.
An important reminder is that all the 9/11 hijackers were in the United States legally, with several on foreign student visas. While retribution against those who aided the planners of the 9/11 attack was fully justified, nary a word was spent talking about the immigration policy failures leading to them being allowed into America. In fact, politicians across the aisle bent over backwards expressing their platitudes on how welcoming the country is (and forever must be) to unfettered immigration.3
“Anything for Safety” became the mantra after 9/11, with many Americans happily accepting these new conditions. Long forgotten was the promise that these powers were temporary and would be rescinded after a short time. They even put a Sunset Clause in the PATRIOT Act – one faithfully disregarded and renewed for years like clockwork during the NDAA vote until March 2020. While this was held up as a victory of sorts for civil liberties, many of the provisions and authorizations for surveillance remain in effect through laws passed in the years after 9/11.
The American Political Media Machine
With modern media operating at the frenetic speed as if on Colombian Viagra, one can be excused for believing this has always been the case. The 24/7 news cycle and minute-by-minute news alarms are a relatively new phenomenon that started less than three decades ago. By the mid-2000s, the constant blaring announcements of breaking news reports, on Fox News especially, had become a trope. A perpetual state of emergency in the media landscape that continues to this day.
Before getting too far into this media observation let it be understood that comparing old media a la Walter Cronkite-style verses what is seen now is not an ode or lament to what once was. The same mainstream media was more than happy to openly lie and carry water for the political aims in the 1960s just as it is in 2025. Yet the scale and reach into everyday life that media now has is more than any media giant could have dreamed up just a few decades ago. The Internet age coupled with the 24/7 news cycle practically guaranteed this outcome. Gone is a time where a morning paper and viewing the evening news was deemed sufficient to keep up with events.
I point this out to highlight a phenomenon I became aware of once back in the United States. Being overseas for almost half a decade beginning in the late 1990s did not prepare me for the American media bubble that quickly enveloped around the events of 9/11. The political media machine telling Americans that the terrorists could be anywhere and everywhere, plotting the next attack behind a Dippin Dots cart at the mall, or scouring the heartland in search of the next target kept most on edge.4
As the buildup to the Iraq war intensified, curt slogans of Saddam Hussein as the next “Arab Hitler”5 being on the verge of conquering the greater Middle East and how we needed to “Fight them over there instead of here” quickly rang hollow to me. Even the vaunted claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), a phrase coined by White House advisors in some brainstorming session, quickly fell apart under serious scrutiny. A survey that came out circa 2003 showed that almost half of Americans believed Iraq was involved in the plotting and execution of 9/11. This tenuous 9/11-Iraq connection was not dissuaded by the Bush administration or Neoconservative planners for the War on Terror.
As these WMD narratives fell apart, a pivot to the idea that nation-building was the goal all along began. The thought that an Arab-style Thomas Jefferson was hiding two caves over from Osama Bin Laden, simply waiting for the American military to bring sacred Democracy at the barrel of a gun was laughable. Yet this was presented to the American public as a feasible endeavor.6
“Media and Politicians lie. That isn’t a revelation.”
Reading this so far, I imagine many thinking, “Media and Politicians lie. That isn’t a revelation.” In today’s world of proven fake news and media sycophant collusion displayed daily, no it isn’t. Many now realize how everything is narrative-driven with a slant towards whatever goal or agenda is at hand.7
But this was the early 2000s in a time where trust in media still held a majority amongst the public. For the most part, people believed that mainstream media’s #1 job was to reliably keep the public informed.
Free press and all that jazz.
Coincidentally around this time, author Michael Crichton developed an interesting cognitive bias concept he called the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. He illustrated how this bias worked in a 2002 speech at the International Leadership Forum:
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.”
We have all done this before when reading the news or watching stories on places we have been. Now imagine around this time you begin to recognize this in almost everything you read or see in relation to 9/11 and the actions that followed it as having more logic holes than Swiss cheese.
This opened a perspective window that went beyond media consumption. Socioeconomics, docutainment, and “The History Channel” version of world events all fell under suspicion from that point on. I soon developed a “What are they selling?” mindset when presented a narrative.8
Over two decades later since the events of 9/11, it is more important than ever for people to weigh the media information they are bombarded with daily.
There’s a reason they call it programming, whether the source is mainstream media, social media, or a government office. Don’t be an NPC and think for yourselves.
Last I checked, six-foot tall Texans did not fall into the demographic range of potential radical Islamic terrorists that the newly stood up Department of Homeland Security should be on the lookout for.
The flight’s destination was Los Angeles International Airport. During this time, L.A. was still considered a heightened target for the next (possible) retaliatory terror attack, especially with rumblings of future conflicts and buildup for the Iraq war that commenced a few months later. Hence, my slight apprehension at the time. Wide awake for a 14 hour flight. Fun.
Of all the missteps taken in the wake of 9/11, not repealing the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 was an injustice.
Explaining to my 80+ year old aunt that no, Al Qaeda will not be targeting her local Safeway in the rural South was an example of just how much fear was instilled in the public.
(New) Godwin’s Law of geopolitics. At this point it is easier to name global heads of state who have not been compared to the German leader post-WWII.
How the concept of Liberal Democracy was supposed to work for countries drawn up in the sand by the British Empire was not really articulated well. A cursory glance of the history of sectarian tribes vying for power easily points this out.
Red-Pilled is the fancy term for not believing all the BS media and gov’t offers.
Does this mean that everything from media/academia/gov’t is a lie? Of course not. That wouldn’t be an effective way to disseminate narratives. Mostly, it is what details are left out, or the framing of a story that is used as a tactic.
Substitute Virus for Terrorist...oh wait that was 2020 thru ???
That’s great article, Arthur.. a blast from the past when it all began in force. It makes me think that Iraq war was an orchestrated psyop to destroy civil liberties ..