© edwardcurtin.com
Art requires the use of imagination, but so does political and social analysis. But imagination is just a first step; it proves nothing.
Evidence is required. But imagination rules out nothing from the start. If one cannot imagine an hypothesis or a scene - no matter how seemingly implausible - to be possibly true, one will leave it unexamined or unwritten. As Graeme MacQueen, the author of the crucial book,
The 2001 Anthrax Deception, and much else,
put it:
Suppose our imaginations can embrace the possibility that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by elements in the U.S. government. In that case what do we do next? There is no mystery. Once the imagination stops filtering out a hypothesis and allows it into the realm of the possible, it can be put to the test. Evidence and reason must now do the job. Imagination cannot settle the question of truth or falsity any more than ideology, morality, or "common sense."
We know that in the case of the attacks of September 11, 2001 that this is precisely what did not occur. Various hypotheses were ignored and emotional patriotism held sway. The script had been written in advance and the good and bad characters chosen. "It was another Pearl Harbor, bin Laden did it from his cave in Afghanistan, it seemed like a movie, etc." And those anthrax attacks were claimed to be second stage terror attacks of these monsters, except that it turned out this wasn't so and that the anthrax came from a U.S. government lab. MacQueen proved in his book that this was so and that the anthrax attacks were directly linked to the those of September 11, later showing through meticulously logical and evidence-based research that both were inside jobs.
Even today, this conclusion is hard for most people to accept, for the conclusion they started with - what was planted in their brains - precluded imagining another hypothesis. To do so was considered too outrageous - an impossibility that offended the patriotic heart.
And of course the Bush administration's lies steamrolled any skepticism, the Patriot Act was quickly passed, and endless U.S. wars of aggression ensued, both preceding and following Colin Powell's Academy Award performance at the United Nations. But he too was an honorable man.
They too are honorable men.
Comment: Our leaders are such good role models... Cocaine elite: Traces of party drug found throughout British Houses of Parliament