[As told on The New American Dream Radio Show Sept. 15, 2011]

Well, on Sunday Sept. 11th I was a speaker at the capitol in Saint Paul. 

There was the outside official version on the capital steps and there was the alternative version inside in the rotunda. It was very cool. I was so surprised and pleased to be invited. 

I worked an awake overnight at the group home the night before. Ruth drove and I slept, a little, on the drive down from Duluth.

Ruth and I were waiting in the seats and as usual, I had to find the bathroom. 

I go down the hall and there are all these fine dressed men and women getting lined up to go outside. I turn and go into the old Catholic elementary school style lavatory and there is Al Franken doing his business. The Senator from Saturday Night Live.

He kind of turns to the side and smiles and continues talking to the big dude in the suit at the urinal next to him. I went into a stall and said to myself – that is effing Al Franken. He is shorter than me and grey. Grey hair, grey face. The two men continued their dialogue and Franken was at the sink washing his hands as I left.

I told Ruth what happened. She texted our daughter to tell her and Emily texted back – who is Al Franken? Well, okay, she's only a junior. Maybe they haven't gotten to Stuart Smalley yet at the University of Minnesota.

And so the big shots in the suits went outside to the real ceremony – leaving those who think this whole thing – this whole country is living a lie. 

And I wondered maybe I should have said something to Franken – like a clenched fist raise and  "9/11 Truth!" – but for one thing he had turned when I came in like he was just looking to make sure he was recognized and also the big guy was probably there – maybe Senators cannot pee alone – maybe that’s part of the Patriot Act? I’ve never read it. Maybe the big guy was there to make sure nobody tells Franken about what really happened on 9/11. But I don't like to talk in the restroom. You can hardly get me to talk in a buffet line or when I'm waiting to pay for gas, either, so that's not such a stretch.

I did kind of wonder, though, what it would be like to be a Senator. Wouldn’t that be a cool life? So special, so privileged. To tell you the truth, that was part of the appeal I felt back in the seminary at the College of St. Thomas back in 1979 – being special, privelaged. It’s a real draw. 

Well, to be a U.S. Senator for one thing you can’t think about what really goes on, priests either, and you probably have a way better idea of what is really going on than the rest of us, but you can’t think about it. You can’t pee alone where any dufus can just walk in and tell you about 9/11. And you fly back and forth from St. Paul to D.C. and everywhere else in between, just feeling cool, special, not knowing what's going on. It must be a good feeling.

It would be so nice and you would not really want to do anything to screw that up.

And that’s kind of what’s wrong with everything – nobody wants to screw up their good deal, if they’ve got one. 

And anyone who's lived for a while absolutely knows how quickly that all ends, like if some guy walks in while you are doing your business and says something that turns your whole world upside down before some big guy can dive over to the next urinal and put his wet hands over your ears.

And that’s our country, our democracy – a bigshot Senator getting ready to go outside to a big-time outdoor ceremony and he’s not thinking about who did the anthrax attacks – and, really, isn’t it at least as important as Paul Revere’s ride? A cracked bell. Not the old guy shuffling through the old Catholic elementary style restroom. The anthrax attacks.

Well, I know Al Franken is listening to this show because he is now home alone and he doesn’t have his baggy little suit on and the big guy is home with his family barbecuing, playing Jarts and keeping any effing little neighbor kids from telling his kids about 9/11, and Al Franken is sitting in some apartment in Washington D.C. with black and white photos of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson on the walls, and he’s setting his Minnesota Grain Belt beer can down on a U.S. Constitution coaster, and he’s got American flag sweat pants and socks on and he’s sticking his hand down his sweat pants trying to find his balls and loosen them from his thighs, wiggling his toes just trying to get the blood back into them after all those hours inside those tight black shoes.

And Al, this is the talk, or part of the talk that I gave that afternoon in the Rotunda while you were outside in the sun telling lies and listening to lies. 

... We have a dream ...

... of bringing the United States politicians, journalists and generals who have brought about this long ten-year war and debacle to trial — and put on TV just like O.J. — every afternoon — so every American can watch  ... just like the McCarthy Hearings and the JFK funeral procession ...

What we need is a New American Dream.

Not of new homes and toasters and microwaves, but of becoming the type of country we always thought we were.

And part of that is becoming the quality of people who are capable of telling the truth.

Right now we live on lies. We subsist on lies, but it's not really living.

The New American Dream means never having to say some question or idea is not valid. We are allowed to ask any questions that we have ... there are no wrong questions. There is no hidden black military budget, there are no UFO files Americans cannot see, no JFK documents that will not be opened during our lifetimes, no destroyed RFK murder photos by the L.A. police, no evidence from Ground Zero taken away before we can even look at it — we are not the Soviet Union of the 1960s — this is supposed to be America. That is our dream, to become America, The New America, the real hope of the world.

I believe that 911 was an inside job.

Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden.

They all know that and yet they refuse to acknowledge what they know. They kill and continue to kill. They allow others to die and continue to send others to their deaths for a lie.

What we need in America is a Truth Commission like they had in South Africa to heal their broken country.

Our country is surely broken as well.

We need a Truth Commission. We need to put certain people on the stand and we need to be allowed to ask questions.

We are not even allowed to ask questions.

Those who are supposed to ask questions for us refuse to do so. Can you honestly say that Brian Williams or Matt Lauer or Katie Couric or Amy Goodman or Jon Stewart or The New York Times or the Minneapolis Star-Tribune asks the questions that need to be asked? 

... The United States of America is not based in the Constitution or the teachings of Jesus as we proclaim that it is.

It is based on the collaboration of the U.S. Army, FBI, CIA and Memphis police to murder Martin Luther King. It is also based on the shooting of Robert Kennedy from behind his ear, rather than from the front where Sirhan Sirhan was standing.

We do not make cars anymore in America but we do psy-ops like the Greeks and Romans did philosophy, astronomy and speeches and literature.

These Great Misdeeds are where we honed our master craft, where those who rule founded this country, where our gears, our tool and die were cast.

Forget about the Liberty Bell. Forget about Mount Rushmore. Forget about the Grand Canyon. They are as much window dressing as CNN or NBC News or National Public Radio.

The Lorraine Motel in Memphis is our true Plymouth Rock.

Dallas’ Dealey Plaza is our real Mount Rushmore.

The Ambassador Hotel pantry is our actual Grand Canyon.

Waco is our Arlington Cemetery.

Oklahoma City is our Yellowstone Park.

The woods near Eveleth, Minnesota where Paul Wellstone’s plane went down is our National Mall.

I believe 9-11 was an inside job ----- they got the new Pearl Harbor they wanted to invade Iraq and take the oil.

The troops are not protecting us. That is someone’s spin on the day’s news – somebody’s advertising slogan --- someone else’s sermon.

The troops serve the empire. They are not heroes. They kill and plunder for the empire. The heroes in our country are the protesters, the ones who go face to face with the empire, those who will begin to gather in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 6........

... the Obama election, believing in Hope – I had hope. I had hope that we might enter a brand-new period of openness, no wrong questions, Truth – becoming the type of people, nation that we always thought we were.

It didn’t happen. And we have to ask ourselves why?

It’s one of those questions that we are allowed to ask—that we should ask.

You have to know that Barack Obama knows the whole truth about the 9/11 attacks. He is complicit. He has lied. He has continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan based on a lie. And he knows he is lying.

He lied right to our faces on national television when he said that Osama bin Laden had been killed ... and buried at sea. ... Osama bin Laden was buried at sea ... and Jessica Lynch was rescued heroically, the U.S.A. does not torture, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, George Bush won the 2000 election, see, there is a plane there in that hole in Shanksville, it went all the way into that hole and no, there is no blood and no bodies and no luggage scattered ... or plane parts ... and Osama bin Laden ... was buried at sea. ...

Remember the anthrax letters, which said “Are You Afraid?” Those were not written with a rock and chisel like Fred Flintstone from the recesses of some cave in Afghanistan. Those letters came from persons within our own government.

Like a horror movie and the killer is in the same house with us.

These killers are right here, with us and  “they” want us to be afraid.

 “We cannot be afraid."

This is from John Updike's book "The Terrorist."

“... the great city sprawls with people, some smartly dressed, many of them shabby, a few beautiful but most not, all reduced by the towering structures around them to the size of insects, but scuttling, hurrying, intent in the milky morning sun upon some plan or scheme or hope they are hugging to themselves, their reason for living another day, each one of them impaled live upon the pin of consciousness, fixed upon self-advancement and self-preservation. That, and only that.

— John Updike, “The Terrorist”

That's perhaps the human condition.

[... forced with having to find a reason for living another day, impaled live upon the pin of consciousness ... to become fixed upon self-advancement and self-preservation]

But the human condition also means knowing when there is something wrong, something not quite right and having the spirit to refuse to live like that, to live within a lie.

That's why so many people have worked for so long, for ten years, against all sorts of obstacles, to find the truth, to make this the country and we the people who can truly make this country great.

People like Kevin Barrett and Jim Fetzer, who have been working almost non-stop for years and years to give us that New American Dream.

They are not afraid.

We take courage from their example.

We also cannot be afraid. We are not afraid.

We are not afraid of little men and little women who do not have the grace or temerity or courage to walk alone, even if only to the restroom.


TOP