The Event That Shifted My Perception of the World
How it convinced me that the Left and the Right are two sides of the same coin
Madhav-Malhotra-003, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
I’m sure readers of this Substack publication wonder how I identify politically; for me, that isn’t easy to do. I grew up with a left-of-center American mother and a right-of-center European father. Both are very moderate in their views. Centrists, if you will. As an adult, my mother always identified as a “Kennedy Democrat,” a rare and dying breed in the current world of extremism.
After 9/11, I developed an inherent distrust for the Bush family, but I was only in my early 20s and still unaware of their decades of dirty deeds. (Check out Russ Baker’s book Family of Secrets about the Bushes.) And Dick Cheney leaving his post as Haliburton’s CEO to become the Vice President of the United States, only to hand over no-bid contracts to his “former” employer without financially disentangling himself, was disconcerting. (Check out the movie Vice with Christian Bale if you want the scoop on the Bush-Cheney administration. Brilliant film.) However, my sneaking suspicion that there was evil among us grew when they finally revealed that Iraq did not have WMDs.
After much research, I later learned that George Jr’s going after Saddam Hussein was in part a retaliation for a hit Saddam had previously attempted on his Jr’s daddy. Of course, oil and other riches—ahem, money—certainly had something to do with it. (As of late, it’s come out via court filings that two of the 9/11 hijackers were directly tied to the See. I. Aye. (Check out SpyTalk’s excellent article if you want more information.)
Of course, we could go on a tirade about Saddam’s ruthlessness and the bloodshed he caused. We could also talk about how Saddam Hussein was a member of the Ba’ath Party, a political party spanning many Arab nations, that tried to modernize Iraq in some ways:
Allowing women to go to college.
Not requiring women to wear burkas and hijabs.
Granting them the right to work in government and corporate settings.
In my mind, he was much like tyrants throughout the world (and history): he improved some aspects of life while simultaneously committing atrocities.
One political position I held then that I still hold today was that the United States’ self-anointed title of global ruler was arrogant, dangerous, and destabilizing.
But as a young adult not well-versed in history, I thought that the warmongers strictly lived on the right of the political aisle. So, when I exercised my right and duty as an American citizen to vote, I cast my vote for Barack Obama—not once, but twice—each time promptly going back to ignoring politics.
It wasn’t until the middle of his 2nd term that I started to wake up to the reality of the world. War raged all over the Middle East, and the US was heavily involved, if not responsible for much of it. And this was under the man who preached peace and even won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
Why did he win that?
How had he promoted peace throughout the world?
He had only just gotten into office when he was awarded it. And then the military under his command carried out “more drone strikes in his first year in office than President Bush carried out during his entire administration.” (Source: Prince Williams for the Harvard Political Review and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism).
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria were all burning.
I started asking questions. Questions that resulted in far too much cognitive dissonance. It was a bitch to realize that much of what I had believed and had been fed over the years was a lie. There were no parties of peace. Just two arms of a global war machine that gave themselves a different name and aligned with a different cardinal color than the other.
But it wasn’t until 2011, when the US/NATO paved the way for the murder of Moammar Gaddafi, the leader of Libya, by the National Transitional Council, that I began to understand that I had been duped. I didn’t know much about Gaddafi, but listening to the woman I had admired laugh and cackle about the murder of a sovereign leader (Gaddafi) on national television (CBS) did not sit well with me.
Watch the first 10 seconds of this clip. (CBS doesn’t allow the original to be embedded on external websites.)
This was my “red pill” moment, if you want to use a term popularized by the film the Matrix.
For those who’ve never seen it, here’s the “Blue Pill vs. Red Pill” clip:
I could either pretend I wasn’t seeing or feeling what I was and carry on as I always had, or I could acknowledge that nothing was what it seemed.
I chose the latter. From that moment on, I abandoned my belief that I was a Democrat to simply being a human who wants peace and the US government out of everyone’s business, including that of its own people.
Several years after this CBS broadcast, I came across various articles online and blog posts about the murder of Gaddafi. The common theory was that Gaddafi wanted to remove Libya from the Rothschild-controlled banking system—the one we all live under now—help other African nations to do the same and launch a pan-African gold-backed currency. Considering the abundance of gold in Libya and Africa in general, this seemed feasible.
Qaddafi’s supposed plan would turn Africa from a financially impoverished continent to a wealthy one. Since I had no access to Libyan media and did not speak Arabic, verifying such claims was damned near impossible. But it made sense.
And we can’t forget Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s recent slamming of the French government for a very similar reason. The segment starts at 00:39 and ends at 01:27. (I have the full segment in my article Right-Wing Extremist?, which I recommend watching. Only 15 seconds longer than the one below.)
It wasn’t until recently that this theory about Qaddafi was proven true when Clinton's emails posted on WikiLeaks caught the public’s eye.
Here’s a screenshot from an email between Hillary Clinton and long-time advisor Sidney Blumenthal (links to full email on WikiLeaks):
And then, over the years, other puzzle pieces of truth found their way to me, like the BBC's broadcast of the 9/11 attacks in New York and how the newscaster announced the collapse of the Solomon Brothers Building (Bldg 7) before 20+ minutes before it ever fell.
The footage has been removed from YouTube, but you can watch it and see WTC 7 is still standing right behind Jane Standley.
(Note: you can only embed videos from YouTube, hence the link.)
Please note: I do not endorse the channel I linked to above. It's merely the most comprehensive footage I've found.
The BBC put out this response to the public outrage, and it, along with the comments that ensued, is worth reading:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/02/part_of_the_conspiracy.html
(Copy and paste into your browser. I intentionally do not link to specific pages.)
You can also watch the footage of the end of the Solomon Brothers building (WTC 7) starting at 03:30:
Again, I do not endorse the channel I linked above. It's simply the best footage I could find.
Another interesting fact is that every video of engineers explaining the impossibility of 9/11 happening has been scrubbed entirely from YouTube.
And lastly, here's one thing that hadn't entered my consciousness until many years later: Donald Rumsfeld announced $2.3 trillion was missing from the Pentagon's coffers one day before the 9/11 attacks.
Here’s the CBS news footage:
The Pentagon was damaged the next day, and the missing trillions(!) were never spoken about again. How convenient. How big is the Pentagon’s “black budget”? Where’s all the money disappearing to? What atrocities are US dollars (Federal Reserve Notes) being used for? How much disappears every year?
Of course, many other moments shocked me out of my belief that one political team was better than the other and that one team had the people’s best interests at heart. But these were the main ones.
And since then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland—married to Neo-Con Robert Kagan—helped orchestrate the color revolution in Ukraine (Euromaidan 2013-2014) and later refused, as the US Secretary of State, to make diplomatic moves to prevent the war in Ukraine in 2021, you’d be hard-pressed to convince me Democrats care about peace and everyday people any more than Republicans.
As with anything, there are probably decent, altruistic people on both sides of the aisle, but they are likely the ones whose voices the media and TPTB make sure we don’t hear.
Many people reading this article—regardless of nationality— have probably had their own adventures down the road of rude awakenings. So, if you feel like sharing yours, you’re welcome to do so in the comments section below.
Note: OTL articles will now appear weekly on Wednesdays by 12 noon EST.
Catch up on the articles you missed:
For Those Looking to Expand Their Minds
How Banks Create "Money" Out of Thin Air
How to Thrive in Uncertain Times
The US Will Lose Its World Reserve Currency
Central Bank Digital Currencies: The Wet Dream of Aspiring Totalitarians
As the Banks Fall (Part 4): Deutsche Bank, The Jim Cramer Effect & Bank Consolidations
As the Banks Fall (Part 3) and Digital Authoritarianism
As the Banks Fall (Part 2): Bankruptcies and Consolidations
As the Banks Fall (Part 1): The Beginning of the End of the Modern Slave System
Groucho Marx said it in jest, but it's a tenet I've taken to heart: "I would never join any club that would have me as a member." As a Boomer, I've leaned a bit right of center most of my life. Running a business, raising kids, and just making a living made it easy to rely on Walter Cronkite (aka the most trusted man in America) for the truth of what was happening. Now in retirement, I have time to dig deeper. The Internet firehose of information seems like a source of truth, but TPTB have used it for their own nefarious purposes, just like the rest of mainstream media. Substack is a bright spot, in that it allows truth to be spoken while allowing the speaker to make a living, at least for the moment. (We thought that about Twitter until TPTB got their hands on it.) Climate change has become politicized, to the point that it's very unlikely it will be dealt with before going critical, in all directions. When the fossil fuels are no longer available, life as we know it will suddenly become very local, with far fewer of us to struggle with it. I'll be dust, but I'll have left 5 grandchildren to deal with it. My hope is that I am simply a nihilistic pessimist who is tragically wrong.
Addendum: I found the quote I paraphrased earlier.
Instead of deploying flawed and simplistic spectrum charts, let us judge political and economic systems by who they empower—the State or the individual. That makes things a lot clearer.
Lawrence Reed