Twenty years on, perhaps the one thing our highly polarized American electorate can agree upon is that A) We don’t have the full truth about 9/11 (hence the public demand to release the government documents). And B) That that truth includes some sort of coverup (exhibit A – Saudi Arabia). But the idea that this likely nefariousness thus means that only a bunch of white, privileged, Silicon Valley dudes with engineering degrees – “Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth,” which I’m guessing doesn’t include anyone who ever set foot inside the WTC (heck, I’m more of an expert on that front) – are the sole possessors of “the truth” seems the height of arrogant nonsense.
For even if they did possess a kernel of truth, as they very well may (conspiracy theories after all are birthed from that kernel), the temptation to drink one’s own Kool-Aid too often overwhelms all rationality (especially if you’re at the top of our caste system. Which is how 9/11 led to the forever wars).
For “proof” look no further than Dylan Avery, the director of the Loose Change films and now Seven, who posits that if WTC-7 collapsed due to a controlled demolition (as he firmly believes) then that somehow throws every piece of the entire 9/11 narrative into the possible realm of fiction.
OK, but then couldn’t one apply that same fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree theory to the filmmaker’s own narratives? (Just asking questions.) After all, Avery (who was a teenager a world away in upstate NY at the time) likewise has given credence to the claim that United 93 never crashed on that day (hey, why couldn’t it have landed in Cleveland?) and that the 2020 US election could very well have been stolen from Trump. (Which may explain why he was at the Capitol protest the day of the January 6th insurrection.)
Sure, Spike Lee might have “got questions,” as he’s told the NYC press, but does he really think he can get solid answers from this “just asking questions” contingent?
Which is a long-winded way of saying that Spike Lee was correct to listen to his critics, removing the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth talking heads (including founder Richard Gage, who’s lately hitched a ride on the Covid hoax bandwagon) from the final episode of his sprawling masterwork NYC Epicenters 9/11➔2021½ after a much-covered backlash. Indeed, their inclusion would have been nothing but a case of mission creep, a noisy distraction – and yet another instance of straight white males hijacking the narrative.
Without them, the focus stays roundly where it should – on the working class, Black and brown folks who were on the frontlines of both a terrorist attack and a global pandemic. The New Yorkers who dug in and got their hands dirty. Who saved us all – and continue to save us – through action not words, with heavy machinery not PhDs. Smartly and lovingly, “Bed-Stuy Do or Die” Spike Lee has with remarkable grace ultimately done the right thing.
Image credit: Georges Biard
