by William Skink

On September 11th I’m going to upload a video to my new Youtube channel. Since leaving my job in February I’ve been working on an art project that will culminate in a website featuring the bulk of my artistic output, including poems, visual art and a barely fictional story set in a mountain town called Zula.

For me the project is a therapeutic process of integrating two fictional representations of myself so I can move forward as an artist in this new phase of my life. It’s been a great chance to reflect on the previous two phases of my time here in Missoula.

I moved to Missoula during the summer of 2000 to finish my undergraduate degree in creative writing. When the attack on 9/11 happened, I was 22 years old. I graduated the year this country illegally invaded and occupied Iraq, with the help of once reputable newspapers like the New York Times (which today can’t even get the capitol of Syria correct).

After graduating and getting married I took my degree and…worked in a kitchen for four years. Artistically I stewed in poems, trying to understand the world that had darkened so dramatically on that blue September morning. I went down the rabbit hole. I entered Chapel Perilous.

2008 marked the start of my second phase in Missoula. In addition to the personal milestone of having my first child, America put a half-black man in the White House amidst the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. It was also the year I started working at Missoula’s homeless shelter.

Now another eight years has gone by. When the stress and risk to my personal safety got to be too much, I decided I had to leave my position at the shelter. Since then I’ve been slowly learning how to use the recording/editing software I’ve invested in. I’m still a bit overwhelmed with the technology, but it’s coming along.

The topics I’ve been researching have sent me deeper and deeper into the bowels of Chapel Perilous. If I didn’t have artistic outlets, strong family support, and frankly the financial resources to take this time to recover, I think I probably would have lost my mind by now. The stuff I’ve delved into is dark and disturbing.

The topics I’ve been reading about–Nazism, the occult, child trafficking, weaponized drugs, secret societies, mind control, dangerous science and religious end-times paranoia–keeps springing up in the stories we consume as entertainment. I just finished binge watching Orphan Black. Before that, it was Stranger Things. Other shows that have caught my attention recently include True Detective, American Horror Story, Walking Dead, Jericho, Salem and Helix.

The most dangerous story, though, is the piece of fiction we were sold as the official conspiracy theory put forward by our government about what happened the morning of September 11th. Last month Europhysics News took a fresh look at the physics of high-rise building collapses (pdf). Will this have any impact on public opinion regarding the official narrative we were told?

Paul Craig Roberts thinks the tide is already turning:

The ability of the presstitutes to influence Americans seems to be on the decline. The media ganged up on Donald Trump during the Republican primaries, intending to deny Trump the nomination. But the voters ignored the presstitutes. In the current presidential campaign, Hillary is not the run-away winner that the presstitutes are trying to make her. And despite the propaganda ministry, the legs under the official 9/11 story are wobbly, to say the least.

Indeed, the official 9/11 story already has lost credibility with the American public. Last April a Rasmussen Poll found that “Americans doubt they’ve been told all the facts about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States and strongly believe the government should come clean.”

A YouGov poll in 2013 found that 50 percent of Americans “have doubts about the government’s account of 9/11,” which shows that the public is far more intelligent and less corrupt than the presstitutes who are paid to lie to the public. This poll also found that as a consequence of the cover-up job performed by the American presstitutes, 46 percent of Americans were not even aware that a third WTC building, Building 7, collapsed on September 11. After viewing films of WTC 7’s collapse, 46 percent saw it as a controlled demolition. By a margin of two to one, poll respondants support a new investigation of Building 7’s collapse.

So, in America today “conspiracy kooks” outnumber those who believe the official lies. As the official lies are themselves conspiracy theories, Americans who disbelieve the official conspiracy theories outnumber Americans who believe official conspiracy theories. The question is: who are the real conspiracy kooks, the majority who disbelieve the official lies or the minority who believe the official lies?

Kids starting high school this year will be learning about 9/11 as a historical event they weren’t alive to experience. But that one day of death and destruction has dramatically shaped the world they inhabit in ways they may never fully understand.

The official story that two planes caused three steel-framed buildings to collapse into their own footprint is ridiculous, yet for fifteen years that narrative has been the only state-sanctioned explanation of what happened on 9/11.

I’m doubtful, though, that the hold this piece of fiction has on us is loosening its grip. Can art help pry the figurative fingers from around our collective throat? I don’t know. But regardless of any wider impact, I feel compelled to start sharing the fruits of my artistic process.

For those interested in what my new phase will look and sound like, stop by here Sunday, September 11th, to see. After 6 years of blogging, I feel like my real work is just starting.

Stay tuned.