Thinking is an expensive occupation

Raising unsettling questions and providing disturbing explanations seldom meet with accolades. For example, Guy McPherson is a University of Arizona scientist who has been studying human disruption of the environment and climate for 30 years. Many human caused disruptions have developed into local or regional disasters, but now the question is whether the planet itself is endangered. Is human activity bringing about human extinction?

This is not a welcome question, and those who explore it are branded as “controversial.”
Dahr Jamail interviewed Professor McPherson and asked him: “What do you say to people who call you extreme for talking about this?”

Professor McPherson answers: “I’m just reporting the results from other scientists. Nearly all of these results are published in established literature. I don’t think anybody is taking issue with NASA or Nature, or Science, or the Proceedings of National Sciences . . . the others I report are reasonably well-known and come from legitimate sources like NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration], other NASA sources etc. . . . I’m not making this information up. I’m just connecting a couple of dots, and it’s something many people have difficulty with.”

In the West truth is dying, because anyone who departs from the official line is branded “controversial.” In other words, truth or the search for it is controversial. People who persist in chasing after truth or alternative explanations to the official line are discredited by those who are not served by the truth or alternative explanations. Whistleblowers, once protected by federal law, have been turned into traitors.

I have no position on the causes of climate change or Professor McPherson’s prognosis. My point isn’t that he or the experts he cites are correct. The point is that talking about what is possibly a serious problem is stymied by name-calling and shooting the messenger.

I experience it all the time. For example, on December 3 in the London Telegraph, a reporter, Hamish MacDonald, said that I am “controversial” for raising questions about “the US government’s reaction to the spread of the [ebola] virus” and for “questioning the official story of the September 11 terrorist attacks.” In other words, believe the official line because independent thinking is “controversial.”

It seems odd that a British reporter would settle on his own on me and on University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle as examples of controversial bloggers. Perhaps he was handed the story by the CIA, as German journalist Udo Ulfkotte confesses he often was.

The absence of thought is how humanity walks into Armageddon. But we mustn’t think or we are controversial. Not only must we not think, we must not report on the thinking of others. Like Professor McPherson who is “just reporting the results from other scientists,” I made myself “controversial” by merely reporting the findings of architects, engineers, physicists, chemists, first responders, pilots, and former high government officials concerning the destruction of three WTC skyscrapers and difficult flight maneuvers by inexperienced pilots. We are supposed instead to dismiss these thousands of experts and their professional experience as “conspiracy kooks” or worse. Remember, British Prime Minister David Cameron declared skeptics of the 9/11 official line to be as dangerous as Islamic State terrorists.

In other words, it is controversial to report that a team of scientists led by a professor of nano-chemistry at the University of Copenhagen found reacted and unreacted nano-thermite in the dust of the destroyed skyscrapers and that Building 7 fell at free fall acceleration, hitherto associated only with controlled demolition.

I am certainly skeptical of the official explanation of 9/11. As a former government official, I find it difficult to believe that a few young Saudi Arabians operating without the benefit of an intelligence service could outwit the entire National Security apparatus of the Western world. Moreover, if such an implausible event occurred, there would have been demands from the White House and Congress for a thorough investigation of the failure. Instead, the White House resisted any investigation, and in place of an investigation, a political committee wrote down the government’s story as the unexamined truth. This is not a believable response to such a humiliating blow suffered by “the world’s only superpower.” Why is it controversial to make this point?

A spoon-fed, no-think society has been created for us, and no one is supposed to think. Reminds me of a science fiction story I read many years ago in which at some point in their development children were tested for the thinking gene. If they had it, they were put down in order to protect the society from dangerous thoughts.

Drawing on my education and experience, I look beyond the propaganda for the real explanations. I might not always be correct, but my inquiries are not agenda-driven in behalf of some interest or the other, whether material or ideological. In order to continue, I need your support. I am constantly attacked by trolls and Reagan-haters, and if the Western intelligence services are at work presenting me as a target for establishment-tamed journalists, trying to wake up an insouciant people is not a pleasant task.

Copyright © 2014 Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, How America Was Lost, is now available.