Generation Bubble

The Cloud of Unknowing: Glenn Beck and 9-11 Atavism

9-11 is only a Rorschach test, a mirror disguised as something else and held up before our believing eyes. We want life to be meaningful and when it is not or when it defies our chosen meanings, we call that disaster. Somewhere in the hazy cloud of debris raining down on Manhattan we thought we saw something: the devil’s face, American virtue, a clash of civilizations, or our own fragility. This is the reality of legerdemain: the suicide bomber is quicker than the eye. The act of flying an airplane into a building and the subsequent fall of that building are fundamentally meaningless. Viewed objectively through the eyes of god or the camera of a spy satellite flying far overhead, 9-11 is simply an event that occurred. The closely held truth of the magician is that magic takes place entirely in the minds of his audience.