I tend to get rather frustrated with people when they don't see what I see going on, and sometimes I feel like
Cassandra, doomed to issue warnings that no one will listen to. I try to make myself remember that I was just as gullible for most of my life. I was into politics from childhood (I got my start at the age of 9, pulling my little red wagon around full of brochures and bumper stickers for Barry Goldwater, back in 1964.) I was an ardent (though not fanatical) Republican all of my life, until the 1990s. The Internet has been responsible for my conversion, as I learned what politicians were actually doing (as opposed to what they were saying.)
I've always been a history buff, too, something that most people seem to pass over, to their misfortune. You can't know where you are going if you don't know where you've been, and you have to dig beneath the facade of history that politicians like to fob off on us. (For example, my boyhood idol was Abraham Lincoln, who I have learned in recent years was really a total scumbag; the popular history of Lincoln is most mostly lies and misinformation.)
I guess that I have taken the old 60s motto of "Question Authority" to heart in my old age. I just wish I had done so much earlier in my life, when there might have been a better chance to stop what was going on. I'm afraid that it may be too late now, although I still hope that I am wrong. I don't have any kids, but I do worry about the future we are leaving for my nieces and nephew.
Update: I've updated the footnote in my
comments above to include links to bin Laden's denials regarding 9/11. I'm not saying that he couldn't have been lying, but I have less reason to disbelieve him than I do to disbelieve the politicians who claim otherwise; they have been proven to be blatant liars about too many other things.