It can already do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, and get away with it. It has the means, the capability, and, most of al, the will. The underlying conviction efect that this view generates, then, lies in its expression of our fundamental unfreedom-an unfreedom the awareness of which we normally repress.
One might wonder why, if the government or a subgroup within it already has this sort of power, would it go to the trouble of taking down the World Trade Center, particularly in the redoubled fashion that appears in emphases on both controlled demolition and airplanes. If the Bush administration, Cheney, or some secret cabal wanted war (and some advocates of alternative explanations point out that plans to invade Afghanistan were already in place as early as June 2001), why would they orchestrate an elaborate attack on U.S. ofice buildings rather than just go to war? If Bush and Cheney are so powerful, do they really need permission, consent, legitimation? If they wanted to attack Iraq, why didn't they just blame the Iraqis for the destruction of the World Trade Center? 'Why did they say the hijackers were Saudi and Yemeni-particularly given the close relationship between the Bush family and the House of Saudinstead of saying the hijackers were Iraqi? Why didn't they simply attack Iraq on trumped-up intelligence of an imminent nuclear threat? Given power's demonstrable excess-which is what the 9 In conspiracy theories demonstrate, what they can't repress-why would power need to display this excess? For whom is it staged?
In the psychotic discourse of 9 I 11 truth, power is staged for itself. It's the way that power is trying to produce itself as a new world order, a new ''big Other" at the site ofloss. S eptember n, in other words, was power's attempt to found a world through the massive expenditure of jouissance and the institution of the law. From the standpoint of the conspiracy theories, 9 I .11 is the founding obscenity or crime that initiates a new order. The primary , political task is dissolving this order. Yet at this point, the 9 I 11 conspiracy theories come up against the passivity underlying their fundamental fantasy-the subjects or, in their words, "sheeple;' who fail to share their certainty. And here they overlap with the oficial discourse on 9 I 11.
The problem passivity poses is twofold. First, the excess of obscene power is so overwhelming that one is rendered powerless in its presence. In the oficial discourse, this appears in the impossibility of being able to prevent another attack, in guaranteeing safety. Measures like taking of our shoes and belts and putting liquids in tiny bottles in clear plastic bags accentuate this pervasive helplessness. Anything could happen. Everything is dangerous. Cheney relied on the meme of inevitable attack, accentuating this unavoidable future whenever he could. In the psychotic discourse of ${ \mathfrak { g } } / { \mathfrak { 1 1 } }$ truth, p<sup>a</sup>ssivity before power appears in the way that, if the government or a secret cabal of insiders could carry out so efectively the incredible conspiracy of ${ \mathfrak { g } } / { \mathfrak { 1 1 } } ,$ then it can do anything. We can do nothing to stop it. Its control is everywhere, an octopus with eye-covered tentacles. Second, insofar as psychotic certainty displaces belief, it comes under the pressure of its own drive. On the one hand, its knowledge persists despite disproof of certain claims. As David Ray Grifin argues, the knowledge of ${ \mathfrak { g } } / { \mathfrak { 1 1 } }$ is cumulative, not deductive. On the other, such certainty tends to demand uniformity: we can't necessarily believe those in our own movement. Thus, members of the 9 I 11 truth movement accuse one another of spreading disinformation or producing unreliable and unverifiable studies. We know government is al powerful-and if it's al powerful, how can we trust anything we know? How do I know I'm not being manipulated?
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