The world trade center attack and the economic situation we’re in are similar. We don’t know completely why they happened. We have leaders who tell us what happened and we have leaders who tell us something else happened.
After a while the leaders and commentators will agree on what happened and will then decide what to do to make things better. They’ll disagree for years about what is the best way to do it and the public will take sides.
My point is that I don’t think it’s worth our time as citizens to worry about it. We’re so far removed from the experts, the people who really do understand why these things happen, that by the time the information gets to us it has been changed to suit the purposes of every individual whose political and financial interest is tied into that information. When you are told Kaleid Shiek Mohammed was the mastermind of 911, you are told that because it was peer reviewed and decided that he was the best person to be responsible for the attack by the parties that get to decide who the mastermind was. When you are told the economy is in a recession it’s because it’s decided by people to tell you that the economy is in recession. You don’t know why they’re telling you that because you don’t know those people and what their motivations are.
In general, in life, without intimate knowledge of a who a person is and what they’re interests are in life, it is difficult to know why they say what they say. Throw into that equation the fact that some people are dumb and will tell you things that sound true but aren’t and it makes it entirely pointless to ever pay attention to our political and social leaders.