| Subject: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty... |
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Date Posted: 01:15:16 04/16/07 Mon
To be brutally honest
Author of "A revolting confession" responds to widespread media criticisms
By Kevin Potvin
John Keats wrote 123 years ago, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
On the confusing afternoon of September 11, that didn’t appear to be quite enough. I went down to my cafe on Commercial Drive to see what people were saying, and inside, on the big screen, was a European soccer game watched closely by about 50 men, while behind them on a small TV up in the corner of the ceiling was New York engulfed in smoke and debris with a big hole where downtown used to be. Nobody was watching. On the sidewalk where I usually spend hours a day in free flowing conversations with so many people coming and going, no one was saying anything beyond "Holy shit, eh?" and "Did you hear?" as if it were possible anyone could not have heard.
I went home and got out my pad of paper and made notes of everything that I could detect I was feeling. This is one of my journalistic techniques, it’s a form of shorthand. Rather than make notes of speeches at press conferences and other events, I instead pay attention and focus on the speaker, and then afterward make notes of exactly how I feel. Later, when I need to write up the story, I refer to my notes, and by being reminded of my feelings at the time, I remember everything that was said, and what’s more, I retain the meaning.
So I wrote a flood of impressions down. When I was stuck for more, I went back inside to the TV, watched another half hour of the plane zooming inside the building, of the Pentagon ablaze, and so on, and went back outside to my notebook with a fresh bunch of new feelings to harvest. And then I put the notes aside for whenever I might try to write a story about it.
When it came time to assemble articles for the next issue of my biweekly newspaper that I publish, I was despondent. None of the usual articles seemed to matter at all in the immediate post-9/11 world, and yet, neither I nor anyone else could seem to write new articles either. I recognized immediately that the week after 9/11 was a rare and genuine liminal moment at the top of the pendulum swing when everything is so still and quiet, and yet so full of potential and motion.
So I hit upon the idea of running out to Langara College and asking a friend who is a political science instructor there if I could speak to his class of 45 or so students. My idea was this: this liminal moment between the event and the beginning of all the myriad consequences of that event is a rare and special moment especially for people in their late teens and early 20s who will live adult lives utterly dominated by whatever 9/11 brings to the world. I invited them to quickly write down everything they were thinking at this moment, without analyzing too much, so that we could capture the essence of their reactions as they’re being formed.
It went so well, I expanded the idea out a bit to some friends and even some younger people. The result was a special edition of my newspaper containing a hundred or so different voices in pieces that ranged from 25 words to 800 words by authors ranging from 8 years old to 73. The range of thought was just as enormous.
I printed the paper and, re-reading it, I thought again of my own reactions to 9/11. Everyone else got to say what they thought, maybe I ought to pull my notes out and write them up to share what I thought too. The result was an essay I called "My revolting confession."
While it was one thing to publish brief snippets of other’s thoughts, it was quite another to present a lengthy essay of my own thoughts as the publisher of the paper, and I lost my nerve and I filed the essay away.
As I had suspected would happen, the world began to spin out of control from the shock waves of 9/11. America launched war in that graveyard of empires, Afghanistan. What was worse, by November 2002, there was talk the US was going to launch war on Iraq. At the time, I considered it possible Iraq had nuclear weapons, and so I reckoned we were going to see Tel Aviv nuked, then Baghdad nuked in return, and possibly Cairo, Damascus and Riyadh too, followed by massive mobilizations of Arab armies marching against Israel, and then massive shows of strength launched by the US and Europe, and then massive response to those moves from China and Russia. In short, I saw a potential for the nuclear annihilation of the world taking shape one year after 9/11.
In that year, I don’t know how many hundreds of people I talked to who confessed to me shameful and frightening thoughts they had when watching 9/11. Many others weren’t shamed or frightened at their thoughts at all - they just came right out and said, "the US got what it deserved," and "its about time somebody slapped them back," and "did they think they would never get what they got coming to them?" Everyone was quick to say they were so sorry to see so many people killed. But inside a lot of middle class houses with trimmed yards up and down a lot of peaceful quiet streets that morning, I began to think there were a lot of moms, dads, soccer coaches, accountants and plumbers saying, if only in hushed whispers, "Right on!" The closer the US got to making war in the middle east, the more people were saying to me that America had apparently learned nothing from 9/11.
I’m a journalist and a lot of the opinions I write typically originate in conversations I have on the sidewalk while collecting groceries or in my café. I take it upon myself to try to hear, process, and feed back to my community the things I hear them saying.
So after listening to so much of this talk about America and 9/11, I pulled my essay back out of the file to have another look at it. Of all the things I heard people say, my thoughts were among the tamest. My essay revealed that inside me was a voice that said "Yeah!" when I saw the tower hit, and "beautiful!" when I saw it fall to the ground. In the context of the essay, the definition of "beauty" was that the attack had been a perfect example of a symbolic spectacle. More than half the essay was devoted to the awful deaths of that day and in other massive tragedies, and re-reading it then, I could well recall the anguish I felt at writing what I had.
But then, after seeing nothing written anywhere in the press about what people were actually saying and thinking about 9/11, I made the decision to print the article. I fantasized that, seeing someone share their feelings about 9/11 in public would cause others to come forth and do the same, and maybe there would be a groundswell of people inspired to do it too, until the whole world, and more importantly, all of America, would rise up against the madness of America’s plans for war and say in one unmistakable and undeniable voice, "No!" And maybe, I thought, it might just be enough to swerve the planet off the path of nuclear annihilation just in time.
Such are the fantasies of all writers. The article got a little attention, some angry emails, but mostly just people saying, "Yeah I felt that too."
My fears about America launching war came to pass, but there turned out to be no nukes in Iraq, and so far the war has not spread. So in 2005 I ran for municipal council as an independent, and I got trounced. But I had so many people tell me they really liked my campaign and that they really wanted to see me get into office somewhere, because they wanted to see what would be written in my paper once I was on the inside of politics looking out.
So this spring, I got interested in the federal election, and a timely email from a Green Party organizer caught me in another fantasizing moment, and I agreed to run as a Green in Vancouver-Kingsway. The prospect of running against David Emerson had a beauty to it, but also, when I saw who the NDP and Liberals had nominated, I saw a real possibility of winning. The prospect of being the first Green in the House of Commons, and all the media glare that would come from that, tickled me when I thought about how that much attention could be turned toward environmental and industrial policy reform. It was a chance, I thought, to do what George Monbiot, Noam Chomsky, and others urge their readers to do: get involved in politics, try to make changes. Because of my local public profile, I thought I might actually be able to do that by winning a seat.
The strategy I developed involved not just winning some of the NDP and Liberal voters over to me, but also to try taking a large chunk of the 41% in the riding who didn’t vote last time. I reckoned that a fair number of them could be inspired to vote if they finally saw someone running for election who spoke about the things they think about, but that no one ever talks about. Chief amongst those things is the event that lies behind so much of all our policies in every file, from immigration to security to military to economic to environmental and so on: it is that day again, 9/11.
What if, I wondered, a real viable candidate was willing to speak in public openly and honestly about 9/11 and related it directly to things like foreign policy? And I didn’t just mean 9/11 as a horrible tragic and regrettable event, but as an historical, economic, and political event too. In that regard, one would have to make accommodation for questioning the official conspiracy theory as propagated from the White House and subscribed to by Ottawa. No matter, I thought, there are all kinds of meetings of so-called 9/11 truth seekers, and certainly, by now, a lot of big name people with serious scientific, diplomatic, and business credentials who were also openly and convincingly putting paid to the original 9/11 story. It looked like a relatively safe thing to talk about, especially if one is hoping to pull off a long-shot election win by appealing to those people who are so turned off by all politicians that they never vote.
So I announced another "Public Table" event, as I had dubbed this part of my campaign. The first one, in the evening at a café on Main Street, about the possibilities for steady state economy, drew seven people. I called another for a Friday at 1 PM at a café on Cambie Street, called "Canadian foreign policy in light of 9/11" . . . and then I added, "truth," so that it read, "in light of 9/11 truth."
Ah truth, such a powerful word.
A newspaper owned by the richest man in British Columbia picked up on this and a reporter interviewed me. The headline was "Open for 9-11 conspiracy chat." That afternoon, CKNW, the largest radio station in western Canada, invited me onto the talk radio show in the evening to discuss "this whole 9-11 conspiracy thing." Later, the first reporter called back. Someone had anonymously, he said, sent him the web address to the archived version of that essay I wrote sharing my feelings I had on the day of 9/11, the "My revolting confession" essay. Next morning, he had a story about that, too. So did the National Post, in a story called "Elizabeth May [the federal leader] and the Green Party: Kevin Potvin must be expelled." In that story, the writer said, presumably after reading my essay, "Who among us would consider watching the death of over 2,000 Americans and more than 20 Canadians ‘beautiful’?" <\p>
By noon, when I stopped answering the phone, I had about 50 calls from media across the country, and by the end of the day, the phone must have rung 300 times. On Saturday, the front page of the National Post read: "Would you vote for this man? 9/11 theorist gets ‘benefit of doubt’ from Green leader," an article in which I am described as "an unsavoury ignoramus." The unsigned editorial for the day was titled "Stéphane Dion, meet Kevin Potvin," in which it is said, "How will his [Dion’s] lovey-dovey rhetorical cuddling with Ms May look to voters if she decides that Mr Potvin deserves to run as a Green candidate and this ‘bold,’ ‘alternative’ ideas, true or not, are exactly what Canada needs to hear? Go ahead, Stéphane, lie down with losers." True or not? As if that doesn’t matter?
Ahead of time I went to the Cambie Street café owner and apologized for what was probably going to be a media circus on his premises. Earlier in the day I issued a clarification and elaboration to media through email rather than talk to so many reporters over and over. At the meeting, so many reporters arrived, I took them outside to a neighbouring parking lot in front of a heap of bicycles outside a bike shop. "Good optics for the Green Party," I thought.
I read a statement that apologized for how my essay had been mischaracterized to construe me as someone who could possibly take joy in the events of that day. Then I dismissed the media and tried to get back to the constituents for the scheduled meeting to talk about Canadian foreign policy.
They asked questions about conspiracy theories and dead people and when I pointed to my statement, they insisted I answer them and complained I had called them out for this press conference and yet gave them nothing. I closed the door and got on with the planned meeting.
One of the reporters present, the one most insistent that I say something good and juicy for him about 9/11, is the one who described me as an unsavoury ignoramus. "Some already know about Mr Potvin and his versions of the truth," he wrote. The Cambie Street café, specifically chosen because, as a small business person, I wanted to bring some business to those small businesses suffering so many problems from the construction of the Canada line on their street, had been transformed by this writer into an East Vancouver hang-out. The author describes how he was "harangued out the door until I entered the sanctity and relative sanity" of another East Vancouver coffee shop, presumably also on Cambie Street, according to this geographically challenged author.
"Pro 9/11 column may oust Green candidate," pronounced the Vancouver Sun the same Saturday, in a half page exposé about me and my "despicable" points of view. This one contained a fabricated quote I never uttered in which the author claims I said, "I regret having written it," and that "I now find [an emotion] so despicable in myself that I can barely recognize myself in what I wrote five years ago." The Globe and Mail ran a story the same day titled "Column that cheered 9/11 was ‘symbolic’ candidate says."
My google news indicated stories like this about me appearing over a hundred times in newspapers and radio stations from Newfoundland to Prince George. I was on the CBC evening news in footage shot years ago in happier days showing off a cooking magazine in my store for a story about what a cool shop I had. The reporter darkly warned that my political future was a lot dimmer now. The CTV national news was much the same.
The story had gone international. A British tabloid compared me to a holocaust denier: "A story about a Green Party candidate in Vancouver who enjoyed 9/11 but thinks it’s all bogus anyway. Its not too unlike those Holocaust deniers who say the mass murder of millions of Jews never happened but wouldn’t it be terrific if it did."
Late Saturday afternoon, a Green Party official was dispatched to come tell me the leader of the party, Elizabeth May, had thrown me out and cancelled my candidacy in Vancouver Kingsway. My apology, it was explained, had not gone deep enough. I was expected to disown my own words.
At night, I ploughed into the emails that began piling in, before I ran out of patience opening them. They were the predictable sort: "Just another fruitcake on the loose huh!!!!!" "Only a sick fuck would think to cheer when 3000+ people were murdered." "You and your thoughts and those who agree with you represent the greatest threat to humanity." "The US should just make parking lots out of Bagdad and Tehran because that is their only option for war. Let the carpet bombing begin." "I will raise my fist in happiness when the muslims chop off your head," and finally, "Go fuck yourself you terrorist loving green liberal fuck head you are a fucking asswhole you suck the green party sucks fuck off."
But then another kind of email started arriving, in equal if not greater numbers. "I would like to help in any way I can with this current debacle." "It would be rather ridiculous of the Green's to drop you now." "Part of me said ‘Yeah’ too. Flying planes into buildings where lots of innocent people were working still wasn't right, but you can understand why the ‘terrorists’ selected the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, for heaven's sake." "Must say I had the same feelings when I first saw the footage - found myself smiling and thinking "awesome"." "It seems to me to be more of a smear on a candidate who has a very good chance of taking the seat of Vancouver-Kingsway. Mr. Potvin is a candidate with more than a little vision, and is someone who has my vote." "Potvin expressed an understanding of why people flew jets into those buildings, he did not condone violence in my reading." "Stand by what you say, never waver," "I have read the column three times. I haven't seen anything abhorrent written in it. Either the people that are making a big deal about it need the publicity badly, or they cannot understand the English language," and finally, "Read your confession piece after reading an item on CBC online. I see no problem with your views."
Of all the negative mail, one stood out for the effect it had on me: "What can I say? You blew it. You had the chance to galvanize support amongst the significant portion (if not silent majority) of Canadians who share your sentiments about the events of 9/11. Instead of seizing this opportunity, you did what every other lame, gutless and entirely unworthy politician would do in the same position: you chickened out, you back-pedaled and with absolutely no support from your party, you sold yourself out. I hope somewhere, deep down inside, you know this and can one day make amends with yourself and the millions of Canadians that you just let down." That one sounded like it was written by one of the 41% who don’t usually vote, the ones I was most keen to win over.
One word started this ball rolling, and another word blasted it into the stratosphere. The first was "truth" and the second was "beauty." I’m not so sure I understand anymore how they could possibly be the same thing, Mr John Keats. But it was at the height of this frenzy, when a National Post reporter in the scrum snorted in disgust because I wouldn’t hand him a dagger to stab me with despite his repeated provocations, when I seized on your confident assurance that it’s all I need to know. I don’t believe you, but I repeated it to myself anyway while staring the reporter back in the eye. It is the only thing that kept me from losing my head by opening my mouth: Beauty is truth, truth beauty. Repeat.
kpotvin@republic-news.org
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