Pulling Back the Curtain on America's Tawdry Wizards

Tucker Carlson's "The 9/11 Files" gives us glimpses of the astonishing manipulation of the American people.

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates tells the “Allegory of the Cave” in which the majority of people are described as being chained in a cave and staring at images projected onto a wall that they mistake for reality. A few prisoners are released, but when they leave the cave to view the world illuminated by the sun, the light hurts their eyes. They find the experience of viewing the world painful, so they desire to return to the cave and the comfort of the shadow world to which they have grown accustomed. However, one prisoner is forced to grow accustomed to the light and to see the world for what it really is.

Socrates further supposes that, if, upon seeing the light, the former prisoner returns to the cave, he would not be able to see in the dark. The prisoners in the cave would infer that he has been blinded by the sun, and they would therefore kill him if he tried to haul them out of the cave.

Plato wrote The Republic after Socrates’s was executed, so I suppose that the part about the prisoners killing the man who saw the light was a reference to the death of Socrates.

The Republic is thought to have been written around 375 BC. In 1939, The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming, was released in American cinemas. In the final scene, Dorothy's dog, Toto, pulls back the curtain, revealing that the "Great and Powerful Oz" is a fraud operating machinery to create illusions. The phrase, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain," refers to the Wizard’s attempt to cover up his deception and regain control.

In 1999, The Matrix, directed by the Wachowskis, presented a modern, computer era iteration of a simulated world. Reality may be apprehended not by leaving the cave of Plato’s allegory, but by swallowing a red pill.

I thought of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” The Wizard of Oz, and The Matrix this morning as I began listening to the first episode of Tucker Carlson’s The 9/11 Files, which pulls back the curtain on the tawdry wizards that have been running this country for lord knows how long.