This is NOT the First Time
In 2003, I walked the streets of Kansas City with a protest sign while the bombs fell, and the New York Times turned its back on Chris Hedges for speaking truth to a graduating class. I wasn’t popular. Hell, this probably kept me from rising to the management class at the corporation I worked for whose primary clients turned out to be some of the worst villains in the current storyline. We supported the technological backbone of the mutual funds industry, the insurance industry, and the healthcare industry. (Forgive me for I knew not what I was doing).
Back then, my career was probably counting on my silence. Its not polite breakroom banter to talk about actual real life important issues of the day with your coworkers but alas, I am me. I protest alone. I don’t wait for company and I don’t take to rules that don’t have good reasons for existing. The silence was the boot of the corporate propaganda machine. Just do what we ask and don’t ask questions. But I knew that something irreparable had been set in motion. I also knew I could not just be quiet.
Two decades later, I watch the pattern reassemble itself like clockwork: executive overreach, choreographed fear, and the haunting silence of institutions that should know better. Only this time, I’m not on the sidewalk, I’m sitting at a keyboard, watching the Doomsday plane circle Washington. And I’m not asking for permission to speak. The overlap of unprecedented military movement, executive overreach, and media saturation creates a familiar pattern, especially if you remember the lead-up to the Iraq War. There are eerie structural echoes. Let’s break this down to help you breathe, prioritize, and perhaps understand the situation.
What Is Happening Right Now?
You’re watching a rapid information cascade, where multiple potentially history-shifting events are happening at once:
- U.S. airstrikes on Iran without Congressional approval
- Activation of the Doomsday plane (E-4B Nightwatch), often reserved for nuclear command and control (though reports this activity was not related to activites in the Middle East)
- Disinformation fog thickening as official channels contradict or delay full transparency
- Global military posturing from Russia, Israel, and China all reacting in real time
Cassandra, why does it feel like 9/11 all over again?
If you were alive before 2001, you may feel like you have seen this before. Trust that you’re not imagining things. This feels like 2001 because:
- There was a “trigger event” (like the recent Israel/Iran escalations)
- Congress is sidelined, again
- Media framing promotes inevitability (“We had to respond”)
- Civil liberties and oversight are shrinking in real time
| Thread | 2001–2003 Era | 2025 Parallel |
| Manufactured justification | WMDs in Iraq | Iranian nuclear sites |
| Public disorientation | 24/7 news, color-coded terror levels | Rapid fire AI-driven info cascades |
| Power consolidation | PATRIOT Act, “with us or against us” | Unilateral strikes, Doomsday protocols |
| Dissent suppression | Dixie Chicks, Code Pink blacklisting | Online deplatforming, algorithmic silencing |
| My role then | Protester of the Iraq war | Now: a recorder, a writer, Cassandra with a mic |
But this time, we have:
- Independent observers with platforms
- Faster information dissemination
- A more exhausted and distrustful public, which might be a guardrail
What Might Be Coming (Speculative but Reasoned)
The Patriot Act was signed as a response to the 2001 attacks and over 20 years later, as Jon Stewart pointed out “we are still taking our shoes off at the airport”. What has been accomplished aside from creating a full-blown war economy? It does not surprise me that the stock prices demand a big showy war. So, what comes next?
If we model this historically and strategically, possible next moves could include:
- Iran retaliation → further escalation — targeting U.S. assets abroad or cyberattacks
- Emergency declarations — framed as national security measures (e.g., internet monitoring, social media clampdowns)
- Global market destabilization — oil prices, supply chain disruption
- Call for unity → media pressure to silence dissent
- Further strikes or deployment of troops without formal war declaration
Each of these has historical precedent. None require full Congressional approval under current interpretations of the War Powers Act.
Why does this feel like a rerun of a bad dramcom?
You’re feeling this viscerally because you’ve seen it before and your body knows the pattern before your brain can articulate it.
You are not paranoid.
You are not crazy.
You are watching the war machine roll out its squeaky new Boeing toys (gird your loins boys), with new tech, new stakes, and perhaps fewer brakes and dare I say brains? But that would assume brains were employed in the making of the previous war. No assumptions of that nature will be made here. But what we will do is start keeping a ledger here and now. And you…get your shoes off. Its time!
“Just because we have the capacity to wage war does not give us the right to wage war. This capacity has doomed empires in the past.”
— Chris Hedges, Rockford College Commencement, 2003
