THE ONENESS of HUMANITYEdward Curtin: A Letter From Desolation Row.
Article republished by Jerry Alatalo | June 15, 2026
[Editor’s note: What came to mind while reading Mr. Curtin’s latest thought-provoking article was imagining a serious one-on-one discussion between Edward Curtin and retired New York Fire Department Captain Richard Patterson, focused on Captain Patterson’s absolutely astounding experience – or what Captain Patterson witnessed, personally, at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001 (9/11). In case you missed hearing his 9/11 witness testimony, as conveyed to Richard Gage across three hours of pure mind-blowing exposition, see: https://onenessofhumanity.wordpress.com/2024/02/22/new-york-fire-department-captain-shares-what-he-witnessed-on-september-11-2001/]
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A Letter From Desolation Row
June 15, 2026
Edward Curtin Substack
“At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do”
– Bob Dylan “Desolation Row.”
Perhaps you have noticed – if you have any idea who I am or give a damn – that I have slowed down my political analyses of our current situation. It’s gotten tiresome since little changes despite all the spilled ink.
What I am going to say is not uplifting, so you can rip up this letter now if you want encouragement. The people whom I thought I knew never changed. They continue to believe the false premises that keep them smiling despite decades of facts to the contrary. Smiling’s important, I guess, and they prefer false hope to none and feel much safer on the other side of desolation row. They keep shouting at me silently, as Dylan put it long ago in “Desolation Row”: “Which side are you on?” But I don’t answer such lame questions while they keep not thinking too much about desolation row for fear of going there.
A example from 2021. The Orange Man was out and the Comatose Man was in the White House. In and out, back and forth they go, coming forth to carry us home. If the sounds you’re hearing these days sound familiar, well, they are.
In 2021 in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the 20th anniversary of the mass murders of September 11, 2001, the corporate mainstream and so-called alternative media were replete with articles analyzing the consequences of 9/11 that resulted in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and its alleged withdrawal after two decades of war.
These critiques ranged from mild to harsh, and covered issues from the loss of civil liberties due to The Patriot Act and government spying through all the wars “on terror” in so many countries with their disastrous consequences and killing fields. Many of these articles emphasized how, as a result of the Bush administration’s response to 9/11, the U.S. had lost its footing and brought on the demise of the U.S. empire and its standing in the world. Some writers celebrated this and others bemoaned it. Most seemed to consider this inevitable, but not the verbiage about the Titanic going down, which continues to resound in 2026.
This flood of articles was authored by writers from across the political spectrum from the left through the center to the right. All were outraged in their own ways, as such dramatic events typically manage to elicit much spilled ink informed by the writers’ various ideological positions in a media world where the categories of left and right have become meaningless, yet those of Republican and Democrat still hold the titanic power of pipe dreams.
Here’s the rub. The authors of all these 2021 articles – with a few worthy exceptions – about the mass murders of September 11, 2001 and invasion of Afghanistan were based on a false premise.
A false premise. This is the way minds are shaped in the era of mass propaganda and servile journalism. Assume (or make believe) something is true or false despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and build from there. Slip in this premise or background assumption as if it were truer than true. Most readers will never notice because they fear going to desolation row by thinking too deeply.
The false premise is this: That 9/11 was a terror attack carried out by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda as blow-back for U.S. wars against Muslims, and this terror attack on the U.S. led to the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
The evidence is overwhelming that this premise is false. The invasion was planned well before September. In fact, the evidence makes clear that 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks were inside jobs, false flag attacks, carried out by sinister forces within the government of the United States with a little help from certain foreign junior partners to justify its subsequent war crimes across the globe. I will not explore here the ample evidence concerning 9/11, for it is readily available to readers who have the will to look, but doing so will take you straight to desolation row. Even the use of the shorthand – 9/11 for the events of September 11, 2001 – that I have used here for brevity’s sake, is a crucial part of the linguistic propaganda used to frighten the public and to conjure up thoughts of an ongoing national emergency, as I have written elsewhere.
One is not supposed to say, or even intimate, that the mass murders of September 11, 2001 were a false flag attack, for it touches a realty that is so disturbing in its consequences that all the hand wringing post mortems must deny: That nearly three thousand innocent people in the U.S.A. had first to be murdered as a pretext for killing millions around the world. It is a lesson in radical evil that is very difficult to swallow, and so must be hidden in a vast tapestry of lies and safe logic. Innocence can survive the disclosures of U.S. atrocities overseas because the deaths of foreigners have never meant much to Americans, but to bring it all back home is anathema. Then, of course, there was the CIA assassination of President John Kennedy, but no one sees a thing there or cares to draw a string from then to now.
Most journalists know where the official Stop signs are, and so many lack a sense of history and the long-term strategies of those who own the country. But they do know where their bread is buttered, and contrary to Thoreau’s advice in “Life Without Principle” – “Do not ask how your bread is buttered, it will make you sick, if you do.” – they no doubt suffer from little dyspepsia on the way to the bank.
As I’ve said, there are rare exceptions, but they have been forced out of the corporate media and write for good independent sites that few read. The witty German writer Karl Kraus nailed the rest a century ago: “No ideas and the ability to express them – that’s a journalist.”
Let me end by asking: What is the key false premise hidden in today’s analyses of Trump’s criminal activities in his second term? It is obvious that he does not fit the mold of past presidents. He is someone even Mark Twain might have trouble creating. He is beyond blatantly outrageous in his actions, statements, and self-glorification – his criminal wars and use of the national treasury to enrich himself and his extended family, etc.
Kraus: “The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are as clever as he.”
Is Trump an actor like his counterpart Zelensky in Ukraine? If so, who is his director or is he just freelancing? Is he stupid, crazy, just evil, etc.? These are important questions. But while all these are bandied about by various writers and news analysts, it is generally assumed that Trump was not chosen and supported by those who control the country’s long-term strategic planning and goals; that his weirdness is a front that conceals the fact that he serves the same interests as his predecessors. That this is impossible is the false premise hidden in plain sight.
Having written about these things too many times before, you may start to grasp why I am now permanently residing on desolation row. Repetition gets exhausting. So I’m just sitting back and looking out from Desolation Row as the two sides “fight in the captain’s tower / While Calypso singers laugh at them.”
Forget about answering this letter. I can’t remember my address.
(Source/Credit: ScheerPost.com)
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Desolation Row
Bob Dylan
They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tightrope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad, they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight from Desolation Row
Cinderella, she seems so easy
“It takes one to know one,” she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pocket
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he’s moaning
“You belong to me, I believe”
And someone says, “You’re in the wrong place, my friend
You’d better leave”
And the only sound that’s left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row
Now, the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortune telling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody’s making love or else expecting rain
And the good Samaritan, he’s dressing
He’s getting ready for the show
He’s going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row
Ophelia, she’s ‘neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her 22nd birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an ironed vest
Her profession’s her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah’s great rainbow
She spends her time peeking into Desolation Row
Einstein disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
Now, he looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
You would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin on Desolation Row
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They are trying to blow it up
Now, his nurse, some local loser
She’s in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
“Have mercy on his soul”
They all play on the penny whistle, you can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough from Desolation Row
Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains
They’re getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
In a perfect image of a priest
They are spoon-feeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the phantom shouting to skinny girls
“Get out of here if you don’t know”
Casanova is just being punished for going to Desolation Row
At midnight, all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
And they bring them to the factory
Where their heart attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping to Desolation Row
Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody’s shouting
“Which side are you on?”
And Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much about
Desolation Row
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
About the time the doorknob broke
When you asked me how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mentioned
Yes, I know them, they are quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can’t read too good, don’t send me no more letters, no
Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row
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Written by: Bob Dylan
Album: Highway 61 Revisited
Released: 1965
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