On this solemn occasion, we pause to reflect on the significance of this date. Oh wait, there is none.

Why? Because this is September 11th, 2009. It's been eight damn years since 9/11/01. But it sure doesn't feel like it. We are still allowing this calendar date to control us. We are still letting it have more power over us than it should.

Now for starters, most of my criticism here is labeled at the media; news and entertainment. This is where I'm seeing the most stupidity, and I'd like to believe that average folks are smarter than that. It'll help if I don't get a lot of comments telling me I'm 'insensitive' for talking about this subject in less-than-reverent terms. Sorry; that's what I do. I've laid the smackdown on Christianity, Islam, feminism, the military, skeptics, Michael Bay and even *optimism* for chrissakes. NOTHING is safe from me.

First off, I wanna remind everyone of a fact that many of you will be uncomfortable with: On a global scale, nothing of importance happened on 9/11.

That's true in more ways than one. For starters, we have to face up to the fact that America, as a country, is pretty much a pampered, pudgy rich kid who's never really known just how bad life can get. Sure, we've had a rocky past, but have we ever had a nationwide plague? Mass starvation? Endless, undeclared war waged by the government on its own people? No, we haven't. And don't try to be a smartass by claiming that we have. What happened to us on 9/11 was terrible. No sane person can dispute this. THOUSANDS of people lost their lives for no good reason. But when you compare that to what some other countries go through, sometimes on a daily basis, it's a drop in the bucket.

Here's an example: Three thousand of us died on 9/11, right? However, on March 9th through 10th 1945, American bombers dropped 1665 tons of incendiaries on Japanese cities, including explosives whose purpose was to intentionally deter and kill firefighters (88 of them, to be precise). The total campaign is believed to have killed 672,000 people, and 87.4 percent of the areas bombed were residential zones. In two days, Americans burned to death 224 times the number of people who died on 9/11. The two events are not a perfect comparison, but it does illustrate the fact that humans in general have gotten very good at killing large numbers of their own kind in large chunks. No country is innocent.

Wanna be humbled even more? Try to imagine how many MILLIONS of animals die every day. Also, consider the fact that 99.99% of the species on this planet have no idea that 9/11 even occurred.

Oh, and if you look at the planet's history on a cosmic time scale? Fuck! Our entire civilization's barely been half an eyeblink!

I say this not to be an asshole, but to ask people to put things in perspective. Call it a tragedy, fine. It _absolutely_ is. But when I hear people say that it was the 'worst terrorist attack in history', I cringe. Anyone who says that needs to be whapped with a history book. Worse things have happened to human beings before, and worse things will happen to us in the future. One could even easily claim that the Great Depression caused more total harm to our country than those four airplanes did. As my friend Ether Bunny brilliantly put it, "Just because something's the worst thing to happen to YOU doesn't mean it's the worst thing to happen EVER."

When the media inflates 9/11 beyond what it really was, it not only cheapens what actually happened, but it's usually nothing more than a slimy ploy to tug on people's emotions for ratings. The actual emotions the event caused are painful enough without some cocksucking news anchor reopening that wound at every opportunity just to get you to stay tuned.

I've got more to say on that, but right now I'd like to take a little detour and talk about something else regarding 9/11: the conspiracies.

Right now, some of you are salivating, sure that I'm either gonna chew out people who are wacko enough to think that there is such a conspiracy, or that I'm gonna chew out anyone stupid enough to think there's NOT a conspiracy. Well, fuck you both. You're both assholes.

When I did my Montroversy about skepticism, I said in the comments that Mythbusters has the perfect attitude: test everything. Even if it sounds ridiculous, you test it anyway, because you can't always predict beforehand what will and won't turn out to be true. I have seen people whose intelligence I otherwise respect suddenly turn into closed-minded pricks when it comes to the concept of '9/11 Truth'. I really like both South Park and Penn & Teller's Bullshit, but was pissed off when both those shows completely dismissed all 'truthers' as crazy people. South Park even admitted that ONE IN FOUR PEOPLE think there was some kind of conspiracy. When a full quarter of the population suspects something, and you try to make that go away by calling them all crazy, then you are a shithead of unimaginable magnitude.

I'm not going to get into debating the evidence. Let me make that even clearer: I AM NOT GOING TO GET INTO DEBATING THE EVIDENCE. This is long enough already, and it'll kill my finger muscles if I even try. But what I am going to do now is simply show why the idea of a conspiracy is at least possible. Maybe even probable.

For starters, let's take in the wider picture of American history. When World War I was beginning (Oh Christ, a Zero Wing reference...), the Germans torpedoed the ocean liner Lusitania, killing over a thousand passengers. This made lots of other countries pissed off at Germany, and according to Wikipedia, "was instrumental in bringing the United States into World War I". But things weren't so simple. Germany had said that the British were using cruise ships to carry munitions to their soldiers; essentially turning the passengers into human shields. The Germans said they would fire on any ship that entered a certain area, and even took out a full-page newspaper ad to explicitly warn passengers of the Lusitania that they would be shot at!! And yes, the ship was carrying shitloads of ammunition and had undergone renovations to turn it into a half-cruiser, half-battleship. But instead of looking at this as the Germans firing upon an enemy ship under the normal rules of warfare, and after giving ample warning too, we Americans called it a cowardly, sneaky act.

Skip forward to World War II. What was the event that galvanized support for entering the war then? The Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Only it wasn't a sneak attack at all. At best you could say that it was a situation where everyone knew an attack was imminent, but didn't know the actual location. At worst, you could say that the American government intentionally ignored warnings because public sentiment was very much against joining the war, and they knew an attack would change people's minds. It's important to realize that most of the worst Nazi atrocities were not known about in America until after, or late into, the war. There was even open Nazi sympathy in America. And after WWI, Americans had no desire to get into another huge conflict. So maybe it was right to allow the attack, letting hundreds die so that millions would be spared the cruelties of the Third Reich. Maybe. I can't say for sure. But what is clear is that the popular perception of the Pearl Harbor attack does not match the reality.

Then we come to Vietnam. Christ, in high school American history I learned that the Gulf Of Tonkin incident, the catalyst for America entering the war, never happened at all and was a complete lie right from the beginning. There's no argument here: it's been proven fully enough to be in the freakin' textbooks. Which usually do everything possible to paint America as the messiah of the world (at least the ones I've seen).

So now we're back at 9/11. Foreigners attack in a sneaky, cowardly way, killing brave, innocent Americans. The enemy is demonized. Retribution is called for. America enters a war.

If once is chance, twice is coincidence and three times is a pattern, what do you call it when something happens four times in a row like clockwork?

Let's also look at who was in power at that point. We had a president whose goal was to go after Saddam Hussein, even back while he was still campaigning for office. We had an administration that lied, blatantly and repeatedly, to the American public in order to get us into an unwinnable war in Iraq where over four thousand Americans have died, over thirty thousand have been wounded, and over a HUNDRED thousand Iraqis have died as well. This is also an administration that sat on its hands while about eighteen hundred Americans died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. (This is just to show you the sheer numbers of corpses that are on these peoples' consciences, and yet they are still venomously defiant about having done no wrong.)

We had a government who did all of this in the open. They showed unimaginable indifference to human life and human rights. AND SOME PEOPLE ARE SO FUCKING BLIND THAT THEY THINK IT'S IMPOSSIBLE THAT THESE PEOPLE MIGHT HAVE ALLOWED A MEASLY 3,000 MORE AMERICANS TO DIE ON SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH!?!?

Am I saying there was definitely a conspiracy? No. I've seen plenty of evidence on both sides and all that's clear is that there is reason to be suspicious. I understand that it's very likely still too soon for us to be able to think objectively about this. The emotions are still too raw and powerful. But it's been eight years. All I am asking is that we accept that a conspiracy COULD have happened. To not treat that idea as if it's blasphemy. I don't like it when *anyone* is called crazy just for considering a possibility. Not arrogantly claiming a certainty, but just considering a possibility.

What I'd most like to see is an independent group of skilled, objective scientists and researchers who would go through all the 9/11 conspiracy theories and test whatever there is that can be tested. Do scientific experiments. Check factual sources. All I want is to know which data is reliable enough to BEGIN to form a hypothesis. Not even draw a conclusion; I just want to know where to start.

Because people fucking DIED that day. And I think it's important that we investigate the living shit out of what happened to MAKE DAMN SURE we're right about who did it and why and how. No one should be above suspicion, nothing should be taken for granted, until all the facts have been examined.

That said, Zephon T'sol and I were talking about this earlier and he brought up a very good point: because people did die that day, we owe them respect. I've heard people say that 9/11 truthers are horrible people that 'dishonor the memory of those who died'. That's bullshit. And it's offensive bullshit too. Like I said, there's nothing disrespectful about wanting to fully investigating a crime. I've heard, 'Would you look into the eyes of a grieving 9/11 widow and tell her to her face that she's wrong!?' Yes, I would. Absolutely. The truth is more important than our emotions. But I'd still be respectful, goddammit. I'd say, "I'm sorry I have to put you through this, but I've found evidence that proves beyond a doubt that what we thought we knew about the attacks is wrong. I'm so sorry. I know it's going to be awful to relive those memories, but we have a duty to see justice through."

So, that brings me to the asswipes who think they KNOOOOOWWW exactly what happened. News flash: You don't. I don't, we all don't. After everything I've seen, one thing I know for sure is that there's shitloads of contradictions. And I know that nobody has it all figured out yet. Some conspiracy theorists are decent people who are simply devoted to finding the truth, wherever it may be. Others are no better than creationists: they have their flimsy little pet theories that they obsessively adhere to and they spend all their time grubbing for any tiny fact or inconsistency that might give their crazy-ass idea some credence. I'm sick of this shit. Once and for all time's sake: IT'S NOT FUCKING SCIENCE IF YOU START WITH A CONCLUSION AND TRY TO FORCE THE DATA TO FIT IT!!! And you are being disrespectful to the dead if your real agenda in this is just to bring attention to yourself.

There are three phrases to keep in mind when considering 9/11 conspiracy theories: Occam's Razor, Hanlon's Razor and The Banality Of Evil.

Occam's Razor states roughly, 'the simplest explanation that fits all the facts is usually the correct one'. Wanna know the real reason magicians never reveal their secrets? Because the secrets are always so painfully simple that you'd feel like a jackass if you ever found out about them. Complicated = much more likely to fuck up. So why do some 9/11 theories take place in an alternate reality where the more ridiculously complicated a plan is, the more LIKELY it is to be true!? I've heard shit about remote-controlled robot planes, that all the passengers were actually government workers who secretly deboarded before the crashes, that voice-replication technology was used to make fake phone calls from the planes... One guy on YouTube even said that the planes didn't actually crash, it was real-time CGI video editing effects!! FUUUCK!!! The truth is, you don't NEED any of that shit for a conspiracy. Blood-chilling as it sounds, it's so much simpler, and so much more cost-effective, to simply let thousands of people die for real.

Hanlon's Razor states roughly, 'never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity'. While the Columbine shooting was happening, and in the immediate aftermath, reporters said all sorts of conflicting shit on the air because everyone was simply reporting on what everyone ELSE was reporting, and lots of assumptions and wild guesses were made. Did you know that the only reason hundreds more people didn't die that day is because the homemade bombs Eric and Dylan planted throughout the school never went off? And I'll guarantee that, unless you've done your homework, your perception of the two shooters themselves bears little resemblance to the people they really were. Unfortunately, humans have this damnable tendency to make a first impression, then cling irrationally to it no matter what new evidence comes to light. What's this got to do with 9/11? The same thing happened there. Reporters ran around like decapitated chickens, spouting off assumptions and repeating misinformation like a plague. So if there's inconsistencies in what we know about the tragedy (and there are), maybe it's not the result of some vast evil intelligence network, but simply because reporters tend to exaggerate shit because they're morons.

'Banality of evil' is the idea that villains in real life do not wear capes and have handlebar mustaches. True evil, and usually the worst evil, is usually carried out by calm men sitting around in a quiet room. True evil is usually committed for such unimaginably petty reasons that it's an anticlimax. We'd rather believe that there's some huge evil network of evil that does evil. It's more emotionally satisfying. You wanna know what I think the most plausible 9/11 conspiracy theory is? Okay; remember all the news reports in the months after September where they went on and on about the many, MANY warning signs? They kept asking, "Why didn't someone piece this together?" Well, maybe someone did. Maybe the big conspiracy is simply that someone did piece together the details of the attack, told Bush and Cheney, and they sat back and decided, 'Let's let it happen. We can spin it to get support for going after Saddam'. And that's all it was. Like I said earlier, it's plausible just because this administration later proved, amply, how morally hollow they are. Wanna know another plausible theory? That Larry Silverstein, the owner of the lease on the WTC complex, took out a gigantic insurance policy on the towers, with extra emphasis on terrorism coverage, two weeks before the attacks happened. Then he made the insurance company pay up *twice*, because he insisted that each plane crash counted as a separate attack. And he made BILLIONS of dollars. How is that not a plausible motive? Now, do I know all of this for a fact? Unfortunately, no. But this would be something that could be investigated and proved one way or another. There would be records of this insurance policy. And if a husband takes out a policy on his wife, and a week later she winds up dead, even the most beef-headed cop in the world would arrest the husband on suspicion of murder. Here's a simple, plausible theory, with no robot planes or camera tricks, and it could be investigated easily.

What it all boils down to folks, is that not all conspiracy theories are created equal. Some are worth considering, some are tenuous but still within the realm of possibility, and some are fucking retarded. Don't fall into the trap of thinking they're all the same, and therefore none of them deserve to be investigated objectively.

There's one last thing I want to talk about regarding 9/11. It won't take long. I'm sure your eyes are getting as tired as my typing fingers by now.

One little fact, and here it is: the terrorists won.

They won, because we LET them win.

What is the aim of terrorism? To cause terror. Which means they succeeded. It's a cliche that's been driven into the ground, but 9/11 really *did* change everything. We became a more frightened people.

The news was bad before, but after 9/11 it became 'All Fear; All The Time!!'. Fear of terrorism, fear of Muslims, fear of Iraqis, fear of bombs, fear of chemicals, fear of germs, fear of anthrax, fear of swine flu, fear of bird flu, fear of shark attacks, fear of contaminated water, fear of contaminated food, fear of contaminated toys, fear of missing white girls, fear of black male suspects, fear of pedophiles, fear of video games, fear of non-PC language, fear of oil prices, fear of recession, fear of socialized medicine, fear of Bush, fear of Obama, fear of MOTHER FUCKING EVERYTHING!!!

You know what? I live my life mostly without fear. I disregard pretty much everything the news tells me to be afraid of. And I'm fine. I don't obsess about my health, and even though I'm a fat guy, my cholesterol and blood pressure are both okay. I buy on eBay, torrent movies, and meet people IRL I know from online. I play violent video games. I eat junk food. I jerk off regularly. And I sleep just fine.

Know what I really fear? Our government.

Because stupid, worthless, spineless people allowed the Bush administration to take away wheelbarrowfuls of everyone's human rights, in trade for feeling safer. Notice I said 'feeling' safer. Not really BEING safer. Just feeling that way. That's all most people seem to want. It doesn't matter that airport security has become draconian to the point of almost classifying as rape, and yet it still won't prevent terrorist attacks. When fliers have their freedom taken away from them, they feel safer. When we lose our right to free speech and our right to protest, some people think it's for the best because safety is more important. Say, what was it that Benjamin Franklin said? Oh yeah; "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." I like that that quote's even more badass than I remember it.

We are a more fearful, more restrictive and more anti-intellectual society now. We have let zealous ultrapatriotism flourish and cheered as it trampled everything that made this country worthy of pride. I'm ashamed of America. I hate what it's become.

And if you helped that happen, then shame on you.

If you want to make things better, a good place to start is to think. Openly, constantly, and fearlessly.