It's "Patriot Day" again ...

To this day, I remember exactly where I was when I first heard of the World Trade Center attacks, which is all the more surprising considering I was only 9 at the time. I was in my mother's car and we were driving home from school for the hour-long lunch break. I'm not certain how it happened exactly, but then I remember my mother informing me and my brother that "bad men had attacked buildings" or something (it's way too distant a memory to remember with any details). I wasn't too preoccupied by it at the time (not surprising, considering I was still young enough to be confusing the words "tourists" and "terrorists" all the time).

It's later that night, while we were still living at my godmother's as our newly-purchased house was undergoing decontamination in preparation for inhabitation, that I remember seeing the first images of what had happened on a late-night news broadcast. There were images of two very tall buildings with large plumes of black smoke bellowing out of them; I still didn't know exactly what was going on (how could I?), but for what it's worth, that's the very first time I realized what man had the capacity to do to himself.

Over the years, I have, of course, matured and learned more about what had happened; it still surprises me how, even today, after all this time, and even though no-one I knew or cared for were anywhere near the carnage, the images of those burning buildings still fill me with anger and hatred for those who perpetrated these acts. But I don't wanna dwell on these feelings now; this is not a day for anger and hatred, but for peace, love, mourning, and above all, remembrance.

Relatedly, I've just finished watching 9/11: Science and Conspiracy which I had PVR'd last night. It's an examination of the Truther movement and the evidence (and/or lack thereof) for some of the more prominent conspiracy "theories" (ranging from the standard controlled demolition hypotheses to that of a cruise missile striking the Pentagon instead of a plane).

Yeah, I'm not convinced.

The most amusing bit of it all was the "grand plan" Truthers (or at least, some of them) seem to believe in, involving rogue, "ghost" airplanes quietly swapping places with the actual hijacked crafts and crashing into the WTC and Pentagon; according to this "theory", the innocent witnesses from the previous three planes were then herded aboard Flight 93, which was then (supposedly) shot down.

Hmm. I wonder why nobody gives these wackaloons any credence.

The show prepared and carried out a number of rigorously-controlled experiments designed specifically to test Truther claims (such as that the fires weren't hot enough to weaken the steel (busted), that the damage could've been caused by thermite (busted), that a plane wouldn't cause the type of damage seen at the Pentagon (busted), and etc.). Any reasonable person would see these results and realize it would be pretty damn hard to dispute them, but the Truthers who were profiled consistently rejected the findings, using the sort of beating-around-the-bush and cognitive acrobatics that would make Ray Comfort proud (yeah, he's my go-to guy for insipidity and cognitive dissonance now). If these are the people at the head of the whole Truther movement, it's a wonder anyone adheres to their mentality and "theories" at all.

There's tons more to say on the subject but, alas, I am conveniently chock-full of allergic symptoms (you try sneezing for six freakin' hours straight and not feel like you're gonna go insane) and am in no mood to keep to this topic for much longer. Long story short: I've seen the evidence, I've heard their arguments, and the verdict is thus: sorry, Truthers, but the official story is the actual story of what happened. No-one denies that, of course, they will have kept some details hidden for the sake of national security (or whatever reason), but to argue that the government, as corrupt as it may be, had anything to do with the massacre of 3,000 innocent lives is just insane (and, for most, contemptuous). Until Truthers bring out a single shred of evidence for any of their numerous claims, just one, then they shall forever be relegated to the outer fringes of lunatics. That's just the way it is.

Consider this my 9/11 anniversary post.

(And for the record, I don't really like the name "Patriot Day" for some reason. It just sounds wrong for this specific occasion of mourning and remembrance.)