Today is Patriot Day. I do not like Patriot Day. It a reminder of how hateful my country has become, and how we let fear; "terror," as it were, take over the country. The catalyst of deciding "safety" was worth any cost. A day when people point to their own government with maddening, absolutely maddening conspiracy theories. Allow me to expound.
There is a low level of consistent irritation I feel at any level of anti-Muslim rhetoric. People have pointed out "radical Islam" as the source of most modern terrorism, and I would be hard-pressed to contest that. However, there seems to be a constant push to mount "radical Islam" on a pedestal of all things evil. Republicans seem to always want Obama to utter the phrase "radical Islam" as though it would be the greatest sound bite of all time. And it is no surprise to anyone that we now fear all of Islam, as though radical Islam comprised the majority belief of Muslims. Has nobody noticed Daesh killing, say, Muslims? Quite the mystery, that one.
I feel that, to some degree, the United States never left the Cold War. For decades, decades, we feared the USSR. Communism was public enemy number one. There was always something for the public to concentrate on, to focus on when the US was threatened. It was the Ruskies! But when that threat faded around the start of the 90s, there was no great evil anymore. No threat against us. For about a decade, we simply stood atop the world... until 9/11. And while I'm not saying it's not justified, we sure to have a proclivity towards hating large groups of people. Now, however, the hate is more visible than before, courtesy of the internet and the speed at which information travels. And there is more resistance to it. I have no doubt that, during the Cold War, plenty of Americans did not view the USSR as a whole group committed to our destruction. But their voices could not be heard the way you hear it now. It is much more clear that there are those who view Muslims, all of them, as a threat to the US. But there are those who do not. And no matter how vile your enemy, hate will only breed hate. If you view Muslims as a danger to the US, how will you resolve that threat? Will you move to wipe a billion people off the planet? There must be a better way, a wiser way. And I think that starts with understanding that radical Islam is in the gross minority.
That, however, is the past. What upsets me in the present are the conspiracy theories. It always comes up, that the events of 9/11 were planned out and executed by Americans. I remember myself believing in them, for a short time, mostly because of building 7. Building 7 still confuses me, and I'll make no attempt to rationalize its destabilization. However, the idea of everything else about that day being orchestrated genuinely fucks with me, for two reasons.
First, Flight 93. By stating 9/11 is a conspiracy, you are either arguing that Flight 93 was (a) completely staged, with all passengers ready and willing to die for the NWO or whatever your theorized end-goal is, (b) downed in an unplanned fashion so as to mess up the plans of the conspirators by a whopping 25%, or (c) planned to fail, making the sacrifices of all onboard meaningless. Now, I'm not saying that option (c) is implausible if the conspiracy is real, but it infuriates me for people to imply it.
Second, the fact that all of the hijackers were trained in the United States. Again, this means that either (a) they were trained by fellow willing conspirators, or (b) the daily regret these men and women live through for lending a hand in the greatest US civilian tragedy in modern history is staged or, worse, nonexistent. Again, not impossible, but incredibly disrespectful.
I will not go so far as to say that conspiracies are impossible. However.
Conspiracy theories represent a known glitch in human reasoning. The theories are of course occasionally true, but their truth is completely uncorrelated with the believer's certainty. For some reason, sometimes when people think they've uncovered a lie, they raise confirmation bias to an art form. They cut context away from facts and arguments and assemble them into reassuring litanies. And over and over I've argued helplessly with smart people consumed by theories they were sure were irrefutable, theories that in the end proved complete fictions. Young-Earth Creationists, the Moon Landing people, the Perpetual Motion subculture — can't you see you're falling into the same pattern? - xkcd 258
I do not like Patriot Day.
Expect another post tomorrow.
