John Stewart’s first Daily Show opening post-9/11; a very moving moment.

I’ve run across a lot of the 9/11 conspiracy sites. I’m fascinated to a shallow level with these sorts of things — how Kennedy was assassinated by shadowy groups of ultrapowerful political types, of how America never landed on the moon, of how 9/11 was really crafted in it’s entirety by the Bush administration to get popular support for the eventual war in Iraq. I say shallow level, because the insanity and idiocy that you can find on the fringes of these discussions will make your head swim.

On the surface, though, there’s some interesting points brought up.   Inconsistencies in the reports of how things went down, weird responses from within the government… All this to say that there’s enough in these discussions that — maybe it’s a little fuzzy around the edges, but it invites and prompts further questioning and examination.

Do I believe that 9/11 was caused by the government?  I don’t think it’s something that is above or beneath our government, on some levels — which is to say, big business, and the people who worship the bottom line more than the common man.  But I don’t think that this is to their credit (or blame), because our government is, generally speaking,  incompetent.

Yup, I really believed that the picture of Bush reading to the kids upside-down might have been for real.

I do think that the administration should be held to the fire for its poor response(s), for silencing critics of its actions with accusations of antipatriotism, for using nearly 3,000 victims of a cruel attacks as an excuse to further its own interests (be they political, financial, or personal), for making political slogans instead of real and valuable change.

I commonly mention that 9/11 didn’t really affect me; I’ve never been to New York, I didn’t know anyone who was hurt or killed in the WTC or the Pentagon or Flight 93.  But then I realize that we all — every American, every Muslim in the entire world, and every Arab now viewed as a terrorist because of their skin color, every airline passenger — were affected by the events of that September day in 2001.

And years later, I don’t know that it matters too much who is responsible for it.  The lessons to be learned — the most valuable ones, to me — have more to do with preparedness, with watching our elected (ha!) leaders more carefully, with not blinding ourselves behind a veil of patriotism.

And in the meantime, I should mention that as long as the victims are remembered and their stories repeated, they will never really be gone.