Maybe I wouldn't be a "9/11 Truther"

Maybe I wouldn't be a truther, if 9/11 wasn't the instigation for the wars that put a purple heart on my friend's chest.

Maybe if it weren't for the billions of dollars being pissed away on our foreign wars, coming out of our paychecks.

Maybe if it weren't for the increased calls for militarization of our local police forces, resulting in DHS grants buying everything from tasers to tanks for the cops in my neighborhood.

Maybe if it weren't for me being “red flagged” at the airport, having my guitar case swapped for anthrax and my carry-on bag ripped apart looking for drugs, by an incompetent TSA goon who managed to miss the several live .30-30 rounds that were left in there by mistake.

Maybe if it weren't for that half-gallon Crown Royal jug that used to sit on my desk, collecting donations for a dead soldier's memorial.

Maybe if it weren't for the cop who pulled me over for drinking a bottle of water, and then asking me all manner of irrelevant questions bound for our newly-created “fusion centers”.

Most importantly, maybe I wouldn't be a truther if I didn't have any concept of basic physics, the entry-level knowledge of government S.O.P., didn't know that cellphones don't work in airplanes unless they're specifically equipped with a satellite link and Flight 93 didn't have any “air phones” on board, I'd never seen videos of a controlled demo on career day in high school, had never even thought about trying to recreate Oswald's miraculous feat, I actually believed anything that ever came out of the mouths of George Bush or Dick Cheney (or any other elected official, for that matter), had ever seen video footage of any of my multiple arrests magically become “unavailable” in the same manner that all of the surveillance footage of buildings surrounding the Pentagon seemed to disappear, didn't know about Building 7 of the World Trade Center falling down in the exact same manner as WTC 1 and 2 without ever having been hit by an airplane, had never seen the photos of plane crashes where the plane wreckage didn't evaporate, had never seen high-speed hard metal impacting into concrete, and all the other bullshit goings-on in my lifetime.

To quote my grandma, “If 'ifs and buts' were candy and nuts, we'd all have a wonderful Christmas”. Until then, I'm gonna continue to question shit. That's life, and life sucks sometimes. If life were gravy, I wouldn't be sitting here typing this while wondering how many decades ago the wallpaper curling up behind my monitor had been hanging on that wall...but just like that wallpaper, the evils of government were here before me and will likely be here after me. It don't mean that I'm gonna stop asking questions...