It's a conspiracy!

For those of you who have been living under a rock, a gas truck crashed on the MacArthur Maze just east of the Bay Bridge and destroyed two overpasses.  It's going to be a pain getting to my mom's this weekend.

My buddy Rob pointed out: "a terrorist couldn't have planned it better."  It wasn't a terrorist; it was a sloppy truck driver.  But that made me realize two things:

(1) People freak out way too much over terrorism.  What if Al Qaeda had stepped forward and claimed responsibility?  "That truck driver was actually one of our operatives.  He is in heaven now, enjoying is 72 black-eyed virgins."  If that had happened, people would have FREAKED THE FUCK OUT.  I'd be hearing F-16's overhead right now, patrolling San Francisco airspace "just in case."  National Guard in green camouflage standing next to the bright orange Golden Gate Bridge.  Republicans making speeches on TV about how we need to stay in Iraq.  But what actually would have been different?  Not a darn thing.  Our ability to handle a crisis is actually pretty good.  But when it comes to terrorism people lose their minds.  It's not just the Bush administration and the Republicans.  It's the press, it's everyone.

When we lose the ability for rational thought, we end up harming ourselves and the whole world.

(2) I also realized: the CIA has been doing their job.  Seriously, how hard is it for an angry Muslim to crash a truck?  It's not like we don't have angry Muslims in this country.  (Most of them are loyal Americans, but that's not my point.)  We've heard about a couple foiled plots--bombing the Sears Tower, or popping off a bomb in a mall in Idaho--but they haven't actually managed to do a single thing.  An angry college kid with a couple handguns was able to wreak more American civilian casualties than all of Al Qaeda.

Therefore, the CIA has been doing its job.  They have been so damn vigilant that there isn't even a single angry Muslim truck driver in this country.  Of course, this security has come at a high price: the CIA has been violating the Constitution and international law the way Michael Moore eats donuts.  Mass arrests of Muslims in America . . . sending prisoners to foreign countries to be tortured . . . secret prisons throughout Europe . . . Guantanamo Bay . . .  These are new scars on the American psyche that will take a generation to heal.  American society is like an angry teenager who cuts himself in order to express his angst.

But, there hasn't been a single terrorist attack on American soil in five and a half years.  That's very impressive.

Bottom line: I've got a final tomorrow.  Regardless of who burned that bridge, life goes on.

J