The History Channel's mockumentary "9/11 Conspiracies -- Fact or Fiction?" puts me in the mind of the old Camp Chaos cartoon "MP3 Music -- Good or Goblin?" Somebody high up in the History Channel's chain of command was ordered to or decided that something had to be done to muddy the waters of debate or at least make a gesture of superiority toward the already maligned "conspiracy" movement. The condescending tone of the hit piece reflected a growing anxiety in the mainstream press about the fact that this old story won't go away quickly. ("For your amusement, here are some conspiracy wackos, followed by the opinions of experts who dismiss their claims.")

But the message from corporate media to 9/11 Truthers is clearer than ever despite the muddying: "Don't believe your eyes, believe what we tell you. Those buildings? They didn't blow up! You have no evidence those buildings blew up. You have no evidence that the buildings you see blowing up in those videos were blowing up. You have no evidence. You have no evidence."

The short cartoon depicting the "progressive collapse" of the Twin Towers was laughably inaccurate, but probably the most morbid aspect of the hit piece, because it is graphically changing the story of how nearly 3000 people died. It is the story of 3000 assassinations, reduced to a slapstick cartoon. The cartoon shows no dust cloud and no pyroclastic flow, and it shows the tops of the Twin Towers crashing intact all the way through the buildings per the story of Bazant et al.

That is the story we are supposed to swallow. The tops of the buildings crushed the bottom 80-90% of the buildings almost (within 30%) as quickly as the tops of the buildings would have fallen the same distance through the air. To believe that you have to believe that the tops remained intact practically until they hit the lobby, whereupon they crumbled into mostly dust. Also you must believe that the entirety of the buildings crashed down, and none of it up or out as the videos show.

That is their story, contradicted by video evidence. Yet they get away with saying that there is no evidence that the buildings exploded. I think they are hoping that eventually all the videos of the Twin Towers exploding will disappear; and perhaps after enough time and after replaying enough cartoons of the mythical collapses, the myths will be remembered longer than the videos and come to replace them as the truth.

For that is the fate of past events, to be lost in time and replaced by the stories we tell about them. Since ancient times the power elite has relied on the short memories of people to erase the wrongdoing of leaders. Even now, humanity is collectively forgetting the lessons learned by the Holocaust. What was it we learned from that again? Oh yeah, something about, um, don't be a Jew, or something.

People have short memories, and that usually means that history that isn't taught will be forgotten, and meanwhile any outrageous lies that are taught as history will be remembered. Today our beliefs about the past are a tangled web of lies and half-truths indistinguishable from genuine historical events. But in centuries to come, that may no longer be the case.

We have the power now to preserve audio and video of our lives potentially forever. Not because computers will preserve recordings forever, but because people can share them forever. Hard drives will burn out and data disks can melt but as long as the internet is shared it will outlive the hardware. Our memories too can outlive our hardware, and that has been the benefit of storytelling since the days that people began to learn language. Now, we are learning a new language that transcends our short lifetimes. If we will it, the internet can outlive ourselves and our current implementation of it; and all data can be preserved forever, if it continues to be shared. That is something that the usual process of mythmaking cannot erase.

No longer does telling new stories serve to replace the old stories. Instead, the old and new are simultaneous. The truth lives on while the lies are circulating. The videos will still be around in 100 years if we keep them alive. The question is, what will people think about the videos and what will people think about the myth that is trying to replace them? Obviously no one can answer that. But maybe if we try hard enough, no matter what wars and bloodshed are to come, the truth can outlive ourselves.