In retrospect, the 9/11 attacks may have been something of a rationalist awakening for me. Not in the sense of making me want to approach the world in a rational way, that I've had as long as I can remember. Rather, I think it may have marked my realization that I was living in world where communal failures of sanity posed a greater threat than mere hostility, and in our fervor to address the problem, we were going to make things much, much worse, and neither the people in power or the people who voted them into office could be trusted to know better.