9/11 changed everything?

That's my guess of what Scott Adams is referring to:

Several years ago I was approached by some advisors for people in high places. I can’t give you the details of this story, or even tell you why I can’t give you the details. But the gist of it was that they needed help squelching some bad ideas that had taken hold in the public consciousness. They thought humor might be one part of the solution, and they were Dilbert fans, so they tracked me down. The challenge was that the bad ideas sounded terrific to the uninformed person. You couldn’t kill these particular bad ideas with logic because the arguments against them would be too complicated. You had to go in through the back door.

I suggested a few cleverly designed, hypnosis-inspired phrases that were the linguistic equivalent of Kung Fu. They were simple (that’s my specialty), and once you heard these phrases, they made any competing ideas seem frankly stupid. Think of Johnny Cochran’s famous refrain “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” In my opinion, O.J. is a free man largely because of that phrase. My phrases worked the same way.

The people in high places tried my phrases. The phrases became world headlines the next day. I could tune the TV to any news channel and hear my words coming out of pundits’ mouths. The phrases smothered the competing ideas and just maybe changed the course of world events. (One can never know for sure.)

This strikes me as very big news. The Dilbert Guy created the media meme for a generation?

I'm probably wrong on my guess, but I'm starting to grasp the way Adams thinks and the style of language he uses. Clearly he's referring to the "War on Terra" if his "high places" phrases were world headlines. The "9/11 changed everything" phrase strikes me as Adams-esque.

Any other candidates?

Go read his entire post. It's extraordinary. I'm in awe, and that's not an easy state to get me into.