Time To Grow Up
I remember during the Clinton years the host of conspiracy theories that surrounded him and his wife. Did he have Vince Foster, Ron Brown, or any host of other people killed? There were even web sites devoted to the alleged body count. While Clinton was Attorney General and then governor of one of the leading drug import states in the country during the 70's and 80's, and one wonders how the drug cartels were able to operate so unmolested during his tenure, there is no proof of any wrong doing in any of those instances. Clinton was a poor President, lied under Oath and was impeached. It was never "all about sex", for anyone that actually followed the charges against him, but like the Teflon Man he was, many of the charges didn't stick.
The thing about most conspiracy theories is, they are self-sustaining. The best conspiracy theories are the ones you can't prove, it is often said, and certainly the 90's was full of them for Clinton. I will not be the last to say that many were generated out of severe dislike or even hate for the man and had little basis in fact. That's why you don't hear much about them today. Sometimes you just have to grow up and move on.
The current President, George W. Bush, has acquired his share of conspiracy theories, even more grand and loony than his predecessor. We start with the tame ones, like he didn't complete his Guard service. Rather still is standing by that canard. There are plenty about his connections and his family connections to Nazis and Saudis and Lions and Tigers and Bears. Just google them and you'll find hundreds of sites, many not surprisingly out of the country and many not so surprisingly linked to "social justice" and anti-war sites, leftovers from the old ANSWER days (yes, amazingly it often comes back to that). None has been so pathetic or ridiculous, I think, than the recent push to claim that Bush and his "Company" were responsible for 9/11.
The loonies at Democratic Underground, my favorite place to shop for leftist drivel, have recently pushed a wave of "experiments" designed to show how the WTC couldn't have been felled by mere jet fuel and weaking of the structure. The story is getting play at some college campuses and even a few mainstream liberals are seemingly unwilling to discount such an occurrence is possible.
Kids, when did we get here? I'm just wondering. I remember right after 9/11 going through this same thing with the creepy Lone Gunmen episode that only months before showed a "shadow government" attempt to crash planes into the WTC to restart the global war market (because, of course, during Clinton's terms there was no war). But it's about as significant as the apocryphal story of classical music suddenly playing right before the Trinity Test. Interesting, even a little eerie, but irrelevant. Such theories and stories may help some make sense of the senseless, but even the most diehard conspiracy gurus have to give way to the onslaught of questions that challenge their theory.
In the case of 9/11, how do you explain the fact that the hijackers were on the planes(confirmed by video at the airports), can be confirmed by recorded conversations piloting and assaulting people on the planes, the extensive documentation of United 93, the video of the plane crashing into the Pentagon and the WTC, the engineering studies that easily showed how the jet fuel is more than just a little kerosene over some chicken wire and how it turned the temperature in the WTC core to one that could warp and deform steel, how Al Qaeda has gone to great lengths to try and claim credit for the occurrence, even resorting to "No, really, it was us" statements when faced with true skeptics. Stop me if this gets complicated. It's bad when some of your own people won't believe you or your enemy. Sometimes you have to be a grown up and accept what logic tells you is true.
Set aside your hatred for Bubba or GW and look at things rationally. What could have happened? What logically could have taken place? Could Bush have been behind some master conspiracy to bring the U.S. back to war footing? There just isn't the evidence. Set aside the hatred for him and for his winning the 2000 election by the electoral college instead of the popular vote, and there really is no reason to blame a sitting President for mass murder in this case. Hell, I won't even blame Bubba C (although that he felt no remorse for what his own branch of government did is the height of sociopathy) for Waco and those are confirmed cases of the U.S. government killing its own citizenry. Janet Reno on the other hand...
I'm a reasonable man, at least I like to think I am and I'm willing to entertain real evidence. Some real evidence, I've seen, like an ATF agent letting three other agents enter a room that he then immediately sprays with automatic fire convinced me something was rotten with the Waco massacre. None of the books or web sites that allege to show the "truth" about 9/11 can get that obvious of a smoking gun. There are mountains of "What Ifs" and conjecture, but nothing that you look at and say "Now wait just a damn minute". It's just not there. Time to grow up boys and girls.
We're in a war, like it or not, and we have to deal with that present. Until then, mainstream libs and even hardcore leftists entertaining such ridiculous theories does their cause little good and only seems to further insulate them from the reality and problems we really do face. If they can't step out of their dreamscape and handle the real problems, even offer real solutions, then we're wasting our breath on just about every other issue. Something to consider.
I remember during the Clinton years the host of conspiracy theories that surrounded him and his wife. Did he have Vince Foster, Ron Brown, or any host of other people killed? There were even web sites devoted to the alleged body count. While Clinton was Attorney General and then governor of one of the leading drug import states in the country during the 70's and 80's, and one wonders how the drug cartels were able to operate so unmolested during his tenure, there is no proof of any wrong doing in any of those instances. Clinton was a poor President, lied under Oath and was impeached. It was never "all about sex", for anyone that actually followed the charges against him, but like the Teflon Man he was, many of the charges didn't stick.
The thing about most conspiracy theories is, they are self-sustaining. The best conspiracy theories are the ones you can't prove, it is often said, and certainly the 90's was full of them for Clinton. I will not be the last to say that many were generated out of severe dislike or even hate for the man and had little basis in fact. That's why you don't hear much about them today. Sometimes you just have to grow up and move on.
The current President, George W. Bush, has acquired his share of conspiracy theories, even more grand and loony than his predecessor. We start with the tame ones, like he didn't complete his Guard service. Rather still is standing by that canard. There are plenty about his connections and his family connections to Nazis and Saudis and Lions and Tigers and Bears. Just google them and you'll find hundreds of sites, many not surprisingly out of the country and many not so surprisingly linked to "social justice" and anti-war sites, leftovers from the old ANSWER days (yes, amazingly it often comes back to that). None has been so pathetic or ridiculous, I think, than the recent push to claim that Bush and his "Company" were responsible for 9/11.
The loonies at Democratic Underground, my favorite place to shop for leftist drivel, have recently pushed a wave of "experiments" designed to show how the WTC couldn't have been felled by mere jet fuel and weaking of the structure. The story is getting play at some college campuses and even a few mainstream liberals are seemingly unwilling to discount such an occurrence is possible.
Kids, when did we get here? I'm just wondering. I remember right after 9/11 going through this same thing with the creepy Lone Gunmen episode that only months before showed a "shadow government" attempt to crash planes into the WTC to restart the global war market (because, of course, during Clinton's terms there was no war). But it's about as significant as the apocryphal story of classical music suddenly playing right before the Trinity Test. Interesting, even a little eerie, but irrelevant. Such theories and stories may help some make sense of the senseless, but even the most diehard conspiracy gurus have to give way to the onslaught of questions that challenge their theory.
In the case of 9/11, how do you explain the fact that the hijackers were on the planes(confirmed by video at the airports), can be confirmed by recorded conversations piloting and assaulting people on the planes, the extensive documentation of United 93, the video of the plane crashing into the Pentagon and the WTC, the engineering studies that easily showed how the jet fuel is more than just a little kerosene over some chicken wire and how it turned the temperature in the WTC core to one that could warp and deform steel, how Al Qaeda has gone to great lengths to try and claim credit for the occurrence, even resorting to "No, really, it was us" statements when faced with true skeptics. Stop me if this gets complicated. It's bad when some of your own people won't believe you or your enemy. Sometimes you have to be a grown up and accept what logic tells you is true.
Set aside your hatred for Bubba or GW and look at things rationally. What could have happened? What logically could have taken place? Could Bush have been behind some master conspiracy to bring the U.S. back to war footing? There just isn't the evidence. Set aside the hatred for him and for his winning the 2000 election by the electoral college instead of the popular vote, and there really is no reason to blame a sitting President for mass murder in this case. Hell, I won't even blame Bubba C (although that he felt no remorse for what his own branch of government did is the height of sociopathy) for Waco and those are confirmed cases of the U.S. government killing its own citizenry. Janet Reno on the other hand...
I'm a reasonable man, at least I like to think I am and I'm willing to entertain real evidence. Some real evidence, I've seen, like an ATF agent letting three other agents enter a room that he then immediately sprays with automatic fire convinced me something was rotten with the Waco massacre. None of the books or web sites that allege to show the "truth" about 9/11 can get that obvious of a smoking gun. There are mountains of "What Ifs" and conjecture, but nothing that you look at and say "Now wait just a damn minute". It's just not there. Time to grow up boys and girls.
We're in a war, like it or not, and we have to deal with that present. Until then, mainstream libs and even hardcore leftists entertaining such ridiculous theories does their cause little good and only seems to further insulate them from the reality and problems we really do face. If they can't step out of their dreamscape and handle the real problems, even offer real solutions, then we're wasting our breath on just about every other issue. Something to consider.
posted by Rob Beck | 12:02 PM
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