You Have To Have Faith To Deny Facts
On this somber occasion, I would first ask that anyone still reading my blog, if you haven't already, check out the 2,996 project. Although they're having bandwidth troubles, the project had the very noble goal of remembering the lives of all the souls who lost their lives on 9/11.
I happened to be listening to WXNT 1430 AM's "Abdul in the Morning" as I went into work and one of the topics that came up on the anniversary of 9/11 was that of conspiracy theories related to it. The most common, and undoubtedly the most extreme, revolve around the Bush administration or some element therein (Rove, Cheney, even Ashcroft when he was AG) or a combination of those being responsible for the whole catastrophe, either by letting it happen on purpose (LIHOP) or making it happen on purpose (MIHOP).
First, it strikes me as incredible that so many of these theories can exist in light of all of it playing out right in front of our eyes. There was no hearsay, no second guessing. We saw it and could easily map the history of our enemies that led up to it. They didn't make a strong attempt to cover their tracks, nor is there any evidence they wanted to.
Many of these theories continue to survive, even in the face of honest, dedicated non-partisan research that end up fully debunking them. Of course, it has occurred to me that believing a conspiracy theory is the easy part. It's often said the best conspiracy theory is one which has no real proof. A certain level of faith is required. I find it even more interesting that individuals who have faith in little else will so wholeheartedly throw themselves behind such enterprises with nothing but that to sustain them.
What drives people to cling to these theories and espouse them quite loudly on each anniversary of 9/11? Well, some could be explained by a need to believe things aren't so cut and dry. Some simply cling to certain bits of quirky or weak evidence as proof that the whole story can't be trusted and some simply don't like the current administration or Congress and see such things as natural fodder for their hatred. Sometimes it's a combination of those and certainly it's not limited to those possibilities.
Whatever they believe, they cling to it as a sort of blind faith. I see the allure in it and have succumbed to it myself in the past, but sometimes seeing things with your own eyes and hearing things with your own ears trumps even the strongest skeptic. Seeing the planes hit, hearing the passengers' and crews' calls that give us an almost blow-by-blow account of what happend on those planes, does more to convince me than 100 conspiracy sites.
I am interested, though, in how after all these years people still don't believe. Then again, there are always deniers. I remember reading of when Eisenhower first saw the death camps in Germany, he ordered as many men as possible be cycled through to see them because "someday someone is going to say this didn't happen". And so someone has, often. There will always be doubters, I suppose, and I will admit that most likely there are portions of our history that we don't know the whole story on. On this, though, having lived through it with the rest of you, the normal skepticism just doesn't hold a thimble full of water.
Maybe we need these people to keep us honest or maybe they're just a given fact of the human condition, that some can't believe what's right in front of their eyes even if you hit them over the head with it. Whatever the reason, it happened. It's been taken credit for by evil men. We have the historical trail to link them to it. We have over 1400 years of history to know why they did it. The facts are there, and I for one don't intend to let them be forgotten.
Update 1: The Editor-in-Chief of Popular Mechanics, James Meigs, has written an op-ed in the New York Post about the response he's gotten by conspiracy theorists to his magazine's work on debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories. It's worth the read (hat tip to Newsbusters).
On this somber occasion, I would first ask that anyone still reading my blog, if you haven't already, check out the 2,996 project. Although they're having bandwidth troubles, the project had the very noble goal of remembering the lives of all the souls who lost their lives on 9/11.
I happened to be listening to WXNT 1430 AM's "Abdul in the Morning" as I went into work and one of the topics that came up on the anniversary of 9/11 was that of conspiracy theories related to it. The most common, and undoubtedly the most extreme, revolve around the Bush administration or some element therein (Rove, Cheney, even Ashcroft when he was AG) or a combination of those being responsible for the whole catastrophe, either by letting it happen on purpose (LIHOP) or making it happen on purpose (MIHOP).
First, it strikes me as incredible that so many of these theories can exist in light of all of it playing out right in front of our eyes. There was no hearsay, no second guessing. We saw it and could easily map the history of our enemies that led up to it. They didn't make a strong attempt to cover their tracks, nor is there any evidence they wanted to.
Many of these theories continue to survive, even in the face of honest, dedicated non-partisan research that end up fully debunking them. Of course, it has occurred to me that believing a conspiracy theory is the easy part. It's often said the best conspiracy theory is one which has no real proof. A certain level of faith is required. I find it even more interesting that individuals who have faith in little else will so wholeheartedly throw themselves behind such enterprises with nothing but that to sustain them.
What drives people to cling to these theories and espouse them quite loudly on each anniversary of 9/11? Well, some could be explained by a need to believe things aren't so cut and dry. Some simply cling to certain bits of quirky or weak evidence as proof that the whole story can't be trusted and some simply don't like the current administration or Congress and see such things as natural fodder for their hatred. Sometimes it's a combination of those and certainly it's not limited to those possibilities.
Whatever they believe, they cling to it as a sort of blind faith. I see the allure in it and have succumbed to it myself in the past, but sometimes seeing things with your own eyes and hearing things with your own ears trumps even the strongest skeptic. Seeing the planes hit, hearing the passengers' and crews' calls that give us an almost blow-by-blow account of what happend on those planes, does more to convince me than 100 conspiracy sites.
I am interested, though, in how after all these years people still don't believe. Then again, there are always deniers. I remember reading of when Eisenhower first saw the death camps in Germany, he ordered as many men as possible be cycled through to see them because "someday someone is going to say this didn't happen". And so someone has, often. There will always be doubters, I suppose, and I will admit that most likely there are portions of our history that we don't know the whole story on. On this, though, having lived through it with the rest of you, the normal skepticism just doesn't hold a thimble full of water.
Maybe we need these people to keep us honest or maybe they're just a given fact of the human condition, that some can't believe what's right in front of their eyes even if you hit them over the head with it. Whatever the reason, it happened. It's been taken credit for by evil men. We have the historical trail to link them to it. We have over 1400 years of history to know why they did it. The facts are there, and I for one don't intend to let them be forgotten.
Update 1: The Editor-in-Chief of Popular Mechanics, James Meigs, has written an op-ed in the New York Post about the response he's gotten by conspiracy theorists to his magazine's work on debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories. It's worth the read (hat tip to Newsbusters).
posted by Rob Beck | 2:19 PM
1 Comments:
These conspiracy theories are most ridiculous when coming from Democrats, who are arguing for the supreme efficiency of the Bush Administration. Think about it- Bush took office in January 2001. It takes several months to place new people in all the Federal offices. And yet, in that scant time, the President at once reviled by so many on the left as an idiot was somehow capable of secretly orchestrating a sophisitcated series of catastrophic attacks... on ourselves?
Wow. Pass these clowns the tinfoil hats.
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