There is an intellectual scum that grows in our culture enriched by Hollywood scripts and inflammatory bloggers, media personalities, and even academic elites, the conspiracy theorists.
Whether it’s a myriad of explanations refuting the Warren Commission findings, the notion that somehow the United States government staged the attacks of 9/11/01, or that the Apollo moon landings were faked, there is always a significant number of total idiots from all walks of life who believe such nonsense. Going back into the 1950’s, adding fluoride to drinking water was supposed to be a government plot to sterilize the American population. Surely as far back as the 1860’s, we could probably find theories on Lincoln’s assassination too.
Unfortunately, as American citizens, we enjoy the implied absolute right to be profoundly stupid, but the conspiracy mindset stoked by radio talk show hosts, and movie directors like Oliver Stone and Michael Moore, never ceases to demand way too much attention. How many Oliver Stone movies do not involve some kind of far-fetched conspiracy as a key compenent to the plot? Nevertheless, his works almost take on the tone of being documentaries. In the case of Michael Moore, his approach is to never let the truth stand in the way of fabricating false images of his political adversaries for the sake of advancing his agenda.
The one thing we can give credit to the paranoid sickos who believe this nonsense. There is certain wisdom to mistrust the government and conventional wisdom, but all three of the big ones: the Kennedy assassination, the Apollo landings, and the 9-11 attacks require a special degree of ignorance and paranoia to believe. First is the assumption that behind all of the various theories that counter the truth regarding these events is that somehow our government could have staged such massive cover ups and could have maintained their deception to pull such things off. To the extent the government keeps anything secret for long is highly problematic. Witness the ease to which the New York Times has been able to leak crucial national security secrets.
While there will always be a lunatic fringe, some striking surveys make this more than just something that’s way out there among the real nutcases who walk among us. For starters, about one third of the population doubts the official accounts of the 9/11 terror attacks. Other surveys show that about one in four individuals between the ages of 18 and 25 believe the moon landings never happened. Given that the last Apollo mission to the moon’s surface occurred in 1972, think of at what age a person would be too young to remember the moon landings especially considering that the later missions failed to gather the high degree of media hoopla that Apollo 11 to 14 gathered.
The psyche of the conspiracy believer is intriguing. First, the person is subject to undeniable ignorance believing a tremendous lie to be true. Second there are certain attitudinal components, a sense of false intellectual and moral superiority, that this small person has special insights into the truth that all the rest of us simply cannot grasp that we are the fools not them. Beyond that is a certain degree of paranoia that all kinds of forces around them: the government, media, historians, the public at large and the actual participants closest to the subject all conspire together to be able to pull off something as fantastic as being able to fake moon landings or that our government on some level would kill thousands of Americans toward some ideological aim.
While the consequences of silencing such fools is far more dangerous than letting their idiotic ideas out in the mainstream are far more dangerous, the media is guilty of giving these total jerks way too much of an elevated platform to spew their nonsense. Such pronouncements should be dealt with as would other extremists’ beliefs. This isn’t a matter of “we report, you decide.” This is more a matter of if such nonsense is worthy of being reported in the first place, how much scorn and ridicule should be assigned to such fruitcakes and clearly demonstrating entertaining such nonsense can only come from people who have serious character flaws and psychological disorders. Conspiracy thinking is truly pathological and should be reported as such.
How dangerous is it? Consider the case of Holocaust deniers, strident racists who argue the death of over six million Jews in Nazi death camps never happened. In its most extreme application, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Islamic-Fascist dictator and murderer of his own people in Iran, uses such big lies to justify the annihilation of Israel and death to the Jewish people.
Can we speculate that all conspiracy theories at their core embrace a certain kind of intellectual fascism?
For a person to appoint himself the self-perceived guardian of the truth contrary to the collective knowledge of educated people and the clearly established, observable and documentable truth exceeds being misguided. There truly is a fundamental sickness and evil at play.
It’s time to treat these lowly jerks as the cancer on the pursuit of knowledge and truth they truly are.
Whether it’s a myriad of explanations refuting the Warren Commission findings, the notion that somehow the United States government staged the attacks of 9/11/01, or that the Apollo moon landings were faked, there is always a significant number of total idiots from all walks of life who believe such nonsense. Going back into the 1950’s, adding fluoride to drinking water was supposed to be a government plot to sterilize the American population. Surely as far back as the 1860’s, we could probably find theories on Lincoln’s assassination too.
Unfortunately, as American citizens, we enjoy the implied absolute right to be profoundly stupid, but the conspiracy mindset stoked by radio talk show hosts, and movie directors like Oliver Stone and Michael Moore, never ceases to demand way too much attention. How many Oliver Stone movies do not involve some kind of far-fetched conspiracy as a key compenent to the plot? Nevertheless, his works almost take on the tone of being documentaries. In the case of Michael Moore, his approach is to never let the truth stand in the way of fabricating false images of his political adversaries for the sake of advancing his agenda.
The one thing we can give credit to the paranoid sickos who believe this nonsense. There is certain wisdom to mistrust the government and conventional wisdom, but all three of the big ones: the Kennedy assassination, the Apollo landings, and the 9-11 attacks require a special degree of ignorance and paranoia to believe. First is the assumption that behind all of the various theories that counter the truth regarding these events is that somehow our government could have staged such massive cover ups and could have maintained their deception to pull such things off. To the extent the government keeps anything secret for long is highly problematic. Witness the ease to which the New York Times has been able to leak crucial national security secrets.
While there will always be a lunatic fringe, some striking surveys make this more than just something that’s way out there among the real nutcases who walk among us. For starters, about one third of the population doubts the official accounts of the 9/11 terror attacks. Other surveys show that about one in four individuals between the ages of 18 and 25 believe the moon landings never happened. Given that the last Apollo mission to the moon’s surface occurred in 1972, think of at what age a person would be too young to remember the moon landings especially considering that the later missions failed to gather the high degree of media hoopla that Apollo 11 to 14 gathered.
The psyche of the conspiracy believer is intriguing. First, the person is subject to undeniable ignorance believing a tremendous lie to be true. Second there are certain attitudinal components, a sense of false intellectual and moral superiority, that this small person has special insights into the truth that all the rest of us simply cannot grasp that we are the fools not them. Beyond that is a certain degree of paranoia that all kinds of forces around them: the government, media, historians, the public at large and the actual participants closest to the subject all conspire together to be able to pull off something as fantastic as being able to fake moon landings or that our government on some level would kill thousands of Americans toward some ideological aim.
While the consequences of silencing such fools is far more dangerous than letting their idiotic ideas out in the mainstream are far more dangerous, the media is guilty of giving these total jerks way too much of an elevated platform to spew their nonsense. Such pronouncements should be dealt with as would other extremists’ beliefs. This isn’t a matter of “we report, you decide.” This is more a matter of if such nonsense is worthy of being reported in the first place, how much scorn and ridicule should be assigned to such fruitcakes and clearly demonstrating entertaining such nonsense can only come from people who have serious character flaws and psychological disorders. Conspiracy thinking is truly pathological and should be reported as such.
How dangerous is it? Consider the case of Holocaust deniers, strident racists who argue the death of over six million Jews in Nazi death camps never happened. In its most extreme application, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Islamic-Fascist dictator and murderer of his own people in Iran, uses such big lies to justify the annihilation of Israel and death to the Jewish people.
Can we speculate that all conspiracy theories at their core embrace a certain kind of intellectual fascism?
For a person to appoint himself the self-perceived guardian of the truth contrary to the collective knowledge of educated people and the clearly established, observable and documentable truth exceeds being misguided. There truly is a fundamental sickness and evil at play.
It’s time to treat these lowly jerks as the cancer on the pursuit of knowledge and truth they truly are.
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