One reason there are 9/11 conspiracy theorists
Bookworm on Sep 11 2006 at 2:54 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
People’s thoughts, especially their irrational thoughts, are affected by their era. In pre-modern times, schizophrenics were all talking to the Devil; in the middle of the 20th Century, their messages came from Mars; and nowadays it’s all about government conspiracies. Schizophrenics, of course, are at the extreme margin of thought, but they’re a useful illustration of how societal paradigms affect all thinking.
I’m blathering about this for a reason. A Marin resident who denies Islamist involvement in 9/11, and is pretty sure it’s a U.S. government conspiracy, explains why he’s comfortable looking for conspiracies:
[Dwight] Loop, a baby boomer who describes himself as “a history buff,” said, “I’ve been interested in things in U.S. history that have been unexplained. I was 11 when (President John F.) Kennedy was killed. That had an effect on my life.” [Emphasis mine.]
What we’re seeing playing out here is grassy knoll stuff writ large.
Related posts:
- The triumph of faith over reason
- A voice of reason has hijacked the LA Times re Hamas
- One more reason we don’t need to read the Times
Email This Post To A Friend
4 Responses to “One reason there are 9/11 conspiracy theorists”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
More grassy knoll stuff writ large, at the Paragraph Farm.
Although, of course,I debunked it, with a little help.
I’m not surprised by your post, Bookworm.
Dr. Sanity diagnoses it as complete denial –or in-sanity– but I think it represents at soul’s depth a basic repudiation of America. Down deep these people have abandoned allegiance. They need justification, and so have found it.
Invoking a ghost of a unity that this day should summon, Instapunk poses a shattering question that exposes more of the evil of these Holocas//I mean 9-11– Deniers.
Instapunk considers the hope and safety one man has given America.
What BESIDES death and despair has been given by these Deniers to America, or to the world–especially Iraqis– for all this time?
“What would the past five years have been like, I couldn’t help wondering, if debate and criticism had proceeded atop the civil platform of agreement that the President was really trying to do his best in a terrible crisis that almost no one had anticipated? Imagine that everyone had been sober and serious all along, as if the responsibility were theirs and not someone else’s. Imagine that the opposition to the administration’s policies had been more substantive than personal, focused on alternative proposals rather than autopsies of irrevocable decisions past. Imagine that all of us were dealing with today’s reality instead of pet grievances from months or years ago. Isn’t it possible that the critics might have had more impact on events, that the defenders of American policy might have listened and responded more thoughtfully.”
http://www.instapunk.com/archives/InstaPunkArchiveV2.php3?a=898
I appreciate the paradigm busting going on in my mind right now as I consider the new [to me] notion that the crazies responsible for the modern conspiracy theories are the ones who have always influenced society with their mass hysteria.
Thanks for the thought.
May I offer one more link about this?
Check this below; NOTE: IT may take time to load (lots of photographs; some repeated). A very lively comments section follows.
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/how-george-soros-and-the-left-remember-911