9/11 truthers have taken over the Google search
The other day I was looking for some information about a certain passenger on one of the 9/11 flights that crashed. To find it, I Googled something like “passenger lists 9/11 flights,” thinking that would do the trick, and up popped this—link after link to 9/11-truther sites, with only a few links here and there featuring the straight information.
You have to get all the way to page 4 to find the Wiki links on the 9/11 airplanes, and even then that’s just a little blip in the cascade of 9/11-truther articles that follows. I got all the way to page 10 and still found that the truther links seemed to outnumber the bona fide ones on that page. Truther articles are either more numerous than the straight ones, or else they seem to be designed or promoted in some manner that raises their status on the Google algorithm.
Either way, the person seeking information about 9/11 passengers is now led through a labyrinth of truther lore, so much so that it overwhelms the search for the actual 9/11 story.
Sad, and telling.
I’m not sure who the average truther is (Wiki says their backgrounds are varied), but the ones I know (all two of them) are on the left. I’ve written before about the need to see conspiracies everywhere, but something about the 9/11-truthers—the weakness of their arguments, the intransigence of their beliefs, and the fact that they cannot accept what the 9/11 attacks meant and still mean—really gets my goat.
Truthers are numerous, too:
The first [poll] was conducted in August 2004, on the eve of a Republican National Convention, on 808 randomly selected residents of New York State. It found that 49 percent of New York City residents and 41 percent of New York state citizens believe individuals within the US government “knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act”. The margin of error for this poll was 3.5 percent…
Rasmussen Reports published the results of their poll May 4, 2007. According to their press release, “Overall, 22% of all voters believe the President knew about the attacks in advance. A slightly larger number, 29%, believe the CIA knew about the attacks in advance. White Americans are less likely than others to believe that either the President or the CIA knew about the attacks in advance. Young Americans are more likely than their elders to believe the President or the CIA knew about the attacks in advance.”, “Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.” and “Republicans reject that view and, by a 7-to-1 margin, say the President did not know in advance about the attacks. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 18% believe the President knew and 57% take the opposite view.”…
It’s worldwide, too:
There’s no doubt that part of the reason for all of this is the tendency in human nature to doubt the official word and to try to get inside info, the “real” scoop on what happened. Still other motivations are the tendency to blame and distrust government. But there is also a specific motivation on the left: to blame Bush et. al. and to simultaneously exonorate the Islamacist terrorists who actually committed their vile deeds on 9/11. From the looks of it, the left has been rather successful in doing so.
Strangely enough I was talking about this phenom with a good friend just the other day. We decided it was a classic variation on Gresham’s Law: “When a society compulsorily overvalues one type of lies and undervalues truth, the undervalued truth will leave the society or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued lies will flood into circulation.”
And now we wait for the closet truthers among the commenters to show up in 5,4,3,2,1….
I’ve never known (knowingly) any truthers, but I have run into them “asking” their “questions” in various places – walking in Union Square in NYC, standing in line at a Panera Bread in Tampa, and my strictly anecdotal impression is that they are overwhelmingly on the avowed Zinn/Chomsky left. They tend to dovetail with the Chuck Hagel, “Israel Lobby” types, forming a kind of mutant double helix of wack-a-doodle craziness
During the Bush years I was fascinated with the conspiracist mindset, in part because, although I used to politically crazy (anarchist), I never had any temptation toward conspiracy theories. I was just a Young Turk who didn’t think too deeply and extended his romantic and existentialist proclivities into areas where they don’t belong. Raymond Aron plus age and experience cured me of that. Still, I was struck by Chesterton’s insight in “Orthodoxy,” even in my crazy(-ier?) days, that the conspiracist mind is not rooted in a temptation to irrationalism, but rather to hyperrationalism, to having the security of perfectly transparent, emotionally satisfying, and morally proportionate explanations for everything (on the assumption that a Great Crime requires a Great Plot).
Of all the things that we human beings can do, living in liberty may be the hardest, because the first requirement of freedom is learning to live with uncertainty, risk, and the thousand little tragedies that beset human life in society that cannot be resolved. There is always a pull to the “secure” extremes, a desire that often has to be consciously fought to escape from freedom into either anarchist, “liberationist” fantasies, or fatalism.
The desire for security is natural if anything is, and obviously I myself have felt and occasionally succumbed to it as a determinant of my perspective on life. I tend to view conspiracism as ultimately – not necessarily proximately – springing from that source. It’s the same human urge that led to leechcraft rituals in primitive societies, meant to suck the witchery out of a scapegoat blamed for a death or some other misfortune. It makes things easier, as reason longs to do – identify the problem, explain its etiology, figure out the solution, employ the means and, finally, achieve the end, with as much certainty as possible.
In a prudent mind, things usually go well with reasoning, since there is no bashfulness about admitting ignorance or copping to the oddities of reality (crazy medieval religious fanatics blow up two of our buildings). But it is otherwise in an untempered mind.
The spread of trutherism is one more manifestation of the decline of (truly) liberal education, and the consequent failure to temper, order, and toughen the minds of the free citizens of this country. We go native; we go Brave New World; in either case, we go for the maximum emotional security in every confrontation with uncertainty and bizarreness.
Closing of the American Mind, indeed…
I find myself curious about the Venn overlap of the “don’t trust government” group with the “trust Obama” group… especially among younger voters.
Given the influence those malign individuals have had on our educational system, that explains the prevalence of these beliefs.
Tesh –
Bingo.
rickl –
Bingo.
I was in college when President Kennedy was assinated and the conspiracy theories were wild. It was done by the CIA, the FBI, Fidel Castro, the John Birchers. Back then we called them nuts, not truthers.
The founders contemplated an informed public and electorate. Which is one reason for the press freedom in the 1st amendment. But no one forsaw a huge portion of both an otherwise free press and a major political faction invested in pandering to idiots and keeping the citizenry dumbed down and ignorant. Who’d ever thought that?
Or is that naivete itself?
G. Joubert:
Well, let’s see:
I disagree with this last one, though:
My impression has always been that people without good reality-testing mechanisms will believe what they need to believe. And an awful lot of people on the left need to believe that there is no Islamist threat.
@G Joubert:
I think this is a durable feature of humanity at large. See, for example, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay.
The mind of the truthers is the mind of the unfaithful, the fearful, of those who lack purpose and power, of those who cannot resist pain or death;
christianity was founded not so much on theology as upon blood because blood counts; one man dying means a hell of a lot; one god dying may mean the whole human condition is purposeful; so thinks the Catholic Church;
set against those who believe in purpose are those who do not; the lack of an end powered by Transcendence requires an end powered by whichever conspiracy avails at the moment.
Hence, the truthers.
I always ask truthers: “How many people do you think were in on it? How are they being kept silent? Where is the American Airlines airplane, the passengers and crew, if the Pentagon was hit by a missile not by an airplane? How many people and how many days did it take to plant the explosives in the buildings and why didn’t the police, fire department, or workers in the buildings notice this activity? How has this all been concealed from the press?” And so on. Their answers are usually nonsensical or there is no answer at all. Of course, it doesn’t change their minds.
I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions.
They hate the truth because, like a lightning flash, the evil of September 11th laid bare the lies they live by, and dragged them naked and sprawling into the light of day, where the decent mind recoiled at the sight of their true nature.
They have made common cause with the moslem fanatics ever since: made regular pets of them, in fact. But even Their heads would explode if they ever copped to the truth of those they lay down with; it is the truth about themselves they are frantic to deny.
One other point: deep down, the “truthers” do know what they most want to not-know: their frantic activity covering it up, like a Geiger counter clicking faster and faster, spikes when they get too close to the radioactive core.
When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything- Chesterton.
I wonder if some of this Truther paranoia has to do with how the last few generations of people have grown up? If you look at a lot of the movies, there is always a conspiracy that the main protagonist has to overcome. And they generally do it within the 90-100 minutes the film runs. Unless you work in the area that the movie relates to, you have no basis for what reality really is.(Real DA’s have an ongoing problem with the common folk juries think everything should be just as it is in CSI dramas.)
You take that idea with the lack of the education profession to really educate the students in critical thinking and one can see why the “Truther” idea is around. People don’t like reality. I remember a speaker saying that back in the 1970’s when the Apollo 18 drama was unfolding, the TV stations interrupted the Batman and Robin episode to report on the drama. And they received a boatload of hate snail mail about that decision. In looking at why, the speaker said that most of us would rather watch Batman and Robin where things are known to turn out well in the end rather than reality where people may die and remind us of our own mortality. In a similar way, perhaps the Truther’s find it easier to think that some Secret agency is moving the chess pieces around rather than face the fact that we may indeed fall to the barbarians. It would be interesting to see how many of the troops that fought the barbarians thought 9/11 was a big cover-up? I suspect they have seen reality and have little tolerance for fools and their theories.
JJ:
Your argument has merit. Please note, however, that the same argument — “where are all the eyewitnesses” — applies equally well to Benghazi.
Granted, it would take a far, far smaller conspiracy to silence the fifty-some-odd survivors of Benghazi, especially since they are reputed to work in some capacity for the CIA already. But we’re in the same territory nonetheless — The Government Knows Something What It Ain’t Telling Us.
Beverly – beautifully written posts – so true. It amazes me that the identities of the Seals who executed bin Laden could not be kept secret for more than a year after the event, even though revealing this information put the men and their families at tremendous risk. And yet truthers expect us to believe that everyone supposedly involved in planning and executing 9/11 has kept silent for over 10 years – and no one noticed them preparing the buildings for demolition – indeed, no one came forth after the event and said “I did see something suspicious but I didn’t know what it was.” Not one person. Additionally, not one lefty in the CIA or NSA (and I personally know someone who works for the NSA and is a real lefty) or other intelligence agency has come out and disclosed the secret? This just utterly strains credulity. As WWII wound down and Nazi death camps were discovered, Eisenhower, Patton and others made the locals and the press visit them lest anyone claim, at some future date, that the Holocaust never happened. Yet here we are – about 70 years later, and many people, including the idiot president of Iran, make exactly that claim. Another poster hit is just right – truthers refuse to face the truth even when it stares them in the face.
I enjoy a good conspiracy theory. It’s entertaining to see how disconnected events can be woven into something that sort of holds together. But, truther theories? Forget it. They hold about as much logical interest and rigor as the plot of Abbot and Costello Go to Mars. I mean, look, you can’t prove that they didn’t actually go to Mars, can you?
One thing that has always struck me about the conspiracy nuts (and continues to strike me even though I should know better at this point) is that is obvious they don’t actually believe their stories. Take the 9/11 truthers for example. Lets say you honestly believed that our government killed thousands of innocent people and successfully covered it up. What would the logical reaction be? Probably something that involves packing up the family and running to Canada. You certainly wouldn’t be handing out fliers on a street corner or posting long rants on the internet. THEY might come get you for that.
I’m not really sure what does drive these people, but a sincere belief that the government is out to get us isn’t part of it.
By the way, did anyone else notice the huge difference on the chart between the Palestinian Territories and Egypt and Jordan? Quite interesting. The Palestinians are actually more likely to blame al-Qaeda than the Mexicans.
Here in South Texas, most of the 911 truthers I run into are devotees of Ron Paul or as I call them, Paulistinians. Remember Debbie Medina on the Glenn Beck show saying the question is being asked.
Mike: I have long thought—and somewhere I think I have a post about this—that the prevalence of the belief in conspiracies surrounding Kennedy’s assassination was the template for the explosion of other conspiracy theories. It’s not that there weren’t conspiracy theories before that, but Kennedy’s assassination really made them proliferate among the population as a whole.
A more accurate reflection of world beliefs might be to combine “Al Qaeda” and “Don’t Know” (or at least put them on the same side of the chart), as I suspect that much of the general public in many countries, such as China, know that terrorists were behind 9/11 but don’t know (or care) about the name of the specific group. They aren’t conspiracy theorists, they are just uninterested.
That would drop the Asian countries to the bottom of the conspiracy scale, which would appear more appropriate. That would include Indonesia, a muslim country, but one where only a relative few blame the US or Israel – less than Mexicans do, for example – and fits the observation that the Indonesian public is far less radical (on average) than their middle eastern coreligionists.
One other interesting item – only a tiny minority of Turks blame Israel compared to their middle eastern neighbors. Turkey’s recent islamist shift seems to have had more impact on US/Turkey sentiment than it has to the long standing relationship secular Turkey has had with Israel. Something at least mildly positive at least.
trapdoc,
I’d take a slightly different view of the people who responded “don’t know”. You’ll notice Nigeria has a very low number of people in this category. Since the Nigerians probably don’t follow world events much more closely than the Indonesians (or the French) I think its reasonable to assume that this is less a matter of people not knowing than not wanting to say. The typical Chinese or Indonesian probably thinks something along the lines of “I don’t support al-Qaeda, but the Americans had it coming”. They reconcile the two by refusing to assign blame. While They’re not conspiracy theorists, its still discomforting.
On the Turks, I think what you’re seeing is nationalism instead of islamism. I say that because I’ve noticed a lot more of the former in turks I’ve met. Look at their graph next to Mexico. You have two very proud, but very poor countries with close ties to the US. They reconcile their pride and their poverty by blaming the Americans for holding them back.
Ma’am, I’ve battled these conspiracy idiots for years since I’ve discovered them. Their pseudoscientific paranoia combined with their utter inability to think critically leaves them in a stuporous state of incomprehensibility, yet they natter on. It’s become less a campaign to convince now and more one to proselytize, but they still pull some suckers in.
And yes, what they’ve done to f*** up Google searches aggravates me to no end. It’s not just plain Google, either; I’ve fallen across Truther “papers” (self published in truther “journals”, with laughable refereeing controls) in Google Scholar when looking up innocuous published items, such as Emergency Department responses on 9/11.
9/11 truthers are scum. Pure and simple.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t necessarily give credence to the figures cited about their numbers. Truthers have been very good about communicating with each other and ‘net-bombing results of any polls. Plus, they’ve been active and deliberate in casting people who’ve asked questions about certain aspects of 9/11 as being trutheristic when in fact context shows the opposite; one classic example is their attempt to make World Trade Center construction manager Frank DiMartini into someone who was “asking questions” about 9/11 (Mr. DiMartini died in the North tower’s collapse, and would have certainly been no truther!). Another is in claming former FAA head Mary Schiavo and MIT researcher James Quintiere as “truthers” for their Congerssional testimonies. Neither are (details available upon request). They also do things like cite firefighters who heard “explosions” as testifying about the presence of bombs and add their numbers. And in addition to such cheap tricks they’ve also stooped lower to simple things such as sock puppetry to skew poll numbers.
The numbers are exaggerated. I personally believe the numbers of true believers in the US is at best in the low 4 figure range, if that. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in the hundreds at best.
Truthers real numbers are revealed in their appearances. When a truther throws a “conference”, he’s lucky to get on the order of dozens of people to show up, if that. They’ve taken to associating with other “movements” (they tried to elbow their way into the Occupy protests, for example) and pretending that those numbers are reflective of people sympathetic to them.
Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about the numbers. Easy ways to test those hypotheses – such as observing results of polls and extrapolating how many truthers should therefore show up at large events, like Ground Zero 9/11 commemorations, or even truther-friendly events like what I call “paranoia conferences”. Again, dozens at best. – indicate that their numbers are extremely low. Even the JFK CT’ists think they’re crazy. Their numbers aren’t high, believe me.
Anyway… If you want info on 9/11 that hasn’t been infected by truthers, email me. I’ve compiled quite a bit of it since 2006. One site to start research at is Mark Roberts page (he’s a tour guide who’s compiled a remarkable number of truther-refuting information): https://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies/. 911myths.com is another good site. However, if you’re looking for just basic information, that can be scattered. The 9/11 Commision Report has some of it, the Moussaoui Trial evidence compilation has some, the James Randi Educational Foundation skeptic’s conspiracy theory subforum has a LOT … if you want, email me what you’re trying to discover and I’ll see what I can dig up. Or I can help in this comments thread if you’d rather.
I agree; JFK paranoia and pseudohistory is indeed the grandfather of all such “scholarship” (those are irony quotes, BTW). But 9/11 trutherism had something else going for it that led to it’s rise: It was one of the first large, historical events in the internet age, and it coincided with the explosion of the internet as being a readily available venue to self-publish opinions.
NASA/JPL engineer Ryan Mackey, notable among both 9/11 truthers and truther “debunkers” as being a particularly effective debunker wrote a long opinion piece on what role technology played in the explosion of what I’ve called “9/11 Conspiracy Fantasy”:
http://www.911myths.com/tgitc_1_0_final.pdf
If you’re curious, it’s worth a read.
The ardent core of truthers are muslims which I found out after spending/ wasting a three day weekend on Youtube rebutting them.
Though they posted from countries all over the planet — by the end — e v e r y last one self-admitted that they were muslims — and that conducting trutherism was part of their ‘personal jihad’ against the Jews. (!)
For infidels unaware: there is a faction of muslims — orchestrated from above — that has been given marching orders to spew trutherism — particularly the insane notion that the Jews were behind 9/11 — and to deflect all discussion of the ‘muslim 19.’
Trutherism is, apparently, a state sponsored disinformation campaign — run out of Saudi Arabia.
BTW, there were no Saudis conducting 9/11 operations.
The infamous 15 ‘Saudis’ were Yemenis traveling on KSA documents. OBL was a Yemeni, by blood. His father was made a Saudi by royal proclamation. (King’s best buddy.)
That proclamation doesn’t really cut it in Arab society.
So it’s no surprise that A L L of bin Laden’s personal bodyguards were Yemenis — never a Saudi. Only later, years later, did OBL permit non-Yemenis to function in his Black Guard.
Fellow infidels: you have to watch out for our ignorant and disinforming MSM. They never discuss the weird status of Yemenis inside KSA. Namely, that by royal edict, perpetual: all Yemenis of those tribes that assisted the dynastic king can receive aid and assistance from the Saud clan — down through time. Such assistance explicitly includes receiving travel documents under his, royal, authority — at no notice and no expense. A Yemeni merely need walk in and get ‘same day service.’ (The King pays for everything, royal, in KSA.)
You’ll commonly read of this or that ‘Saudi’ joining AQ on jihad. Be wary. Typically, such men are Yemenis that were born and raised in KSA. That makes them Saudis only in infidel eyes. Such a status doesn’t cut any mustard over there. Tribes are tribes. What’s a ‘nation’, anyway?
Because trutherism is a state sponsored project, it’s immune from sane rebuttal.
Remember that, if anything.
If 9/11 was an inside job, it would be one accomplished by the Left. See Fast and Furious for one recent case example, Verona for others.
They are the very definition of useful tools. The Left will use them and dispose of them when the Left sees fit.
Can someone post a part # found from one of the airliners. Every part of every plane has them. It is a requirement by the Transportation Safety Board. You do know they found a terrorist id card at the trade center site, made of plastic. All together 4 Id cards of terrorist made of plastic found. Now give me a positive id# from a plane. Please.
Oh ! The box-cutters were only mentioned by Fox-5 and CNN Barbra Olsen to Ted Olsen her husband and top notch Bush supporter and Neo-Con attorney. The FBI confirmed, it was impossible to make a cell phone call and no towers reported the calls, and the plane had no air-phones. So nobody ever mentioned the words, box-cutter that can be proven. Why would Ted Olsen Lie ? I only believe in evidence that would hold up in a court of law. Actually nothing about 9/11/2001 can be proven, except 4 of the so called hijackers are alive. Other countries put this stuff on the news, not the U.S. Some of you guys got the word truther mixed up with those of us who want the facts.
Waxey: I suggest that you get help.
Seriously.
Waxey just wants, neo-neocon to answer his questions ?
Give me those part # and proof of the phone calls. Just the facts.
Propaganda is useful in many ways. Reason, not so much. It’s only of use personally, if at that. Propaganda can be used on all 6.5 billion humans. Remember that one.
So the solution to people who you think lives in a cult, is to manipulate them out of it. If your manipulation skills are stronger, it just proves the fact that they believed as a puppet. If you cannot manipulate someone, then the fact that they may have good cause to believe whatever they believe is the truth, will have better personal evidence for it.
Reason, logic, evidence, will not help them. It’s not like it is helping the US out of the Left’s Utopian Deus Ex either, of course.
Oh, there’s the truther. Google alerts work great, don’t they?
Remember, everyone: The truther’s goal is not to illuminate and inform. It’s to induce the mere illusion of uncertainty in order to start a debate over nebulous details disconnected from all its context. If he really wanted proof of a part, all he had to do was look:
https://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies/aircraftpartsnyc911
http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=2601518&postcount=30
.. But then, if he did that, he couldn’t strike the pose of “just asking questions” to initiate his attempt at creating that illusion of doubt about the events, could he?
His response to this will be illustrative of the standard truther tactics: Jump to yet another talking point. It may be the firefighters quotes (out of context) that supposedly demonstrate explosives in the buildings. It may be the scientist who supposedly found evidence of thermite, thus supposedly proving the towers were intentionally collapsed. Maybe it’ll be the standard appeal to authority for all the “architects and engineers” who signed the petition calling for a reopening of the investigation of 9/11. But whatever it’ll be, it’ll already have been answered and refuted a long time ago (the whole “jet parts question” play has been in existence since 2007). Just go to the 911mytsh.com, the debunking911.com, the “Mark Roberts” collection of links (sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies), or the James Randi Educational Foundation Conspiracy Theories subforum. All of it will be there. In excruciating detail, unfortunately, but it’ll be there. But the bottom line is that:
1. You can bet any of the “questions” asked will have been answered years ago.
2. You can bet that the questions will be distortions of what really happened (for example, the “sounds of explosions”… look it up at one of those links)
3. You can bet they’ll lean on “experts” of questionable validity (for example, the physicist who committed multiple, egregious errors in his materials analysis in concluding he found thermite… when he really found paint).
4. You can be they’ll do their best to subtract any and all of the context they can in order to create that illusion of doubt.
But what you can’t bet on is that answering his question directly will satisfy him. He will simply gallop off to the next truther talking point – whether it be the supposed “stand down” order, or the “pilots couldn’t hit the buildings” claim, or the “cell phones don’t work at altitude” red herring… nothing. He’s simply trying to make it look as though there’s doubt about what “really happened”. So don’t engage him beyond what we’ve done so far. Just point him right back at the sources he’ll attempt to denigrate. And let him flail. If truthers had something truly substantial to give, they wouldn’t be shunned by the rest of the conspiracy addicts community (JFK’ers I’ve read ridicule truthers), let alone most of the political left (journalist Matt Taibbi and talking head Bill Maher – both very liberal figures – despise truthers, and there’s also Bill Clinton’s rejection of them). He’s all sound and fury, signifying nothing. As is the entirety of the so called “Truth” movement.
I`m having problems debating with one of these “truthers” any help would be appreciated here`s the discussion…
http://methamphetamineabusediscussionforum.yuku.com/topic/15111/911-A-Retrospective?page=1
Arnold James: if 9/11 truthers were persuadable by logic and reason they would have been persuaded long ago. If you mount an argument, they will move the goalpoints until you’re worn out.
There are thousands of articles debunking 9/11 truthers’ beliefs. Just refer them to some of them, such as, for example, this one and this.
The divide between those who accept the official consensus account of events and those that present what they claim are inconsistencies in that account is wide enough to deem these opposing forces diametric peoples. But, extremely dissimilar opinions isn’t exclusive to the topic of 9/11.
After having become a “Truther” myself I encounter extremely polarized opinions regularly. Obama is the man he claims to be vs. Obama is a construct, which would necessitate a government conspiracy. Israel is acting out of legitimate concern for its safety vs. Israel is engaged in intentional genocide and quite literally seeks to rule the planet, which would necessitate a government conspiracy. Bohemian Grove is an exclusive gentleman’s club vs. Bohemian Grove is a theater of occult activities, which would necessitate a government conspiracy. JFK was assassinated by Oswald alone vs. JFK was assassinated by persons working for US agencies, which would necessitate a government conspiracy. Do you see where I’m going with this?
So, isn’t it possible that the people who accept the official consensus account of the 9/11 events tend to view any alternative account of historical events as less likely? I haven’t been able to test this theory, but it would fit with my observations. Wouldn’t it be helpful for the groups on both sides of the debate to know each persons opinions of other controversial events?
I suspect that, many of the proponents of the official consensus account are more heavily invested in the belief that government is truthful, beneficial and protective of its citizens. It wouldn’t even enter their minds that none of us in the US are considered citizens in the first place. To then accept more complex scenarios involving elements of government acting in concert to deceive the masses would be inconceivable.
I blame most of this continued disbelief in government conspiracy on the government. For, the government seems unwilling to ever admit its mistakes. Sure, the less conspiratorial crimes are admitted on occasion. But, more disturbing crimes like those that led to water fluoridation (toxic waste disposal) or why the US went off the gold standard (gold bond issuance) will never be admitted to. And why? After all, the actual individuals who committed the crimes are deceased. My guess is that the current power structure sees admissions of this magnitude would have serious repercussions that might diminish their authority.
What say you?
“So, isn’t it possible that the people who accept the official consensus account of the 9/11 events tend to view any alternative account of historical events as less likely?”
You neglect the issue of trust and competency. Whether adult B should trust the gov or whatever doesn’t really matter to me. What matters to me is why I should trust/believe what Adult B claims.
1. People who are incompetent or ignorant in terms of killing humans, have little credibility when they speak of gun control, gun safety, or preventing crime. They have to get their credibility from somewhere else than merely the claim that they know what they are talking about. The same is true for explosives, terrorism, war, community protection.
2. Organizations that are merely tools for a Leftist Deus Ex Machina Utopian plan, cannot and should not be trusted.
3. Those who are easy to con and fool, should not be telling me or anyone else they know which cons will fool us. Those who say they know the truth because they were once fooled by government cons, are examples of people who are easy to con: tools.
The basic difference is that if people were right, they could use that data to predict with amazing accuracy what Bush would have done. Everything would add up, before or after the fact. The same would be true of Obama.
If Bush or somebody else was doing a false flag operation, they would have found WMDs in Iraq. They did not. This suggests either the false flag wasn’t done by Bush, or the Bush admin could kill 3000 Americans and get away with it, yet can’t plant WMDs in a foreign country they just decapitated.
If the things about Obama were true, Fast and Furious (false flag) would be covered up and things 1000 times worse would still be working in the background.
The point is, people who are incompetent at doing things will never be able to figure out how these strange, alien, government entities do their conspiracies. They have no reality to compare it to.
Peter Klein: it is irrelevant whether you trust the government or not. 9/11 truthers’ arguments are both ignorant and illogical, and can be discounted on those grounds.