Today, I ran across an especially good example of the complete irrationality and lack of insight that characterize the deniers. The blogger at Humint [sic] Events Online is a no-planer. That means that he knows that no planes were flown into the towers. What he's not sure of is how the towers were brought down. He has narrowed it down to five possibilities:
1. the towers were pre-built with demolitions embedded in them for future re-activationWhat makes this perfect is his reaction to Saddam's execution:
2. the towers were loaded up internally with essentially conventional explosives
3. the towers were taken out by a few extremely powerful bombs, such as mini-nukes
4. the towers were demolished by some external force, such as a directed energy beam
5. the towers were demolished by a combination of the above
Because of course conspiracy theories are impossible if an event is captured on live video.
I'm just saying the conspiracy theories will flourish unless extremely good quality video of the execution is shown.
11 comments:
David:
You may have missed Common Sense for Conspiracy Nuts
Besides being a very unattractive exposition of the conspiracist mindset, I also learned that Harry Eagar's brother is an MIT Engineering professor that published a comprhensive takedown of the conspiracy nonsense.
David:
A new (at least for me) blog! Great! You are missed by all the extended siblings.
I wonder if these deniers refuse to enter any building before x-raying the structure for explosives. Have they checked their own homes? Do they fly commercial? Would they send their children through on the x-ray scanners (can't be too careful)?
But 'beliefs' like this exist because people want to believe comic book reality. Most Christian eschatology is driven by comic book thinking. I'll never forget the time I encountered a very angry friend after church one day - she was upset because our pastor had preached on his view of eschatology, which was quite different than hers. She proceeded to tell me that she thought the Anti-Christ was in the mother ship, hiding behind the moon, and that UFOs were the probes being conducted by Satan. Once the rapture occurred, the mother ship would land and the world would suffer.
9/11 denial is like that - an escape from a very messy reality into an amusement park or a comic book. It makes things fun, in a strange way. But I can't decide if the 9/11 crowd is sillier for blaming Mossad or for blaming George Bush. Now, if some sect decided to blame Al Gore or Madeleine Albright, then I'd be interested.
Skipper: I remember the post, but apparently I didn't follow up on the comments. That's exactly the denier mind-set I've come to know and love. It's completely impervious to any other argument. I really love the complete and total reliance on the FBI's not adding 9/11 to OBL's crimes. Because, you know, the wide and comprehensive government conspiracy to fake 9/11 couldn't possibly get to the FBI.
Jim: Welcome. I have to say that I love the idea that all new buildings come with built-in explosives, just in case the government needs to gin up a war.
Sometimes I think we over-intellectualize the conspiracy theory mindset. 300,000,000 Americans watched at least some portion of their worldview come crashing down around them on 9/11. It shouldn't surprise us that some of us cracked in the process.
David:
I remembered (after my initial comment) that the Towers were initially constructed under LBJ and Nixon - what could suit a conspiracy theorist more?
The part about the energy beams is really what made me think of comic books (the X-Men in particular).
I'm sure most worldviews were rocked that morning, but the weird conspiracy theories didn't take root here until much later. Of course, the "denial" started in Europe and the Arab world (that very day), but I am a bit surprised that so many Americans seem to have taken hold of it.
Perhaps it is a backlash from the media's decision to avoid images from that morning (although they were certainly prominent for that first week or so). Perhaps it is a response to the length of the war in Iraq, and the unresolved tensions with Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Some of it is just plain old-fashioned hucksterism. Some of it has been fanned by figures like Howard Dean and Cynthia McKinney.
A lot of people believed FDR 'allowed' Pearl Harbor to happen. But they would not have engaged the idea that he actually mined the Arizona. Today's tin-foil crew goes further.
The two specifics that still make me cringe are the claim that no pictures of the Pentagon strike were ever taken (false, but they weren't shown until after Moussoaui was convicted), and the claim that the Flight 93 passengers were off-loaded and murdered. That is just disgusting.
Jim: Once you realize that the space-based beam weapon people are a respected part of the truther movement, you can only conclude that there is no limit to the crazy. There simply is no piece of evidence that you can offer them that they can't work around.
However, aren't most of the deniers, broadly defined, just people who think that the administration had a heads up about the attack and chose not to take action? That just makes them part of the long American tradition of conspiratorial paranoia. We once did a list at BrothersJudd of all of our wars, and the conspiratorial explanation for each of them.
Peter:
Assumimg it was planned at least days in advance, if not longer, how did they know there would be cloudless skies over the entire northeast?
Didn't have to, anymore than Eisenhower needed to know the English Channel conditions for June 6, 1944 when he was planning the invasion.
The 9-11 plan, just like Eisenhower's included blanks for D-day and H-hour (more appropriately, F-flights). Once the "commander" saw the plan-suitable conditions, he needed only communicate D-day and F-flights to those carrying out the plan.
Plug simple.
Plus, I do think that there's a tendency to overstate how lousy the hijackers were as pilots. Hitting the buildings was, I understand, some pretty decent flying but finding NY and DC would not, I believe, be difficult for anyone who had been in a flight simulator before and knew how to use the automatic pilot, etc.
BTW, as a more recent example of how plans are executed:
I authored a hurrican evacuation plan for NAS Whiting Field that involved moving about 140 aircraft and crews to NAS Millington, near Memphis.
D-day and H-hour were defined by working back 36 hours from the time the Weather guessers predicted storm generated winds would exceed 20 knots, using the storm's speed, not its velocity.
David:
You are right -- very little skill is required to hit a building on a clear day.
Calling it decent flying is like calling taking aim at a roadside tree with your car and then managing to hit it decent driving.
Truthers are like members of any other cult. It is all about being in an elite minority that knows the real truth. That is a powerful, seductive thing, to think of yourself as a chosen one, as one of the few who has broken free of the Plato's cave of lies and disinformation.
People want drama in their lives, they want to live in a spy novel or, as Jim rightly described it, a comic book. The real truth about 9/11 is too widespread, too readily available. It doesn't take any special courage or insight to accept it. You can't be a superhero that way.
Ooops. Left out a few words:
... predicted storm generated winds would exceed 20 knots at Whiting Field, using the storm's speed, not its velocity ...
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