My grandfather first taught me to be skeptical. He was a 1920s-30s union organizer who had to fight both the companies and sometimes his union higher-ups. Before I was in second grade, he let me know I should question everyone, even the people "on your side." Thirty-plus years as a journalist, editor and activist have made me even more skeptical of what I was told, including what I was told by people I was predisposed to believe because our worldviews were in sync. Admittedly, it took a few times getting burned before I really, truly understood.
So, around 3:30 a.m. PDT, when I saw queues at Heathrow and the brief press conference with Paul Stephenson of Scotland Yard talking about "mass murder on an unimaginable scale," I said to myself hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Given the vast number of lies, cover-ups and attempted cover-ups we've seen exposed over the past five years, it would be foolish to presume from the get-go that what we're now seeing splashed endlessly on our television screens is anywhere near the truth, however many kernels of truth there may be in those words and images.
What I didn't do, however, was jump to conclusions. Because I'm a skeptic, and skepticism and true believerism don't jibe, whether that's true belief in the publicly stated rationale for global U.S. interventionism or true belief in the view that Osama bin Laden is Dick Cheney's patsy whose glee over the collapse of the twin towers quickly turned to shock when it was announced that he was its author.
So I didn't say, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, this airplane plot is
clearly done to divert attention from Lebanon, from Lamont. Or that it is
clearly a move that's been bubbling on a back-burner waiting for the most politically convenient time for Blair and Bush and their minions to dish it out to the gullible masses.
Nothing is clear. Nothing is obvious. Skeptics will wait for more information to emerge. They won't, in true believer fashion, connect dots that don't exist with dots that do.
If today or in the next three or four weeks a dozen or so airplanes had plunged into the Atlantic depths with several thousand passengers aboard, some of the more outrageous commentary I've seen here at Daily Kos and elsewhere this morning in wwwLand could be lifted verbatim into a thread backing up the claim that these murders were the outcome of an inside job. That's not how true skeptics operate. It doesn't serve the cause of truth to replace the gullibility of those who buy every word of Foxaganda with the gullibility of the typical conspiracy theorist.
If anyone believes that my cautions here are meant to suggest that I think we're getting the straight skinny in this matter of "mass murder on an unimaginable scale," you've missed my point. I'm recommending nothing more than caution, a wait-and-see approach as more information (and yes, disinformation) trickles out so that any contradictions or falsehoods can be sussed out.
Not that my admonitions will have much impact, I'm sure.
Take the poll.