When I was a boy, I just loved all that Mysteries of the Unknown stuff. It really did float my boat. I would read with fascination about UFO's and Area 51, about paranormal phenomena, precognition, psychic investigators.
Damn I use to love the stuff. I was big on science at the time, too. Read all kinds of books, watched all kinds of shows. I didn't see the conflict.
I had to grow up a little to figure out what was wrong. And what is wrong? Well, what we have with conspiracy theories are theories that not only can't be proven wrong, but theories that the people in question revel in alleging are only unprovable because people have hidden all the evidence. At some point, I wanted something more than just vague pronouncements that "The Truth is Out There".
I encountered this book in the library about the skeptical approach to the paranormal. It was fascinating how much the frailties of the human mind played into all this, how simple ignorance and optical illusions could contribute to mistaken impressions about events, and the world around us.
People get shit wrong. That is simply a fact of life. We experienced eight years of an administration where our leader just couldn't get this through his thick skull. It's not merely something you shrug off, its something you have to defend yourself and your organizations against.
If you're a reporter, you ought to be fact checking your stories, because the story that sounds right, feels right, still can be wrong. If you're a scientist, you have to double-check your results, and do your best to cancel out your own bias in the system. If you're a govenrment official, you can't afford to operate with ideological blinders on, to ignore the necessities of carrying out your responsiblities, or the feedback from it.
When I argue politics on the internet, I like to argue with more than just abstract rhetoric. If somebody mentions a case, I google it, I research it, and I read it, because often enough, most people don't read through their sources as well as they should. The Republicans have been plagued by a system that undercuts them by treating them like Mushrooms: feeding them bullshit and keeping them in the dark. This allows the worst kind of paranoia to fester as the Republicans pour their venom into their constituents ears.
Which brings me around to the 9/11 truthers.
My annoyance factor with them is pretty high. Nothing personal. There's just such a lack of follow through on these folk's part regarding the facts. They talk about the controlled demolition of the WTC buildings, a feet that would have been amazing, considering that nobody saw them set it up. They make the link because of the dust that got propelled out the sides of the building as it collapsed. Never mind that most of a building is air, and concrete was being pulverized. Has anybody running these theories taken a good look at what a controlled Demolition actually involves, in terms of tearing out the inside of the building? Unless you're aiming to drag in tons of explosives, you'd have to be unrealistically sneaky to do that. I mean, would you really miss a bunch of people moving in tons of explosives into the top floors of one of the world's busiest office buildings?
Nobody seems to think these things out more than one or two steps ahead, and when they're confronted about the inconsistencies and the missed implications, many of them retreat either into ad hominem accusations, or shrug that they're merely asking questions.
Are they? The simplest questions to ask, given a certain theory, are what the requirements of such a conspiracy be. What would it take to demolish the twin towers on purpose? What would it sound like? What about what we saw might argue against it? How do thermite charges really behave? It might seem tiresome to go through these questions, but what distinquishes good science, good reporting, and even good questions from the bad is the willingness to put our beliefs and assumptions to the test.
Where we don't, people can manipulate us, or disregard us as we spew ill-informed critiques. When all else fails, we have to be the ones to read the fucking articles when others don't. We've got to be the ones to research and put claims to the test when others simply accept the theory that suits what they feel in their gut.
If we want to restore sense to our government we have to restore skepticism and due diligence in our studies to ourselves. Otherwise, we're just full of it, and nobody has to take us seriously.