A few of years ago, I got into a bit of tussle with a good friend who was insisting I watch a DVD showing how Bush & Company rigged 9/11. I begged off telling her that there was no way that any "expert" could convince me that the Bush team could have pulled of 9/11 even if they had wanted to. So I was pretty surprised to hear Ian Masters complain (Background Briefing, KPFK, May 2, 11:53AM)
Everytime I go to any public event where I have to speak I get heckled by the 9/11 'truthers' who are the first people to rush up to the microphones and shut down the entire event so whatever the subject of the event was nobody get's to talk about it...they sort of hijack it and force you to talk about Building 7 collapsing.
So where DO 'truthers' come from? Are they lefties unrecovered from the Bush regime, or anti-government libertarian/anarchists, or just plain conspiracy enthusiasts?
Besides shouting down civil discourse, Truthers have become Exhibit A in an 'equivalency' argument that maintains that the far ends of the political spectrum are equally prone to crazy partisan distortion. That sure doesn't ring true to me but exceptionalist counterarguments are always difficult to defend, the vagaries of our human mind being what they are. But today's right wing perfecta: Fox News, teabaggers, looney GOPers, are pulling down hard on the conservative end of the distortion prism. Not that the MSM seems to care. We've all seen how, under the guise of 'equivalency', the media is most comfortable installing itself at a hypothetical midpoint on the conservative-liberal continuum. So what do we get? Climate change 'experts' claiming that the verdict's still out and an increasing number of Americans thinking that global warming is a left wing phantasma.