I am guessing I am the thousandth diary on this, but I want to get into the debate about conspiracy theories. Personally, I think that people are too quick to take real concerns about trusting Bush and conflate them with theories such as 09/11 was caused by Bush. The later is a conspiracy theory, but the former is not. There are reasons we don't trust Bush that all your fear over terror can not deny.
I am the kind of guy who likes to separate things out, and understand them in their own context. So, I will try to do a bit of that here.
I will go through how I think of things, and let you decide for yourself.
Right after 9/11, I had a friend - I will call him John- who called me up. It was 2 days later. I had just come back from checking out the strangeness that was Manhattan. I was still a little shell shocked myself- not just because of the events of 9/11 but the contrast of human behavior. i saw people helping. Giving food. Doing what they could. I saw people hurting. One guy was selling t-shirts that said "thank God I got out a live in front of the many rows of photographs of people looking for loved ones. I say this to make a point- I became a NYC'er right as the attack happened, and I understood first hand what terror meant having to live through it. I saw that it meant the best and worst in humanity.
Anyway, John called me up- he worked as an operative in progressive politics. He said point blank to me 'The Republicans have just found a new cold war in which they will try to ride this for the next 30 years.' John brought me back to sobriety. I understood that the worse that I had seen in people could get worse. It's through that lense that I looked at Bush and his operatives.
Maybe it's because I have read 1984. Maybe its because I already was suspicious of "they attacked us for our freedoms" while he was trying to deny us our freedoms, but I have never trusted Bush. Indeed, he has more than been willing to give me reason not to trust him- on Iraq, on the terror alerts, on Social Security. Just to name a few things.
I take this into the consider when I realize that all governments have a tendency to seek to use propaganda to convince us of their agenda. This is indeed one of the central powers that governments have beyond the power to tax and regulate or to imprison- it can control thinking through propaganda.
When I hear peo saying that anyone who questions the timing of the alerts (who may indeed by terrorists) is engaging in conspiracy theories, I can only think of one thing to say: it takes no conspiracy to use propaganda to control and use your fear. Ask the Germans (or rather read Hitler's Willing Executioners). It doesn't take any conspiracy to imagine that the terrorists maybe real, but the way we go about dealing with th em is more about keeping the Republicans in power for 30 years. So, the next time you are quick to argue that something is a 'conspiracy theory' think about it a little more, and think about how much you are controlled by your fears. Are your fears justified or are they being magnified and used by people who know you are afraid?
If you don't respect, in other words, that you can be manipulated (as can we all), then how will you ever recognize before its too late that it is happening?