Jim Stillman
NevarParanoia is bad for your health!
July 9th 2007 17:17
I know, as a brand new member of the Community, that I should begin by posting autobiographical materials so that readers will know from whence I come. (Already you can see that I am a grammar purist; the use of less rather than fewer is like nails on a chalkboard.) I fully intend to write about my Trophy Wife, Joan, of 49 years, our four daughters, assorted sons-in-law, 14 grandchildren, etc. As is the case at Lake Wobegon, all of our women are strong, the men good looking and the children above average.
But first, a few remarks about things that go bump in the night, are likely untrue, but seem to be seriously considered by otherwise rational and sober people.
A neighbor of ours introduced me to a film about the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. The focus of the film, in the form of a documentary, is that the buildings collapsed because of explosives placed in the structures by the United States government. Moreover, the filmmakers suggest that the crash of the airplane into the Pentagon was contrived and could not have happened in the manner portrayed in the press. Finally, Flight 93, believed to have crashed after a valiant struggle by passengers, is said to have landed safely and without incident in Cleveland where all passengers were spirited away. It is never explained where these passengers were sequestered; were they killed by the government? Did their families ever become reunited?
The reasons for this entire set of events were, in addition to allowing the President to wage war in the Middle East, to cover-up massive securities fraud, the stealing of billions of gold bullion and so forth and so forth. The buildings at the Trade Center included the local office of the Securities and Exchange Commission which held documents that would have disclosed major fraud on the part of Administrative cronies.
The fact that, in order to have this exercise succeed would depend upon the continued silence of hundreds and hundreds of people and the continued disappearance of many people is not discussed. Could this scenario actually have existed? I suppose so, except that credulity is certainly stretched.
The tragic events of September 11th are things that have been burned into our nation’s, and the world’s, consciousness. During my lifetime, the only other events that rival the attack on the World Trade Center are the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963 and, perhaps, the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 when I was six years old. All of these “incidents” (what a weak word, indeed) have some commonalities. All seemed to horrible, so terrible, so inexplicable that many people resorted to ideas of conspiracy, secret government involvement, to explain the unexplainable. I must acknowledge that these claims of secret conspiracies were, and are, abetted by sloppy and tardy release of official information. In the absence of governmental candor, conspiracy theories and devious explanations are likely to flourish.
So, President Kennedy was not killed by a lone, unhappy, frustrated nut case, Oswald, but, in fact was killed by a C.I.A. cabal, or the Mafia, or Fidel Castro, facts that were well known but suppressed by the authorities for, now, over 44 years! And no one talked, no secret memoranda (the lifeblood of bureaucracy) have been found. The President’s body was switched at Bethesda Naval Hospital to where it was brought, the autopsy faked, Kennedy was not really killed. All of these assertions were popular in the years following the assassination.
Pearl Harbor could not have been planned and carried out by the Japanese government; it must have been facilitated by traitors, secret evildoers, in the United States government or, perhaps, allowed to happen by President Roosevelt in an attempt to bring this country to war.
Could all of these conspiracies have happened? I suppose so, but the thought of hundreds and hundreds of ordinary people keeping a secret so well over the decades seems less likely than the conspiracy itself.
The claims about President Kennedy, the World trade Center and Pearl Harbor join others in popular folklore. According to a Gallup poll conducted in 1999. Six percent of Americans believe that the moon landings in 1969 were faked. That’s better than polls conducted in 1970 and 1971 reporting that between 30 and 50 percent of Americans were convinced that the moon landings were unlikely, were staged either on a Hollywood sound stage or somewhere in Australia.
What harm do these beliefs cause? The harm is that constructive thought is being replaced by fantasy. Fairy tales are fun and entertaining, but to base political or societal beliefs on such tales allows the election of buffoons – and Lord knows we have sufficient of these.
Those who write, at whatever level, should be wary of accepting conspiracy theories of all kinds. Each theory should be measured against the yardstick of common sense and scientific evidence. And the most reasonable answer accepted.Your text goes here
But first, a few remarks about things that go bump in the night, are likely untrue, but seem to be seriously considered by otherwise rational and sober people.
A neighbor of ours introduced me to a film about the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. The focus of the film, in the form of a documentary, is that the buildings collapsed because of explosives placed in the structures by the United States government. Moreover, the filmmakers suggest that the crash of the airplane into the Pentagon was contrived and could not have happened in the manner portrayed in the press. Finally, Flight 93, believed to have crashed after a valiant struggle by passengers, is said to have landed safely and without incident in Cleveland where all passengers were spirited away. It is never explained where these passengers were sequestered; were they killed by the government? Did their families ever become reunited?
The reasons for this entire set of events were, in addition to allowing the President to wage war in the Middle East, to cover-up massive securities fraud, the stealing of billions of gold bullion and so forth and so forth. The buildings at the Trade Center included the local office of the Securities and Exchange Commission which held documents that would have disclosed major fraud on the part of Administrative cronies.
The fact that, in order to have this exercise succeed would depend upon the continued silence of hundreds and hundreds of people and the continued disappearance of many people is not discussed. Could this scenario actually have existed? I suppose so, except that credulity is certainly stretched.
The tragic events of September 11th are things that have been burned into our nation’s, and the world’s, consciousness. During my lifetime, the only other events that rival the attack on the World Trade Center are the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963 and, perhaps, the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 when I was six years old. All of these “incidents” (what a weak word, indeed) have some commonalities. All seemed to horrible, so terrible, so inexplicable that many people resorted to ideas of conspiracy, secret government involvement, to explain the unexplainable. I must acknowledge that these claims of secret conspiracies were, and are, abetted by sloppy and tardy release of official information. In the absence of governmental candor, conspiracy theories and devious explanations are likely to flourish.
So, President Kennedy was not killed by a lone, unhappy, frustrated nut case, Oswald, but, in fact was killed by a C.I.A. cabal, or the Mafia, or Fidel Castro, facts that were well known but suppressed by the authorities for, now, over 44 years! And no one talked, no secret memoranda (the lifeblood of bureaucracy) have been found. The President’s body was switched at Bethesda Naval Hospital to where it was brought, the autopsy faked, Kennedy was not really killed. All of these assertions were popular in the years following the assassination.
Pearl Harbor could not have been planned and carried out by the Japanese government; it must have been facilitated by traitors, secret evildoers, in the United States government or, perhaps, allowed to happen by President Roosevelt in an attempt to bring this country to war.
Could all of these conspiracies have happened? I suppose so, but the thought of hundreds and hundreds of ordinary people keeping a secret so well over the decades seems less likely than the conspiracy itself.
The claims about President Kennedy, the World trade Center and Pearl Harbor join others in popular folklore. According to a Gallup poll conducted in 1999. Six percent of Americans believe that the moon landings in 1969 were faked. That’s better than polls conducted in 1970 and 1971 reporting that between 30 and 50 percent of Americans were convinced that the moon landings were unlikely, were staged either on a Hollywood sound stage or somewhere in Australia.
What harm do these beliefs cause? The harm is that constructive thought is being replaced by fantasy. Fairy tales are fun and entertaining, but to base political or societal beliefs on such tales allows the election of buffoons – and Lord knows we have sufficient of these.
Those who write, at whatever level, should be wary of accepting conspiracy theories of all kinds. Each theory should be measured against the yardstick of common sense and scientific evidence. And the most reasonable answer accepted.Your text goes here
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