I never thought I’d witness it in my lifetime. The paranoid left, aided and abetted by universal access to the internet along with an educational system that has stopped teaching young people the mechanics of thinking rationally, has apparently broken through and gone mainstream.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government had warnings about 9/11 but decided to ignore them, a national survey found.And that’s not the only conspiracy theory with a huge number of true believers in the United States.
The poll found that more than one out of three Americans believe Washington is concealing the truth about UFOs and the Kennedy assassination – and most everyone is sure the rise in gas prices is one vast oil-industry conspiracy.
Sixty-two percent of those polled thought it was “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that federal officials turned a blind eye to specific warnings of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Only 30 percent said the 9/11 theory was “not likely,” according to the Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.
While there is certainly enough paranoia on the right about 9/11 and “The New World Order,” black helicopter conspiracies, the driving force behind 9/11 truthers, Kennedy conspiracists, and Area 51 nutcases has been the far left of American politics.
And with the advent of the internet, where their most outrageous conspiracy theories are given the patina of respectability, they have been able to capture the dim witted, the ignorant, and especially the young who have grown up without the benefit of learning how to think critically and rationally about the world around them.
To believe that people in the United States government – specifically Bush and Cheney but anyone for that matter – had advance knowledge of 9/11 and did nothing to prevent it is to believe that there is a monstrous evil abroad in the land – that the President of the United States is as bad as Adolf Hitler, standing by while so many were killed. Variations of that theory have Bush pulling a “Roosevelt” (another, older conspiracy theory) who wanted to get into World War II so he did nothing despite prior knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack. In the expanded theory, Bush wanted to go to war in the Middle East for the oil.
For those with the critical thinking skills of a marmoset, such a formulation makes perfect sense. The only problem is that those who actually think about that idea for more than a few seconds realize the enormous problems for someone actually planning and carrying out such a conspiracy so that it has a chance of success.
Leave aside for a moment the fact that such a conspiracy would involve so many hundreds – perhaps thousands – of people in and out of government that the idea it could be kept secret is idiotic. The number of unknowns in executing such a plan are staggering. To believe in such a conspiracy, one needs to also believe in psychics and soothsayers. That’s because for such a conspiracy to achieve fruition, a series of events – many of which would have been impossible to predict – would have had to occur.
The problem for the truthers is that they are examining 9/11 after it happened so that what appears to be a logical progression of events and actions leading to a specific result is actually a mirage. There are forces and occurrences that no one could have foreseen at work as each step of the con piracy would have taken place thus making such a plan a crapshoot at best.
History does not unfold in nice, neat little vignettes where logic rules and the orderly progression of events can be measured and predicted like a mathematical equation. History is chaos. It is unpredictable because of the human element involved in its revelations. To believe in conspiracy is to suspend belief in reality itself and ignore the impact of randomness on events that is so obviously a huge part of history.
Oswald and Kennedy in Dealy Plaza, Dallas Texas, 44 years ago is so unlikely a happenstance of history that in order to get the two together on that day, in that location, conspiracists have had to extrapolate theories with no facts at hand to buttress them. They guess, they infer, they even just make stuff up. They create an entirely different past for Oswald – one not found in any historical record anywhere. He was CIA, or KGB, or an agent of Cuban intelligence. He was working for the mob, or the FBI, or the Secret Service. He was a patsy or he wasn’t even there.
The point is, they can’t all be right. What is missing is the brutal and boring reality that Oswald was in Dealy Plaza that day because of a random series of coincidences having nothing to do with any conspiracy but having everything to do with the arc of events related to Oswald’s miserable life. Add the random factor of a trip to Texas at exactly that time and that place by Kennedy and you have history in all its confusing, chaotic, glorious best.
An historical anomaly? Not hardly. Consider what happened during a real assassination conspiracy; the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, the proximate cause for World War I.
The killing of Ferdinand is so impossible, so unlikely as to be beyond belief. And while there really was a conspiracy involving the Serbian separatist group, The Black Hand, the actual circumstances that led to Ferdinand’s death would have been rejected by a Hollywood studio for being just too fantastical.
The conspiracy had several assassins spread out along a motorcade route where Ferdinand and his wife would be taken to the town hall for a formal welcome. The first two assassins lost heart completely and failed to make an attempt. They were armed with bombs and pistols. Further along the route, another assassin made the first attempt on the Archduke’s life, tossing a bomb that bounced off Ferdinand’s car and landed behind it, exploding when a follow-up car passed over it. The bomb injured 20 people and shook up Ferdinand’s party considerably. The would be assassin swallowed a cyanide pill and jumped in the river – neither of which killed him. He was promptly arrested.
Also failing to act despite being armed with bombs and pistols were several other assassins standing nearby including young Gavrilo Princip. The 20 year old would get another chance shortly.
After a tense greeting by the mayor of Sarajevo, Ferdinand announced his desire to go to the hospital and visit those injured in the failed attack. Additional security for the Archduke was discussed but in the end, it was left up to the Serbian police to protect Ferdinand.
Meanwhile, young Princip, probably disappointed at his failure to carry out the plan, made his way to a deli to grab a sandwich. And here is where coincidence and the rule of randomness unite to make history.
Ferdinand’s driver, unaware of the change in destination and unfamiliar with the winding, confusing streets of the city, made a wrong turn down a street near where the bomb blast occurred. By chance, at the end of the street was the very same deli from which Gavrilo Princip was just now emerging with his sandwich. Realizing his mistake, the driver stopped and began to back up. But before he could get very far, Princip jumped on the running board and pumped two shots into the car, hitting Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. Both died within the hour.
Let us examine this from the perspective of a conspiracy theorist. Obviously, the driver is in on the conspiracy. Are we really supposed to believe that he innocently made a wrong turn down the very street that the assassin was waiting? And surely, the Mayor is part of the plot. If his welcoming speech as been 2 minutes shorter or longer, Princip would have not been near the deli and missed his chance.
How about the security personnel for the Archduke? Guilty! They could have added security along the route and failed to do so – a sure sign they were complicit in the assassination. And let’s not forget the Archduke’s own suicidal participation in this plot. After all, would he been killed if he hadn’t insisted on going to the hospital?
Most historians dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand because of these kind of random occurrences that simply cannot be predicted and would in many cases, scuttle the bud of a conspiracy before it had a chance to flower.
This has not stopped the paranoid left from positing the notion of history as conspiracy especially as it relates to 9/11. Part of this is certainly the way the left sees history in a deterministic fashion:
The conspiracy theory is the bastion of shadows and little or no evidence. It explains a famous or known event by appealing to the leftist dictum of “follow the money†or “look who benefits†as if actual evidence is irrelevant and personal ethics are just a farcical way for the rich and powerful to pull the wool over the eyes of everyone else. Whether it is the Kennedy assassination or the 9/11 attacks, conspiracy theories which pop up to counter the “official†tale of events share common characteristics.As a historian, I come across conspiracy theories all the time. Progressive historians like Charles and Mary Beard made the conspiracy theory view of history a popular vogue for a while. They contended that the founders plotted the constitution as a way of aggrandizing their power and property at the expense of common folk, the evidence being that nearly all of the men at the convention were wealthy property owners and remained so afterwards, or became richer under the new system. Of course, this case is circumstantial at best and ignores the actual debates which occurred at the convention and afterwards on real political and philosophical issues.
Beard’s assertions inspired other historians to go into other historical episodes and see greedy conspiracies. The War of 1812 is a topic I study quite a bit and a topic with a historiography full of conspiracy theories, whether to steal Canada, Indian land, or whatever else, as opposed to the real issues of free trade and sailor’s rights which actually sparked the conflict. The conspiracy theory today is usually a way to cast the darkest aspersions upon the government in general and certain officers of the government in particular.
The mindset that can take an historical event and glean the truth from “who benefits” is absurd on its face. One need only look at the conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, and the examine the make-up of Congress and Bush’s approval ratings today in order to totally debunk the idea. Democrats in control of government (and likely to increase their majorities and win the White House next year) while George Bush is seen as a failure.
If we are to believe that Bush & Company either allowed 9/11 to happen or actually planned and executed that tragedy, then one must look at the political situation today in order to validate those theories. Are we to believe it was part of the plan that George Bush would sink to historic lows of approval by the American people? Are we to believe that the fall of the Republican party was foreseen by the plotters?
Do these facts mean that the conspiracy is now no longer in operation, that it has been closed down? At what point did the plotters see the end of their machinations? After Saddam’s statue fell? After Bush’s re-election? When the first gush of Iraqi oil was stolen by the government (or their proxies, the oil companies)?
These aren’t idle questions. They are questions that must be answered by the conspiracists in order for them to prove their theories. They can’t, of course. For instance, to believe that the conspiracy was over with the 2004 election raises its own set of problems. For if the President knew there were no WMD’s in Iraq prior to the invasion, you would have to carry that idea to its logical conclusion that Bush wanted to lose the war. Otherwise, our victorious troops would find no WMD and expose the plot or at the very least, risk defeat by the Democrats in 2004 who would make the failure to find WMD an issue in the campaign. Or our defeated troops would never get the chance to search for WMD and the plot would remain intact. Of course, there would be such an outcry over our loss of the war that Bush would be defeated for re-election.
Remember, we are not seeing these events after they happen but rather we are planning to invade Iraq for the oil. How can we be sure Bush won’t get slaughtered in the election for not finding any WMD? As it is, the Democrats came within 100,00 votes in Ohio of winning, which would have destroyed the plot right there.
All it takes to dismiss most conspiracy theories is a little skepticism, a little critical thinking. But the skills necessary to examine conspiracies by applying logic and extrapolating outcomes based on reason and common sense rather than deterministic fantasies has been largely lost thanks public schools ignoring the necessity of teaching comprehension and cognition.
This was due to a widespread belief among educators that students are vessels to be filled with information rather than human beings who must be taught how to value and assess that information. There was also a belief that teachers shouldn’t bully students by imposing a specific worldview.
I sympathize with the argument but reject it from experience. The best teachers I had growing up did not tell me what to think. They taught me how to think. Bad teachers can’t tell the difference. But all it takes is one or two teachers who impart more than knowledge but rather habits of thought you carry with you for a lifetime and give a student the basics of approaching information with a rational and reasoned mind. I fear that the de-emphasis on teaching critical thinking skills prevents most younger people from attacking intellectual problems like conspiracy theories armed with the proper intellectual weapons to cull the truth from the nonsense. Couple that incredulity with the viral nature of the internet and you have a potent combination to spread the disease of ignorance with regard to conspiracies.
From believing in creationism to advancing theories about Area 51 and aliens, it is sometimes beyond belief how dumb people can be. Michelle Malkin has it about right; “The fringe is now mainstream.” And it is frightening to consider the idea that if this is so, what other kind of conspiracy theories can gain traction and eventually cause some real mischief.
The left has done a good job the last 30 years smearing our history, denigrating our accomplishments as a nation, ascribing all sorts of evil to our motivations, and generally highlighting America’s numerous shortcomings. Howard Zinn is an extreme example of this school of leftist thought. This is a one dimensional view of America that fails spectacularly in describing the people and events that have shaped America into the imperfect but basically decent vessel that it is today. But at the bottom of most of the left’s critique of America is the belief that powerful, evil, unseen forces are at work to oppress and rule the American people.
The fact that a majority now subscribe basically to that view should not surprise us. But it should nevertheless chill us to our bone marrow. For out of such paranoia arise dictators and tyrants. And with so many enthralled with conspiracies of one kind or another, it wouldn’t take much to see such a man as a savior on a white horse rather than the harbinger of disaster.
4:34 pm
Sorry to say but it’s really not surprising. It’s a strange confluence of insouciance, cynicism, laziness and pride- it’s staggering. Facts and reason be damned- it’s as unscientific as believing the Earth is 6,000 years old. What’s odd is that we have more knowledge at our fingertips than at any point in history. Yet somehow, the reptilian brain holds firm, clinging to the dark shadows of fear and paranoia.
You’re right to be concerned by this dark, anti-scientific trend. It flies in the face of classic liberalism, and is most disturbing trend. Maybe it’s just easier than thinking.
4:39 pm
Maybe This Explains Ron Paul…
If this level of tinfoil-hattism is so common, maybe he does stand a chance in 2008 after all. Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government had warnings about 9/11 but decided to ignore them, a national survey found. And…...
5:04 pm
So why haven’t the Democrats investigated this this obvious conspiracy against the “little guy†that they so dearly represent ?
Because even they know it’s not true, or is it that they represent the “richâ€. Oh, it’s both.
Actually, this is what you get when you feed people the “the Daily Show” as their primary source of information. While it is often funny, some people just can’t cypher out the “comedy” from the “truth”. Too many of those cute one-liners go into people’s memories as the truth, when they are meant to to be comedy.
They end up living in a world that only Chuck Baris would love.
5:21 pm
The people doubt their government. Could it be because one group says that the government should not be trusted? And that when that group has control of government tells truths that are not true and labels as fact that which is not fact?
As a card carrying leftist, I absolutely do not believe that 9/11 was an inside job. Whether we would have been better off with a national security advisor instead of a gym buddy for George is a different question.
6:34 pm
[...] Left in the West | Montana Politics wrote an interesting post today!.Here’s a quick excerpt I never thought I’d witness it in my lifetime. The paranoid left, aided and abetted by universal access to the internet along with an educational system that has stopped teaching young people the mechanics of thinking rationally, has apparently broken through and gone mainstream. Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government had warnings about 9/11 but decided to ignore them, a national survey found. And that’s not the only conspiracy theory with a huge number of true believer [...]
6:49 pm
Does anyone have a link for the poll details? (In particular the wording for the question about warnings of attacks being ignored in 2001.) The source article is here: http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll
For out of such paranoia arise dictators and tyrants.
The poll, if we choose to believe the summaries, is basically saying Americans distrust their federal government. How does distrust of government turn into dictatorship? Not trolling here, just looking for historical parallels.
There is a useful heuristic here, variously called Hanlon’s Razor, “principle of least conspiracy”, or the mainstream British version “cock-up before conspiracy”. It is particularly useful when thinking about the likelihood of conspiracies organized by one’s political opponents.
“Follow-the-money” is a very useful investigative tool, as long as enrichment isn’t conflated with proof of conspiracy.
6:55 pm
Bill:
The question was ambiguous in a way. If you believe that the administration had evidence that 9/11 was going to happen – date, time, targets, – and didn’t do anything about it, you’re a loon.
If you believe there were warnings that went unheeded, that’s another story. The survey question probably reflected a combination of the two approaches.
Still – a poll last year showed nearly 40% actually believe Bush knew of the attack before it happened.
As far as “distrusting government” this has nothing to do with trust. It is ascribing the most evil of intentions to people – truly evil motivations.
People will throw freedom away in order to have someone save them from the threat.
7:04 pm
“Are we to believe it was part of the plan that George Bush would sink to historic lows of approval by the American people? Are we to believe that the fall of the Republican party was foreseen by the plotters?”
While I respect the general point of the piece, this is not a difficult question to answer. Obviously the plot failed because, rather than becoming a willing protectorate of the US, Iraqis had other ideas about nationalism. If all had gone well (as, if they are to be believed, the most senior planners assumed they would) then the lack of WMDs would be irrelevant compared to the glories of liberation and vindication. This isn’t conspiracy, or guesswork, this is just reading what the leading players said at the time.
7:24 pm
“Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government had warnings about 9/11 but decided to ignore them, a national survey found.”
I see nothing ambiguous about this question. “about 9-11” is sufficiently vague to not suggest the government new the specifics of the 9-11 plot and it’s execution.
On the other hand, I think there was a plot by the bushies to instill in the American people the idea that Saddam Hussein was part and parcel to the 9-11 attack. When the Iraq war started roughly three-fourths of Americans thought Hussein was in on 9-11. That number has come down some, but remains high for republicans.
9:39 pm
How refreshing to know my views are shared by a majority of Americans.
2:29 am
9/11 was written all over the walls before it happened. It’s probably more comforting for people to believe that a conspiracy allowed it to happen, as opposed to believing that colossal stupidity and ineptitude caused to be overlooked. I’ve read much of the 9/11 commission’s report.
If you don’t believe that many elements both corporate and government (if the two are even distinguishable) ached for some kind of 9/11 then you are truly blinded. Everything is revealed when you follow the money. Following the money is as enlightening as it is horrifying.
5:04 am
[...] More at Right Wing Nut House. [...]
6:12 am
The good news (?) is that this isn’t just an American issue. Gallup reported a few years back that 80% those polled in 6 Arab countries believed that 9/11 was a set-up by Israeli intelligence. So it’s a mistake to think that uninformed, misguided paranoia is a uniquely American problem. Now I feel so much better.
7:37 am
Maybe I am living in another world but I am not surprised at anything the average American voter would believe. Having served in public office for a number of years I have come to the conclusion that the average voter has the IQ of lint. They are too concerned about sports, show business trash, getting something for nothing, shopping, moronic TV, and any other distraction that will keep them from having to be a responsible citizen.
Would any thinking person pay attention to the likes of Barack Obama let alone stand there and swoon at his mundane sophomoric babble.
And that goes for the majority of public official wannabees.
Conservative commentators are too believing in the moral fiber of the average American. Voters have proven time and time again they do not really think but let someone else do it for them. Circumstances alone changes the dynamic, not facts and reality.
“Super stars” like Rush, O’reilly, Hannity, Beck, Ingraham, etc. have a captive audience who don’t think for themselves, but lap dog their hero.
Most high profile bloggers have the same followers, and get the same me-to responses.
8:39 am
I’d like to know exactly how the question was asked – could it have been interpreted to include the warnings from the FBI agent who tried to get permission to search Moussaoui’s computer and the warnings of foreigners who wanted to learn to fly, but not land, passenger jets? If the question were so broad as to include those warnings, maybe the American people aren’t as nuts as you suspect.
However, as someone who sleeps with a radio on, I hear Coast to Coast AM at night. The show was formerly hosted by Art Bell and was a funny show about UFOs, Bigfoot, ghosts, and occasionally an open line for the anti-Christ to call in. While some of the callers, and some of the guests, took it all very seriously, I always thought I could detect a chuckle in Art’s voice.
Now, however, the show is hosted by George Noory, a former news manager in Detroit and St. Louis and other places. George repeatedly says there is no such thing as coincidence. He actively promotes conspiracy theories that would cause even Alex Jones to give pause. The overall goal of the plot is to reduce the population of the earth to some absurdly low figure – 5-million, IIRC. Somehow this population reduction is supposed to benefit the rich.
Callers to the show now are rarely engaged in fun – the fear in their voices is evident. You’ve hit the nail on the head – people no longer know how to think about a topic. As someone who spent 15-years in the news business, I can tell you that the problem is particularly profound in the news media.
10:45 am
Two people I work with believe in, respectively, “Big Oil” price fixing, and the “They let it happen!” myth. After two or three questions, each of them said virtually the same thing, “I can’t talk with you”, “I’m not gonna argue with you” and so on. The Big OIl guy even postured threats. What I am intrigued by is the desire and need of individuals to believe their hysteria. Neither of these guys could stand even hearing questions about what they believed. The “They let it happen” guy was sure they let it happen because he couldn’t believe an aircraft’s location could not be determined. When I pointed out that the transponders were turned off,and though radar may say where a plane is, location doesn’t automatically mean knowing
which plane it is, he erupted. I’ve concluded these guys want to be angry.
11:11 am
Whenever questions are posited that can’t be logically addressed within the framework of the conspiracy theory, the nutcases simply point their fingers and start howling that the skeptic is part of the conspiracy, too.
The point is, arguing with these people is a Sisyphean task. Personally, I’d rather shave my head with a cheese grater while chewing on tinfoil than provide an audience for any of these lunatics. If there ravings do become conventional wisdom in the years to come, I’ll gladly resign myself to insanity by becoming what Orwell termed the minority of one.
And on that note, Happy (belated) Thanksgiving, Rick.
6:37 pm
I agree with commenters who say it was the way the question was phrased.
The Philippine police came across an early version of the 911 plot in the 1990’s, which was ignored by the Clinton administration. So did “the government” “KNOW”? Well, no, but they should have taken the PNP warning seriously.
11:29 pm
Previous 2 posters Broadsword and Sirius nail it. E. Cropper, however, fails the basic critical thinking test with his dimwitted smear of Rush/O’reilly/Beck listeners. I’ll bet he thinks Glenn Greenwald is a real journalist.
3:51 pm
It is always enjoyable to read about the bizarre coincidences that led to Ferdinand’s death (although they would have got him eventually and the war would have happened eventually because of the force of history . . . which is the real point of that story of coincidence).
I am very sympathetic to problems in critical thinking but it should be noted that this essay is a poor example of actual critical thinking.
By attributing these conspiracy theories to the ‘paranoid left’ and other versions of ‘the left’ he is missing the actual reasons for conspiracies and fanciful thinking being so pervasive. It would be easy to demonstrate that ‘the right’ is not immune from such things and his essay ironically helps prove the point.
For instance, fear is a central part of human nature and it can be manipulated by feelings of loss of control. The current administration has tweaked this mercilessly for political gain and has set the sensitivity for believing conspiracies even lower.
The results of the poll he cites do not suggest that people think that the US government orchestrated 9/11. They say that a lot of people believe that the US government had advanced warning that it might happen and didn’t act on it. They would be correct. The 9/11 Commission and other investigations have revealed this to be factual.
The 9/11 ‘Truthers’ that he refers to are conspiracy nuts but conflating them with people who think the government had warnings that they didn’t act on is dishonest. Its almost like saying that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11 (through Kevin Bacon, no doubt).
And Bush probably did go to war, in some large measure, for oil (and that may be a legitimate strategic aim that was smothered by the deceptive approach that his administration took).
As I pointed out earlier, I am very sympathetic to the argument that great teachers help children learn how to think and that critical thinking is in short supply. People who engage in lousy thinking and call it critical thinking are not helping.