The Seattle Seahawks coasted to an easy victory over the Denver Broncos yesterday in a Super Bowl that was mostly uninteresting due to it being an absolute blowout. The most interesting part of the game actually came after when a 9/11 truther hijacked a microphone from MVP Malcolm Smith and said “Investigate 9/11, and 9/11 was perpetrated by people within our own government.”
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Matthew Mills was arrested by police and charged with criminal trespassing for his little stunt that proves that stupid is alive and well in America today. The Libertarian Republic has worked hard to debunk 9/11 conspiracies in the past. Your faithful editor is a hardcore skeptic, participating in public debates and publishing heavily sourced articles in order to encourage critical thinking in a culture that far too often accepts uncritically the claims of those who take advantage of people’s willingness to believe in grand conspiracies. Mills is just one example of a movement that has hinged itself on the belief that forces within our own government were responsible for 9/11. Despite the fact that their claims have been repeatedly debunked, they still perpetuate the myth. Many of them do so undoubtedly because their livelihoods depend on how many listeners and clicks they can get to their website, and some of it relies just on plain old uncritical thinking.
Conspiracy theorists point at holes in evidence as if it was evidence itself, rather than taking concrete facts and piecing them together. They claim that thermitic dust was found at the site, whichit wasn’t. Or they rely on appeals to authority such as the fact that engineers and architects signed a petition claiming the building shouldn’t have fallen at free fall speed, again a myth that has been debunked. Never mind the fact that the amount of money it would take to pay off a group of government agents responsible for a cover up is more money than the economies of entire nations. Some estimates put the figure of payoff money needed at around $5 trillion dollars, basically half of the entire U.S. economy. Happily, not every 9/11 conspiracy theorist is willing to keep perpetuating the myths and lies surrounding these events. One incredibly well done video by a former 9/11 Truther shows just how easily duped people can be by a faked video.
Observe here Eddie Current as he dupes Truthers into believing a video that he produced reveals the real “truth” about the events of 9/11.
Current’s video is a hilarious example of just how easily people can be tricked into believing something. It also proved Winston Churchill correct when he said that a ‘Lie gets half way around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on’. The 9/11 truth movement has hung around so long, I believe mostly for financial reasons. A multi-million dollar industry has sprung up based around the traffic generated from the bored housewives and the tinfoil-hatted basement dwellers for whom an interesting lie is much more fun to believe than the boring truth. Indeed, many broadcasters sole strategies rely on the unquestioning audience of conspiracy theorists, who will consume any media that is conspiracy related, even if it doesn’t confirm their biases, but merely brings it up to garner their attention.
In fact, there are probably many Truthers reading this right now, driving traffic to this website, padding my wallet and increasing our exposure, not even thinking about the fact that by simply clicking on this link, they’ve already done me a favor. Did you know that many news broadcasters don’t even believe the crap they spin for the public? That may sound like an obvious truth, but if most people knew what the talent at their favorite networks really believed it would probably shock the hell out of them.
For instance, when I worked at a major cable news station in New York, I was blown away to learn that some of the talent not only didn’t believe their “War on Christmas” rhetoric, in fact they believed the opposite. One of the major talents there knew that conservatives that the content would sell. They published books about the culture wars and engaged in debates on issues to which they not only didn’t believe, but they believed the opposite! I believe that many conspiracy theorist broadcasters are probably doing the exact same thing.
Once I published a headline that had a vaguely conspiracist-sounding headline and the traffic response was unbelievable. A massive deluge of traffic pounded The Libertarian Republic and nearly took the site down. Even though the article ended up debunking the claim of the headline, the incentive to continue to publish articles in that same sense was extremely tempting. One has to wonder if many of those who broadcast conspiracy theories today, or who pander to that audience aren’t simply caving in to that pressure.
Regardless of the motives of those who push conspiracy theories and other related bullsh*t, the 9/11 Truth movement needs to die. Not only is it intellectually bankrupt, but I believe that it harbors the insanity of those who might be willing to commit crimes in order to avenge what they see as a wrong perpetrated by our government. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of reason to be angry at the government, but we don’t have to make up stories to hate our public figures, there are plenty of reasons in the open to disdain American public leadership. Take your pick of Benghazi, Obamacare or the War on Drugs. But don’t make something up to find an excuse to kill your boredom or feed your need for perpetual hate.
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