Reply #185: Some additional thoughts.... [View All]

[MervinFerd]

Ernest,

If you are still monitoring this thread, I would like to add a couple of additional thoughts.

The OV is NOT a Bush admin press release and it is NOT equivalent to any old theory that gets posted on a web site. The OV, as you define it, is a shared reality constructed by many millions of people watching these horrible events on TV, by the many thousands who lost friends and relatives or witnessed these events, by many thousands of investigators from the entire world's police, security services and journalistic organizations. Without doubt there are errors in that account. And coverups. But to treat this shared reality as equivalent to whatever is the latest conspiracy story is, quite literally, insanity.

As a brutally practical matter we must always maintain a threshold of evidence and plausibility below which "theories" do not need to be refuted or considered seriosly. The world is full of con-men, lunatics, religious cults and conspiracy theorists. If we treat them all equally, as the media and some liberal academics are prone to do, discussion descends into chaos. You cannot have a seminar on Evolution if a Scientific Creationist must be treated seriously. And you cannot have a discussion of Bush admin failures before and after 9/11 if we have to listen to Conspiracists who reject the shared reality for wild speculations.

For most activists and for the general public, the 9/11 hobbyists are an ugly and infuriating group. Whatever the failures and crimes of the Bush Admin (and they are many and awful), we WERE attacked by insane religious thugs. It is a peculiar kind of asshole that devotes himself to finding evidence that thouands of our own government and military people did this deed. NOT George Walker Bush, but the soldiers and bureaucrats who would have had to execute his orders.