Cheer Up Charlies
Black's La La La Attitude Poses Far More Threat to U.S. Than Theorists
RECEIVED Thu., July 19, 2007
Dear Editor,
Ranting about "conspiracy theorists" [“Page Two,” July 13], Louis Black shows the same lack of any sense of irony as the Republikanski faithful ranting about Democrats. With no shades of gray whatsoever, he lumps all conspiracies and their believers into one tinfoil-clad gaggle, deriding them for thinking only in terms of black and white. He berates 9/11 loonies for focusing on one aspect of something and ignoring all else, then unilaterally dismisses talk of government involvement just because 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq. I don't buy the inside job line either, but "bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S." makes refusing to investigate the possibility that it was allowed to happen seem kind of silly, and the Manchukuo Incident and the Reichstag fire show that inside jobs can happen. Using the most special generation's opposition to war in Vietnam to allege their hypersensitivity to corruption is somewhat dubious, given the role of the Gulf of Tonkin "incident" in both building support for the war and grabbing unconstitutional war power for the executive branch.
I posit that Black's la la la I can't hear you attitude poses far more threat to America than the wide-eyed gullibility of the tinfoil hatters; refusing to acknowledge that "conspiracy" just means two or more people colluding to commit a crime leads to despicable absurdity like blaming Ralph Nader for Dubya's "victory" in 2000, despite (still missing ballot) boxes full of evidence that Dubya's campaign manager used her position as Florida's secretary of state to rig the election. Not every conspiracy theory involves orbital mind-control lasers; some are just about electronic voting machine programming, and ignoring them by association threatens democracy itself.
Ranting about "conspiracy theorists" [“Page Two,” July 13], Louis Black shows the same lack of any sense of irony as the Republikanski faithful ranting about Democrats. With no shades of gray whatsoever, he lumps all conspiracies and their believers into one tinfoil-clad gaggle, deriding them for thinking only in terms of black and white. He berates 9/11 loonies for focusing on one aspect of something and ignoring all else, then unilaterally dismisses talk of government involvement just because 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq. I don't buy the inside job line either, but "bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S." makes refusing to investigate the possibility that it was allowed to happen seem kind of silly, and the Manchukuo Incident and the Reichstag fire show that inside jobs can happen. Using the most special generation's opposition to war in Vietnam to allege their hypersensitivity to corruption is somewhat dubious, given the role of the Gulf of Tonkin "incident" in both building support for the war and grabbing unconstitutional war power for the executive branch.
I posit that Black's la la la I can't hear you attitude poses far more threat to America than the wide-eyed gullibility of the tinfoil hatters; refusing to acknowledge that "conspiracy" just means two or more people colluding to commit a crime leads to despicable absurdity like blaming Ralph Nader for Dubya's "victory" in 2000, despite (still missing ballot) boxes full of evidence that Dubya's campaign manager used her position as Florida's secretary of state to rig the election. Not every conspiracy theory involves orbital mind-control lasers; some are just about electronic voting machine programming, and ignoring them by association threatens democracy itself.
Jason Meador
