|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
The Liberals' Conspiracy Mindset Lowell Ponte In his Rolling Stone Magazine column, Matt Taibbi weeks ago described "9/11 Truth" conspiracy theorists as "clinically insane." He expected a few angry responses. Instead came a "deluge" of obscene responses accusing him of being part of this purported conspiracy. "Apparently," wrote Taibbi, "every third person in the United States thinks [President] George Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks." Taibbi's estimate, shockingly, may be accurate. According to a September Scripps Howard/Ohio University Poll's survey of 1,010 adults, 36 percent of respondents overall said it was "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials either participated in the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop these attacks "because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East." Sixteen percent of poll respondents said it was "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that "the collapse of the twin towers in New York was aided by explosives secretly planted in the two buildings." Twelve percent of respondents expressed suspicion that the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, was struck not by a skyjacked airliner but by a military cruise missile. Those holding such conspiratorial views, the poll found, were disproportionately young, members of racial and ethnic minorities, people with only a high school education, and Democrats. "If large numbers of people in this country can swallow 9/11 conspiracy theory without puking, all hope is lost," wrote Taibbi. Story Continues Below
"At bottom, the 9/11 conspiracy theories are profoundly irrational and unscientific," wrote another thoughtful left-liberal, editor of The Progressive Magazine Matthew Rothschild, who like Taibbi found that by questioning these conspiratorial views he had "kicked a hornet's nest." "It is more than passing strange," wrote Rothschild, "that progressives who so revere science on such issues as tobacco, stem cells, evolution, and global warming, are so willing to abandon science and give in to fantasy on the subject of 9/11." Rothschild is half right. He and his fellow "progressives" have, e.g., irrationally embraced deceitful demagogue Al Gore and ignored the many scientists who dispute Gore's extremist climate doomsaying, as we documented in the July NewsMax Magazine. Rothschild has compromised his claim to rationality by regularly publishing the likes of Marxist historian Howard Zinn. [Editor's Note: Get the Report "Al Gore Spins Global Warming" by clicking here] But in his September 11, 2006, dismissal of 9/11 conspiracy theories, Rothschild references scientists and engineers who have punched hundreds of holes in the Swiss cheese claims of conspiracy zealots. Among these zealots are Claremont School of Theology emeritus philosophy professor David Ray Griffin and Brigham Young University physics professor and cold fusion specialist Steven E. Jones. Popular Mechanics Magazine in its March 2005 cover story and August 2006 book Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to The Facts (foreword by Senator John McCain) critiques 20 conspiracy claims in great detail. One fact among many: DNA from nearly everyone aboard the airliner that hit the Pentagon was identified from the wreckage. Taibbi cuts down these zealots with a sword of logic. The conspiracy theorists, he argues, claim President Bush somehow led a conspiracy of "tens of thousands" of operatives, missile users, demolition explosive experts, and surviving airline passengers. But neither evidence nor any leaker has exposed this conspiracy. If this was faked to justify war with Iraq, why not make the attackers Iraqis? Why kill Republican-funding Wall Streeters? The unverified claims of conspiracy theorists, Taibbi argues, simply do not create a plausible, coherent plot that anybody more worldly than a fourth grader can take seriously. The more important questions: why have so many people eagerly swallowed these conspiracy theories? And what does their fanaticism portend for our society? The Scripps Howard/Ohio University Poll found that a record-high 54 percent of respondents said they were "more angry with the federal government" than they used to be. That anger seems related to growing suspicion that government has deceived the public about the War in Iraq, weapons of mass destruction and other political policies. If government is no longer believed, then the hidden agendas alleged by conspiracy theories offer an alternative reality. Democratic politicians seeking to regain political power in this November's elections have encouraged such "Bush lied, people died" paranoia to stoke anger. Former President Bill Clinton in his attacks a week ago against Fox News reporter Chris Wallace evoked Hillary Clinton's accusations against a "vast right-wing conspiracy" that purportedly controls American politics. (In fact, the Right is a wholly inept gaggle, at best only half-vast and half right-wing, Republicans now being almost as much in favor of ever-larger government as are liberal Democrats.) The United States, argues Taibbi, "has become hopelessly divided into insoluble, paranoid tribes ... that construct their own reality by cherry-picking the evidence they like from the vast information marketplace, violently disbelieve in the humanity of those outside their ranks, and lavishly praise their own movement mediocrities as great thinkers." Democrats and their leftwing media allies have already, in case it is needed, been refurbishing another favorite conspiracy – how this November's election will be stolen, just like all previous ones Democrats lost. Why accept voter rejection when your radical Manichaean reality can concoct a fantasyland where leftists (always good) lose only because right-wingers (always evil) rig elections? This increasingly paranoid leftwing worldview is undermining democracy, patriotism, and civilized society. Mere partisan differences are being turned into ideological alienation, distrust, division, demonization, hatred and even anti-Semitism. Mere politics is becoming uncompromising warfare as scorched-earth radical extremists have seized control of the Democratic Party. If such irrational Shiite Democrats win control of Congress in November, God help America. Even when sleeping, Democratic dreams apparently now reflect the "hidden distress and unpleasantness of the liberal mind," according to researcher Kelly Bulkeley of John F. Kennedy University near Berkeley, California. Sleeping conservatives, he reports in an upcoming issue of Dreams, a journal of the American Psychological Association, tend to have realistic, monogamous dreams, while liberals are more likely to dream about erotic encounters with strangers and to have nightmares. Will leftist nightmares soon again be imposed on the rest of us?
Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
Print Page 
Forward Page 
|
| All Rights Reserved © 2008 NewsMax.Com |