Can Houston911Truth Handle the Truth? August 7, 2007
Posted by TimTheFoolMan in Blogging, Flatulence, Politics, Voting.trackback
Although my knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss conspiracy theorists pretty quickly, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt by doing a little research into what they’re saying. Accordingly, when people started suggesting various plots behind the 9/11 destruction of the WTC, I did my homework, and came to the conclusion that they were looking for conspiracy where it simply didn’t exist.
Such is the case with the various “9/11 Truth” sites. They invariably point to flawed research, connect dots from hearsay, and use faulty logic to make a case for “the official report isn’t really what happened.” One characteristic that is particularly noteworthy of such sites: They will not tolerate critical thinking to be applied to their “facts.”
Why Isn’t Everyone Talking About Ron Paul?
Yesterday, I noted an article in the WordPress Top Posts about Ron Paul and ABC Television marginalizing him, and being a Republican, wanted to see what they had to say. In spite of my reservations about the site hosting the article, I read it, and posted a couple of comments about the fact that few people offline seem to be talking about Ron Paul, even though he has a loyal and vocal following online.
My initial comments were met with the type of reception that you would expect from vocal supporters of a given candidate, even though I wasn’t attacking the candidate himself. The immediate suggestion was that if the mass media (apparently under unilateral control by some hidden entity) weren’t keeping the Good News of this candidate so well suppressed, then they would be as heartily supporting him as people online apparently are.
I found that assertion curious, so I read a bit more. That’s when it got interesting.
The ABC’s of Marginalizing?
The opening paragraph of Houston 9/11 Truth’s article suggests that ABC pronounced Mitt Romney the victor of a recent poll, and then proceeds to show graphics that display Ron Paul having won that poll, as well as a second poll. What they don’t tell you is that the poll that ABC was describing in the original article wasn’t an online poll at all, but was a traditional telephone canvassing poll (restricted to residents of Iowa), jointly produced by ABC & the Washington Post.
Accordingly, I left the following comment:
August 6, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Upon further inspection…
The poll results article linked at the top isn’t even talking about the online poll that’s referenced below. The article links to the actual poll (a PDF), so you can find it there.
If you’re going to slam ABC for marginalizing a candidate, at least make sure that you’re talking about the correct poll that they’re supposedly skewing the results of. Is this the kind of research that’s supposed to give this site credibility about 9/11???
Tim
I waited, noting that my comment was “awaiting moderation.” A few more comments appeared. My comment was still “awaiting moderation.” Hours later, more comments appeared, including the following insight from “Jeremy”:
August 7, 2007 at 2:40 am
MITT ROMNEY, what a joke….
Ron Paul 2008
It’s now a full day later, and both this comment of mine, another comment criticizing the site’s approach to truth, and (I suspect) any comment critical of the article or Ron Paul are… awaiting moderation.
My Question
So, to the writer/editor of “Houston 9/11 Truth,” I have one question: If the truth is that there is no conspiracy against Ron Paul, but his platform simply doesn’t have any broad appeal to the voters of America, could you handle that truth?
I suspect not.
A Fool and his Words are Soon Parted 
Hi Tim, you left a comment to what I wrote about America and Facebook and ever since I have been subscribed to your blog.
My question to you is this:
With regards to 9/11, and without pointing fingers there are now several websites, claiming, with often very compelling evidence that there was an enormous cover up of the Pentagon Strike. Here being one of these sites: http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/flash.htm
By watching something like this we are forced to either assume that the entire this is a hoax, meaning false quotations and many photoshoped images or that it is true. There can not be, in this situation, a grey perception.
There is a growing number of sites, revealing in a extremely compelling way that the U.S. government does lie, does cover up and that is does it, very often, for reasons we can not understand. Take this site for example: http://www.libertythink.com/totalinformation/BlueMars.htm
Another example, where if what they are claiming is true, then we can only speculate as to why there is a cover-up.
regards
Nikolay,
First, thanks for reading and commenting.
With regard to questions about the US Government and cover-ups, the most compelling argument against such things is the massive amount of coordination necessary, and the number of people that must be complicit, at a ridiculous number of levels. Consider, for example, Anne Northrup, former congressperson for Kentucky. I worked with Anne’s husband, and followed her political career in this region. One of my co-workers is a close friend of her family. Sprinkled throughout the US Government are people just like Ms. Northrup, who go from being ordinary citizens to a part of a huge political machine.
For a cover-up of the magnitude of the Pentagon attack, several things would have to be dealt with. First, you have the huge number of people who saw the plane go overhead, and hundreds of witnesses to the actual crash. These eyewitness accounts are rarely discussed, because the people who saw the event don’t see the point in testifying about something that was blatantly obvious.
Second, you have to deal with the hundreds of civilians who work in the Pentagon building every day. I’ve been to the Pentagon as a civilian contractor, and the processing of the many other contractors was a non-trivial process. We’re not talking about a handful of people going in and out of this building each day. These people, several of whom I worked with at a previous job, were on-site when the event happened. When I went to the Pentagon, we were working on some additional security measures, which the local staff took very seriously, because they had lived through the attack. With all due respect to your opinion, it is insulting to these people to suggest that people who were not there have a better understanding of these events than people who worked in the rubble, and helped with the rebuilding process.
(On a completely different note, if you’ve never been in the Pentagon building, it’s hard to imagine the scale of how large the place is. Seeing pictures of the building does not give you any indication of how huge the building really is.)
Third, you have to involve ordinary citizens, who are constantly going in and out of various committees in Congress, any number of whom might bump up against some of the “real information,” and therefore must be complicit. This further suggests that the government has some kind of amazing leverage against these and others, to keep ALL of them amazingly quiet. Do you know people that are that good at keeping secrets? Why then, would hundreds of people voluntarily agree to keep silent about something so horrendous?
Now with regard to the black/white issues presented on the pentagonstrike site, this is a common (but flawed) argument technique, to suggest that something MUST be either A or B. They point to unbroken windows, or spools of wire that were apparently undisturbed, and pronounce “this wasn’t an 80 ton aircraft.” They leave no other room for other explanations, such as the spools having been elsewhere (and moving as a result of the impact), and so on. They also point to the hole and say “one small hole.” Again, this sounds like someone who’s never been to the building. The scale of the destruction (I walked through the area that had been rebuilt) was beyond your imagination. One small hole?
I have to say that the libertythink site strikes me the exact same way. Any number of rational explanations are possible, but rather than waste time going after them, I’ll simply point out that human nature is such that we prefer to believe that there is something mysterious. We prefer to believe that a huge entity like the US Government is hiding information, intentionally misleading the public, and covertly presenting a “reality” that only a “true thinker” can see past.
The truth is, our politicians aren’t that smart, and the system isn’t that good. When we try to cover things up, and we try to manufacture information, we are so incredibly horrible at it, everyone figures it out.
In summary, when our government is made up of people smarter than me, and not my neighbors, then I’ll start to believe that widespread conspiracies are plausible. Until then, sites like Houston 9/11 Truth, PentagonStrike, and BlueMars simply provide me with an endless source of entertainment. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Tim
Follow-up on BlueMars:
Check out the following stories on Slashdot, which hosts an interesting collection of science nerds & geeks.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/18/0220201
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/09/1724246
In short, nothing to see here… move along.
Tim
Now, now, Tim. As we all know, there’s always a little truth to every lie. 😉
Good to have you back, Tim. I’m mostly skeptical of conspiracy theories simply because I have yet to come across an organisation that was so efficient that it could maintain such a complex lie for so long. Maybe I work for all the wrong people.
Thanks.
My favorite line from one of these folks was this:
Her “facts” were as dubious as any. 🙂
Tim