You have got to be fucking kidding us:
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government had warnings about 9/11 but decided to ignore them, a national survey found. And that’s not the only conspiracy theory with a huge number of true believers in the United States. The poll found that more than one out of three Americans believe Washington is concealing the truth about UFOs and the Kennedy assassination – and most everyone is sure the rise in gas prices is one vast oil-industry conspiracy. Sixty-two percent of those polled thought it was “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that federal officials turned a blind eye to specific warnings of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Only 30 percent said the 9/11 theory was “not likely,” according to the Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.
Idiots.
Conspiracy theories are parasitic on sound epistemic and deliberative norms. Persuasive conspiracies that have gotten some social traction are marks of cultural and deliberative disintegration, a particularly dangerous detour in Burke’s guilt-purification-redemption cycle. The pomo defense of conspiracy theories – that they’re disruptive intrusions into hegemonic discourse that work by “just airing some questions” – was already untenable theoretically. Following Burke, persuasion simply doesn’t work that way. It works through a relatively well-described process of attempted identification and then – when that identification fails – either scapegoating or self-mortification. Persuasion through disidentification is a contradiction in terms.
Now that one of the dumbest conspiracy discourses ever is the hegemonic discourse, the already untenable defense of conspiracy theorization has becomes empirically incoherent.
Sunday Link Dump -
We’ve got a few more posts that still need to go live, but we’re going to sandbag them until tomorrow because (a) we’re lazy and (b) we’re lazy. They’ll go live tomorrow, but here’s a little teaser to keep…
Your comments are factually based but biased in their delivery. How so? They are only partial truths. To take an either/or perspective in this argument conceals greater facts for both sides. There are some aspects of conspiracy theories that are true; however, most do not meet empirical standards of proof as you pointed out. Often it is not wholly a conspiracy but rather market factors in general combined with collaborative activities of human nature toward taking advantage of situations for an increase in egoic or monetary position and wealth. There are Federal conspiracy indictments brought on a regular basis against a great many individuals and organizations. However, the elaborate narratives and stories that many of the proponents of these theories come up with are preposterous in light of simple research and investigation. Nonetheless, to deny the validity of their story in general does not mean that some of the facts included in the story are not accurate and should not be considered further. This two valued all or nothing perspective is a logical fallacy that leads to the same one sided perspective that created the conspiracy theories to begin with. Let us be careful about taking too strong of a stand regarding any situation that contains multiple facts. Each fact must be evaluated separately as to its accuracy and legitimate or illegitimate causal connection to other facts surrounding a matter. This is the heart of scientific and philosophical truth.
In brief, my personal observations and experience, as a former subscriber to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) publications and working with CFR members and their Tri-Lateral Commission (TC) partners, shows me that the disagreements amongst themselves over their own transforming objectives would make it highly improbable if not impossible to maintain a malevolent networked global conspiracy over a long period of time. Even so, I have personally observed specific collaborative plans on a small scale to intentionally utilize mass media outlets to gain prominent political positions for the least amount of financial expenditure. Is this a conspiracy or just good planning to aid mostly personal or private but completely legal interests? The issue then becomes one of ethics and whether it is appropriate to run for a specific public office with the majority of the intent focused on private rather than public interests?