The Opinionated Bastard

I read a few pages of the Noise last month and started seeing red. There was this long article about questioning the “official” 9/11 story. (Their quotes not mine.)

9/11 was one of the most heavily documented events in human history, and people still want to believe something other then the evidence of their own eyes. It’s just amazing. In March of 2005, Popular Mechanics had to run an article debunking all the 9/11 myths. It was just infuriating. To me, this is the same kind of thing as Holocaust denial.

It took me about 6 hours to calm down, and then I re-read the article in detail. Basically, one of our nutty NAU humanities professors, Dr. Marcus Ford, was going to show a tape of this even bigger nut, Dr. David Griffin, who has written a conspiracy book about 9/11. The guy reporting was basically doing an announcement article, that’s what I would expect of something like the Noise, making people aware of the weird stuff going on. So I was less incensed at the Noise.

I don’t really want to debunk these nonsensical theories, for that I refer you to the Popular Mechanics article that covers this stuff in detail; its available online. Instead, I want to talk about credentials and beliefs. For me, its never been “Question Authority”, but rather “Question Authorities”. A quick reflection on Dr. Griffin’s credentials make it obvious to me that he’s not really qualified to talk about any of the issues he raises. A few minutes research on the Internet would have quickly served to answer most of the questions he raises in his book. One of the charges this nut levies is that the collapse of the twin towers “looked liked a demolition”. Does anyone really think that a professor of theology is qualified to make that judgment? Couldn’t they at least be mechanical engineers? Or perhaps they could have read a number of the scholarly articles written on the collapse in the engineering journals? Look, I know that when you were a little kid, and you piled up blocks on top of each other, they would fall over in a big tall stack. Those were blocks. In the case of the twin towers, there is a lot more going on. Buildings are not blocks. The reason the twin towers crumpled is not because there were demolition charges placed throughout the building. Its because of two things: They were hollow, and there’s this thing around you may have noticed called gravity.

Don’t believe me? Build a tower out of dominoes instead of blocks. Knock out the middle. What do you get? A big pile of domino rubble. You probably did that as a kid too, so its all about having the right picture in your mind. That’s what happened on 9/11. No demolition necessary.

Of course, that’s gotten me into debunking the beliefs of this weird nut, which is beside the point of this piece. What I’m really trying to point out here is that Dr. Griffin and Dr. Ford want to believe this nonsense. Otherwise, they wouldn’t fervently believe something you can disprove with a box of dominos.

So I’m left with the conclusion that like Fox Mulder on the X-Files, he wants to believe. It’s interesting to me that Dr. Griffin is a professor of theology, because it seems to me that he has sort of a reverse faith. All criticism of the Administration is assumed to be valid, all praise suspect.

So why do these people choose this path? Why do they blindly cling with both hands to these beliefs? Both Ford and Griffin are university professors, they could have consulted with their local engineering and political science departments. Five minutes lunchtime conversation would dispel their whole book, but these professors avoid those thoughts. They prefer their blind anti-faith in the government.

I don’t know where this anti-faith stems from. But here are a couple of thoughts on the matter.

Most people, right or left, think in the back of their mind that people who don’t agree with them must be stupid. In real life there are many things where the choices we make aren’t quite so obvious. In all areas of political controversy the choices are non-obvious.

But it doesn’t matter. I can be skeptical of the bureaucrats at the EPA without being “stupid” and I can be skeptical of the ability of chemical companies to regulate themselves without being a “treehugger”. We live in a grey world, not a black and white one. Most people realize this; the sign of an extremist is their belief in those black and whites.

The left hasn’t been getting that lately. Overall, Bush has been a very grey President. But when I read even the mainstream left, they make out literally like Bush is Hitler, like they’re fighting a noble guerilla war against the forces of oppression.

Sure, if you believe that everyone who disagrees with you, even a little, is stupid. Notice how the left love to criticize Bush as being stupid? What they’re really saying is “he disagrees with us”. That’s how they could nominate a candidate with worse grades and worse SAT scores, and not see the irony. Kerry agreed with them, therefore he was smarter. Both Bush and Kerry were born with silver spoons in their mouths, Kerry even more so, but “Bush is a rich kid riding his daddy’s coattails”. Kerry agreed with them, so the fact that he’d never actually either accomplished or failed at anything in life didn’t matter. It’s the hysterical blindness of the self-righteous.

So now we get to the 9/11 conspiracists.

My wife has a great saying: “People who are controlling feel out of control.”

I think that Griffin and Ford would rather have some sort of American conspiracy secretly be responsible. Because then somehow, as an American, they would have more control. Terrorism is a scary thing; its chaotic, random, and violent. It’s comforting to these people to think “Bush is leaving office in 2008, so then terrorism will go away”.

Ah, if only that were true. Terrorism was around long before Bush2, and it will be around for long after Bush2. It’s been an exhausting 4 years since 9/11. Two wars later, we have 1 and a half democracies in the Middle East, and $200B spent. It would be nice to imagine that it could all go away. But it won’t. For all that the Europeans mock us for our cowboy ways, we haven’t had an attack on American soil since then; while they’ve had several. Could the “chimp” from Crawford be right? Could the best defense be a good offense?

I don’t know. No one does; we can argue the couldas, wouldas, shouldas and might-have-beens all day long. For all that I argue with the hysterical left, sometimes I fear they may be right, we may be warmongering assholes. But something I wish they would realize: If they’re right, we’re all doomed. If I’m right, we’re all saved.

I’d rather have a positive belief then a negative belief any day. I’d rather light a candle then curse the darkness.

That’s what bothers me about the delusions of Griffin and Ford. They’re choosing to embrace the darkness. I’d have more sympathy with them if they had a blind faith in hope instead of their blind hatred of Bush. Of course, Micheal Moore didn’t help. To this day, few people who saw F911 know that big chunks of it were distortions if not outright lies. Good if you want to believe I guess.

So the beat goes on.

Oh well. My venom has run down. Now I merely feel sorry for Griffin and Ford. I see many years of red states ahead for this country until people like them learn to respect people who disagree with them.