The Opinionated Bastard

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 is going to show a tape of this even bigger nut, Dr. David Griffin who has written a conspiracy book about 9/11. link 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.

But talk about the blind leading the blind. To quote his bio:

David Ray Griffin has been a professor of philosophy of religion and theology at the Claremont School of Theology in California for over 30 years. He is co-director of the Center for Process Studies there and the author or editor of over 20 books.

Ok, so we have a humanities professor, shilling for a theology professor.

The blind leading the blind. 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 humanities or theology is qualified to make that judgement? 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.

As for his political commentary, couldn't we at least have a professor of political science comment? I mean really, just because the staff member who led most of the work voted Republican, that doesn't mean that the entire rest of the bi-partisan staff were blind sheep.

Sometimes, I think we should ban the use of “Dr.” as a title for anyone with a liberal arts degree. We'll come up with a new title, like “Buffoon”.

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 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? Perform this thought experiment in your head. Take a bunch of bricks and a bunch of empty milk cartons. Put a milk carton on the ground (the short way), then a brick on top of the milk carton. Repeat. milk-carton, brick, milk-carton, brick, milk-carton.

Ok, now picture in your mind the tower rising higher and higher until the weight of the bricks will be too much for one of the milk cartons and it will crush one of the milk cartons. When that happens, more milk cartons will be crushed from the momentum of the weight above it. The other bricks will slide off the milk cartons, and you'll end up with a pile, not a toppled tower of blocks.

Now rebuild the tower in your mind so it is just barely straining under the load. Set 3 of the milk cartons on fire in your mind somewhere in the middle...they burn for awhile and collapse, producing a big pile of rubble.

That's what happened on 9/11. The kerosene (jets burn kerosene not gasoline) burned in a short, low-temperature fire. The kerosene fire wasn't the problem. What happened is that the kerosene ignited the paper, furnishings, etc. in the office. Lots and lots of paper, actually in a typical office, which would burn hot enough to weaken the steel. In our thought experiment, its not the match that's the problem, its the wax on the milk cartons. The match ignites the milk cartons, which then burn quickly.

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.

For me, its never been “Question Authority”, but rather “Question Authorities”. A moments 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.

So I'm left with the conclusion that like Fox Mulder on the X-Files, he want's 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 moonbats choose this path? Why do they blindly cling with both hands to these beliefs when a few minutes thought or research would ally these fears? 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 these myths, 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.

I've noticed, and commented before on the self righteousness of the hysterical left. I think it boils down to this.

Most people, right or left, think in the back of their mind that people who don't agree with them must be stupid. In fact, I'm often not any different, I just referred to these professors as buffoons above, right? Of course, hopefully, my readers realize that since I blog under the moniker “Opinionated Bastard” my tone is light, I'm not always serious.

The reality in life is that 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. Killing a newborn baby is obviously murder. Preventing conception by wearing a rubber is obviously not. Somewhere in the middle is a line, and it makes perfect sense that reasonable people can disagree on where in the 9 months in between that line lies. It doesn't mean they are stupid if they disagree with you. The controversies in our society exist precisely because they are areas where reasonable people can disagree. No one in Congress will ever make it legal to kill babies, and no one in Congress will ever make it illegal to own contraception. But we'll argue about the line between them for quite awhile.

I have met many pro-choice people who are fundamentally convinced that pro-life people are “stupid”. Even though I am pro-choice, I have a certain amount of sympathy with people who aren't sure exactly where that line is. Even then, I'm not comfortable once the baby is “kicking”. If the health of the mother is imperiled though? Ah, but who determines that?

Abortion is a very controversial issue,.

But it doesn't matter. I can be skeptical of the EPA without being “stupid” and I can be skeptical of the ability of chemical companies to regulate themselves without being a “treehugger”. The reality is that we live in a grey world, not a black and white one. Most people on each side of the political spectrum realize this; the sign of an extremist is their belief in those black and whites.

Bush ran as a compassionate conservative. What he was trying to say when he called himself that is much the same thing Clinton was trying to say: “Yes, we need to help the less fortunate members of our society, but the way we've been doing it hasn't been working.” In addition, Bush was trying to say: “I'm going to do something different, and its going to be based on a certain set of values.”

Most of the left didn't get that. 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.

I've always said it was Bush's detractors that made me a fan of Bush. They portrayed Bush as a fundamentalist Christian, but when I looked into it, Bush was a lukewarm Christian; he believes in God and only occasionally attends church. They said he was the worst president for the environment ever, when I looked into it while he eliminated a few regulations that may or may not have made sense he was funding various alternative energy proposals and a zero-emission power plant. They said he was a pro-life activist; so far he's done nothing in that area except promote “abstinence education”, which strangely, works. They said he was ruining our school system; when I looked into it No Child Left Behind was the best piece of school reform in 30 years.

Where they see black, I see shades of grey and occasionally white. Where they see stupidity, I merely see a difference of opinion.

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 these people 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 ernie on my blog, sometimes I fear he may be right. But something I wish ernie would realize: If he's 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.

So the beat goes on. But I wonder if people like Griffin and Ford realize that they're dragging the left down?

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 remove their head from their ass. In the meantime, I think I'll vote against all pay raises for college professors...