Carrol is right that rational argument is impossible on this topic.
It's like religious belief. And here's an item from Left Business
Observer #112 on how the ruling class feels about conspiracy theories
- they're useful distractions from real politics.
Doug
----
Conspiracy. This is a boom time for conspiracy theories. Some of the
most toxic are those around 9/11: no airplane wreckage was found in
the Pentagon, the World Trade Center was wired to explode, Dick
Cheney orchestrated it all from his secret bunker, etc. It's all
nonsense, a reflection of paranoid ideation combined with political
weakness: when you're powerless, it's easy to blame the situation on
almighty secret plotters (though you have to wonder how, if the
plotters are so damned clever, "researchers" always manage to unlock
the mysteries so easily, and disseminate them without consequence).
It's tempting to write a full-blown critique of conspiracism, which
reduces the sloppy process of ruling class power over state and
society to the machinations of shadowy potentates, who all agree with
each other and exercise perfect control. The impulse demeans the
capacities of the 9/11 hijackers, by implying that only white people
could pull it off. (George Galloway is very incisive on this point,
in an interview in the LBO radio archive
<www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#051013>.) But there isn't
space for an extended meditation on conspiracism.
Connoisseurs of conspiracy might want to check out a 1998 report on
Defense Department declassification procedures, prepared by the
consulting firm Booz Allen & Hamilton, posted to the Federation of
American Scientists website <www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/
dod_opsec.html>. They recommend that "[t]he use of the Internet could
reduce the unrestrained public appetite for 'secrets' by providing
good faith distraction material." As an example of such material,
they suggest "Diversion: List of interesting declassified material—
i.e. Kennedy assassination data."
So, consider this, conspiracy theorists: instead of analyzing all the
rich material about capitalism and empire on the public record,
you're doing the Pentagon's work for it by pursuing "distractions."
You'd almost think it's a conspiracy.
