Weblogsky: This is intense!

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This is intense!

A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness. - Miller in "Repo Man"

Thought about this quote after seeing a couple of very similar articles about 9/11 conspiracy theories this week - from Michael Ventura and RU Sirius. Seems they were both having the same thought, dipping into a pervasive cosmic unconsciousness...

Ventura is skeptical of blogs because "they often fail to cite their sources, and there's no way to know if they've confirmed their facts." He's even more skeptical of the 9/11 consipiracy theories, especially the one that says it was an "inside job," that the U.S. government brought down the World Trade Center. I won't say the thought hasn't crossed my own mind – an analysis that asks who benefited most from the attack could point to the Bush Administration, who clearly took full advantage of the post 9/11 senes of national unity and fear of terrorism to further it's own agenda (as Keith Olbermann said earlier this week). However as one who's played (ironically, not seriously) with many conspiracy theories in the past, I've always had a skepticism similar to Ventura's:

The conspiracy usually outlined would require dozens of people to do lots of manual labor for a considerable time with no leak then and no leak since. Perfect secrecy accomplished by, say, a hundred people. As a journalist and student of history, to me that would be strangest of all.

In this week's article he goes on to make a good point:

Even if these conspiracy theorists are right, does it matter? Does it matter which cabal of murderous madmen was responsible? What matters more is that cabals of murderous madmen now set the world's agenda. It's easy to say that, one way or another, it's always been like that, and I would agree that there have always been cabals, and some have been powerful, but what has been more powerful by far is the counterpoint of momentum and inertia of the masses of us, throughout the ages, who want to live our own lives by our own lights and do the best we can. What's changed is that technology has given cabals vastly disproportionate power.....

RUSirius is skeptical of conspiracy theories anti-conspiracy theories... pretty much everybody. He reviews a book from Popular Mechanics called Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts, and attempted an interview with the author, who was evidently reticent because he's been worn down by conspiracy theorists (and probably made the easy but wrong assumption that a guy named RU Sirius is Sirius but not serious). RU concludes saying that "We live, obviously, in paranoid times. People are quick to conclude that the discursive other – the person with the opposite point of view – is 'the enemy.'" This reminds me of Richard Rush's "The Stunt Man", a film that suggests that paranoia is our real enemy... "nothing to fear but fear itself."