[lit-ideas] Re: Is it any wonder...
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 16:34:34 -0700
I can't believe anyone here treats that junk seriously, but then I shouldn't
be surprised. I read The Hidden Hand, Middle East Fears of Conspiracy by
Danlel Pipes. You can't explain them all away, even when they are as
self-contradictory as Simon's. I guess I'm surprised that anyone would want
to.
What do you do when you encounter a mad idea? I live in Southern California
and have encountered them all my life. We've had people timing their
suicides to the arrival of a comet. Some have gone off to kill themselves
in South America. Others have gone to Giant Rock to commune with aliens.
Mort Sahl went bonkers over the death of JFK at the Hungry Eye. I've known
otherwise normal people who believed in this sort of thing. You don't
defend yourself against it. You ignore it - if you can, and usually you
can.
As to the Leftist & Islamist Conspiracy about Bush, I ignore those as well.
I have been an admirer of William of Ockham. If there are two ways to
explain something, you take the simplest. The simplest is that we really
were attacked and a President, ill-equipped to mount a military response,
mounted one. He came from Texas as a "uniter not a divider." He wanted to
do for the U.S. what he did for Texas, improve its schools, leave no child
behind, and balance its budget. He thought he could do that. Fighting a war
was the farthest thing from his mind. History, as I have written on more
than one occasion, shows all of our presidents, despite the calumny heaped
upon them, to be pretty much what they seemed to be. Lots of them made
mistakes and some of them were pretty dumb ones, but they never turned out
to be the evil people their enemies said they were, and there were always
enemies saying those sorts of things.
But as to enemies, this may be the first time Americans (which neither you
nor Simon are but your views are shared by some Americans) credited the
propaganda of our enemies. Think of what the Japanese said about Roosevelt
during World War II . . . oh yeah, I forgot, our reporters never published
that junk.
Lawrence
_____
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Paul Stone
Sent: Friday, May 05, 2006 1:20 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Is it any wonder...
At 04:06 PM 5/5/2006, you wrote:
Simon,
I assumed Paul had his tongue in his cheek.
No Lawrence... my tongue wasn't in my cheek. I find the inconsistencies and
outright coverups (of what, we don't really know and I try daily to convince
myself that "there's no way they would actually DO that") pretty troubling.
Where answers to very necessary questions should be, there is just a void.
There's not even an attempt to answer except to say "yeah, those conspiracy
theorists are really something."
Do you know what the NUMBER ONE response to a spouse who accuses the other
of cheating? "How DARE You Suggest such a thing". A good defence is a strong
offence. But instead of actually answering any questions, the "conspiracy
nuts' " questions are just written off as ridiculous. There are dozens of
happenings on 9/11 that would need the craziness of Arlen Specter's 'magic
bullet' theory to even begin to dismiss -- at least that's what the missing
evidence would suggest. My only question is... if the government has
exculpatory evidence, then why don't they show it? There are only two
answers that are viable: 1) the evidence implicates them or 2) the evidence
does NOT show them to be completely innocent. Why else WOULDN'T they want it
out there?
paul
##########
Paul Stone
pas@xxxxxxxx
Kingsville, ON, Canada
Other related posts:
