I see all the Truthers have jumped in to rebut DallasMike’s learned and sensible post, written by someone who actually knows something about aerodynamics, jet fuel, basic physics, etc. What? No? How surprising! Why Jon Gold can rebut things he hasn’t even read!
CyberJacques wrote:
There are two reasons that people believe in conspiracy theories. The first is that it makes them feel like they’re part of some mysterious little in-crowd, a select group of people that know the real truth while everyone else is in the dark. It makes them feel special. The second reason is fear. They are too afraid to admit that there really is a larger evil out there somewhere, and so they blame things on our own government. Because deep down, they already know that they have very little to fear from our current government, and it makes them feel safer to pretend to fear a false threat than to face the actual threat.
Excellent points, and I would add something else: conspiracy theories allow leftists to feel both superior and victimized at the same time and for a lib, the combination of two of their most cherished emotions must feel like pure bliss, along the lines of a major league orgasm. Not only do they know more about the REAL truth than those dumb red-state Fox viewers, but those dumb Fox viewers are also MEAN (of course we are, we’re conservatives!) The conservatives pick on us and laugh at us and call us kooks and nutjobs who went to the Rosie O’Donnell School of Engineering – but we know we’re brave and noble and misunderstood – and smart, dammit! We’ll suck it up and march on, nevermind facts or logic or the sense God gave a goat.
A while back, it occurred to me that one reason why the JKF conspiracies took hold so quickly was because Oswald was a Commie. If he had been a John Bircher, liberals would have been more willing to believe he was a lone nut (although there would have been a lot of yammering about the dark heart of America, etc.) But the fact that Oswald was a leftist didn’t fit into the lib scenario. “A leftist killed Our Hero? That can’t be! It must have been,…, the Joint Chiefs of Staff! Or LBJ! Or the CIA!” Uh, huh. The CIA couldn’t even make Fidel’s beard fall out.
Funny how the people who think the government is capable of the most nefarious plots (which include feats of physics that would dazzle Einstein and 007) are also the people who want to expand the government.
