Friday, August 21, 2015

The process of death wishing…

Two great Malcolm Muggeridge quotes from Ann Barnhardt.
Bill Whittle on The Great Unlearning: How Our Society Became So Stupid.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whittle was on spot, up until the point of calling 9/11 a "conspiracy theory".

OF COURSE IT WAS A CONSPIRACY. Whether one believes the fairy tale .gov version, or otherwise.

Chiu ChunLing said...

He probably means the popular attribution of 9/11 to "right-wing extremists" in government seeking a pretext for a new crusade to spread and reinforce the "utterly false" notion that Christianity is being persecuted globally.

There is, after all, a difference between a real thing and any theories about that thing. Obviously there was at least one conspiracy on 9/11 (I count several), and so you can say that the conspiracy[ies] are a real thing. But the fact that there was at least one real conspiracy doesn't mean that all (or even any) theories about that real thing are valid. Some are as ridiculous as the theory that the moon (which is real) is made out of cheese.

The most laughable meme that has come out of 9/11 theories is the idea that fire does not melt steel. I have absolutely no idea how any person can claim this with a straight face, let alone declaim it with fierce passion. One truly bizarre theory held that Bush did it to hide the complicity of his father in bringing down the Soviet Union (and thus the Iron Curtain, including the Berlin Wall). Other aspects of the theory were actually fairly plausible (compared to most, at least), it was only the motive that made absolutely no sense...but it still made absolutely no sense.

NASA organized a massive effort, many of the details of which were officially secret, to put men on the moon (and bring them back, a significantly more difficult proposition). Keeping that much technical data a secret (even if only temporarily) was a conspiracy. There were all kinds of intelligence shenanigans involved in landing on the moon without giving away vital missile technology. The theory that the moon landing itself was faked is a theory about this real conspiracy...it just happens to be among the silliest (the theory that they left the astronauts on the moon to die and replaced them with doubles is more plausible...and a better conspiracy all round, given the significant accretion of political power as a result).

Conspiracies are real. But most theories about them are foolish. Our idiocracy is not a matter of being less capable of making good theories, it is a matter of being willing to settle for bad ones rather than criticize them.

Anonymous said...

Bill Whittle is a damn national treasure. I wonder what it would look like if we let him do live commentary during the RNC/DNC debates.

oughtsix said...

"Bill Whittle is a damn national treasure."

Absolutely. Reasoned, articulate and evenly measured in tone, rare these days so as to be nearly singular.

"I wonder what it would look like if we let him do live commentary during the RNC/DNC debates."

If the notevencandid-ates could hear him, if he were to ask the questions, the melt down would be delicious and hilarious. They would all be finished and their "parties" along with them.

Folks know in their bones that something is wrong and they're hungry for someone to tell the truth. That's why Trump is getting such play.

If Bill Whittle could expose them all on live tv... Hey, a guy can dream can't he?