Conspiracy Theories On The Rise

8 August, 2006. 519 words.

On the way home yesterday, I heard Mac Watson (voted Richmond’s most annoying talk show host) talking to callers about conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11. I was compelled, because Mac Watson normally only talks about incredibly superficial topics during the time I drive home (yesterday I left later than usual). I was further intrigued, because I had also read a CNN story yesterday about how conspiracy theorists were supposedly gaining more credibility because a couple of people with college teaching credentials are on board with the theory.

Now, I generally find conspiracy theories fun to think about, but I can’t think of any that I actually believe. To me, it’s an exercise in creativity: What alternate cause might explain the observed effect? But for me to even take one step toward believing a conspiracy theory, I would have to see something about the accepted theory that doesn’t make sense. And so far, I haven’t seen anything about 9/11 that can’t be explained by the accepted facts.

One caller to Mac’s show, though, was pretty convinced that the government — specifically, the Rumsfeld/Cheney cabal — was behind 9/11 (presumably for the purpose of starting a war in Iraq). She mentioned that there have been 5 or 6 other skyscrapers that have been hit by planes, but none of those others collapsed in the same way as the WTC. (This is supposed to be evidence for controlled detonations.) I hadn’t ever heard about those other buildings before, but I find it really hard to believe that there have been other (completely unreported) examples of jumbo jets loaded with fuel intentionally hitting skyscrapers. Even if that had happened, as Mac pointed out, the WTC towers were constructed differently from most skyscrapers.

The caller also mentioned another supposed piece of evidence for controlled detonations: Apparently there were unexplained “flashes” seen in lower floors as the building collapsed (or maybe it was before the building collapsed, I dunno). It seems to me that could be pretty easily explained by, say, light bulbs popping. Or maybe fire extinguishers bursting. Or just about anything bursting under the enormous weight of a building falling on it. I could even imagine that the air itself might become combustible under the tremendous force of all that weight falling.

Taken individually, each piece of conspiracy evidence seems plausible. For example, demolitions is one possible explanation for flashes seen in the lower floors. But when you put all the conspiracy puzzle pieces together, it just doesn’t make much sense. For example, why detonate the building to make it collapse when just hitting the building with a plane would have accomplished the goal of sparking a war? Why bother hitting the buildings with planes at all if you had demolitions in place to collapse them? Why not collapse the building at the same time that the planes hit to maximize casualties? For that matter, to really maximize casualties, why not wait until later in the day when the buildings were full of people? Those are just a few things that would make me think there was a conspiracy theory behind the conspiracy theory.

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