One Sucker's Saga, Part III: Our Uninformed Populace
Whenever the people are well-informed,
they can be trusted with their own government;
whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice,
they may be relied on to set them to rights.
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1789
In this installment of my saga, I'd like to suggest a corollary to Mr. Jefferson's observation: "Whenever the people are ill-informed, their government can trust them to do nothing to correct wrongs, no matter how much those wrongs attract their notice."
There are many ways to prevent information from spreading. One can create a cover story. One can use mouthpieces to tear down the reputations of those who dare investigate the story buried beneath the cover version, or to disseminate conflicting versions of the story, thereby sowing confusion. One can simply bury the story itself, quashing attempts to bring the story to light. Provided one has enough resources and accomplices, there is just about no length one can reach to affect the official version of What Happened.
Long-time readers know I've been pointing out examples of such manipulations for years. Some topics so threaten a group vested in maintaining the status quo that they will hire operatives to troll LJ groups and plant seeds of doubt in a given topic, publish articles referencing research that completely misrepresent the research itself (and then deny the original researcher a chance to correct the record), report widely and often on salacious details but fail to correct the record with nearly as much fanfare -- these are just a few examples from just one controversy, examples that barely scratch the surface of what has happened. All one needs, as I've said, is some cash to throw around to "research" groups and foundations and ideologically like-minded newspapers and magazines. The juggernaut will follow, one that may crush hard scientific findings or at least dissuade further research.
When it comes to the truth about certain topics, you see, very few people care. I know, that sounds harsh; but it's pretty accurate. People are interested in, well, what they find interesting. OJ, Jacko, Britney and Paris come to mind. If another topic in question doesn't interest them personally (and many don't), they won't bother digging to see what facts presented in what forums can be called into question. If they check out a story at all, they will most likely ask opinions from folks they know and trust, listen to these opinions, and leave the topic to rest without their involvement.
Since people generally surround themselves with like-minded peers, some information spreads unevenly. One can even track the tendency for some ideas to be adopted by examining where on the political spectrum people holding opinions identify themselves. The graph below, from the linked article, shows what I mean.
Brenden Nyhan created this graph to show the prevalence of which unprovable opinions were being held by people holding which political views. Since Republicans are more likely to question President Obama's presidency (or even the legitimacy thereof), it's no surprise they would grasp at any straw that helps them question his ability to serve. Likewise, those (like me) who chaffed for eight years under President Bush would no doubt latch onto any wild-ass scheme to link him directly to 9/11. This would trash his legitimacy and his purportedly important "legacy."
I find only one flaw with Prof. Nyhan's research: the level to which either story is treated by mainstream media outlets as "legitimate" is amazingly disproportionate.
Therefore, I think how readily one would find information on either topic would greatly affect acceptance. The number of mentions the Birther movement gets is insane in its frequency, especially a few months ago. (Getting actual numbers would prove difficult for me, simply because I would be forced to watch Faux News, the main Birther story outlet. I hate headaches and nausea.) But what about the number of Truther stories run outside the internets?
That's rare. Weirdly rare.
One outlet that most recently tackled the 9/11 topic was CBC's the fifth estate in a piece called The Unofficial Story (you can watch the episode at the link). Since I was just a few pages into a book on that topic, I gave it a watch.
I was surprised.
You see, a few years ago I heard an interview with Steve Alten on kmo's C-Realm. He had just written a book, a fiction work based on another author's writings. I was so incensed by what he had said I ordered his book, The Shell Game. I read The Shell Game as soon as I got it. It's alright; a good story, not badly written, lots of action. What appealed to me most, though, were the concepts behind the story, concepts I had not heard before in all of the news accounts covering 9/11. I was up to then basically a virgin to the Truther movement. I didn't fall head-over-heals into the depths of conspiracy right then, though. I felt it was necessary to read the source for Mr. Alten's claims, Crossing the Rubicon by Michael C. Ruppert. I ordered his book.
I ordered the book. It wasn't available in my small local bookstore. It wasn't available on the shelves of the larger big box book chain. After a few months of fruitless searching through ever more distant and obscure area book dealers, I had to break down and order it.
I mention this because a year after I got the book in late 1998 2008, it started popping up on the shelves. A large book written by a relatively unknown author and published by an obscure publishing house was starting to become more and more popular.
I confess that I didn't read it right away. In fact, I waited over a year before I sat down and cracked the cover. Why did I wait? Quite frankly, those few Truther advocates I have met in public scared me. They seemed to think differently, more intensely when the topic behind the "movement" was raised. They were far more defensive, almost hostile to criticism. And they lost friends easily.
Once I cracked the cover of Rubicon, though, I started to see this was not just complete bull. Ruppert has done his homework, and in a way I approve. When he speculates, he notes the speculation. When he makes a declaratory statement, he cites his sources and lets the reader determine the veracity thereof.
Which is weird. Getting back to the fifth estate piece; here's a blurb outlining the contents:
You’ll meet some of the leading proponents of “truther” theories: Richard Gage, an American architect, explains how the WTC twin towers and the lesser known ‘Tower #7’ could only have crumbled as they did due to explosive charges placed inside the buildings. Others, including Canadian professor Kee Dewdney, insist that the story of the brave fight by the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 must have been a hoax. But, you’ll also hear from others who dispel “truther” theories and try to understand why, from JFK’s assassination to the moon landing to 9/11, a culture of conspiracy springs up around certain historic events. (Emphasis man: Me!)
Let's go back for a second and check out that passage I emphasized. Why in a "news" piece covering 9/11 will a reference "to the moon landing" mean anything? Aren't the two separate stories?
Simply by implying that the two stories are connected, the fifth estate has planted a conflated association. If one is group proves to be whacko, how might we judge the credibility of the other?
In the piece, host Bob McKeown interviews people who claim the big towers could not have fallen from the impacts at all, and had to have been detonated. For evidence, an architect notes pressure blasts blowing out windows leading the collapse. McKeown later interview an architect and demolition expert who refutes this claim . . . and who goes further, to suggest the claim itself is untrustworthy and unpatriotic. They interview one man who asserts that all of the planes that hit the towers and Pentagon were duplicates, identical in every way to the planes that left New York and Boston but never returned. Though they provide no expert refutation to that claim, the look of incredulity on the host's face was all they needed to shoot the legitimacy of that assertion down in flames.
Oh, and note the title of the piece: The Unofficial Story. "The" as a definite article implies that the people being interviewed are the representatives of the movement. I found that very odd indeed, given that I've neither ever heard of these people nor seen their writings on any bookshelves.
Worth further noting: No where in either the blurb or the piece itself will one find mention of Michael C. Ruppert. This book, which as I've said has been making itself more and more common in regular bookstores and which has testable claims, was never mentioned.
Testable claims. That is more than worth a mention. Quite a few events are unfolding right now that seemingly have no connection to the events on September 11, 2001. If Mr. Ruppert is right, though, these events may all be connected in ways that may stand up by themselves as testable hypotheses. I'll try to cover some of those in later posts, though.
I'd like to close here instead to note that several vast conspiracies, once the stuff of scoffing dismissal, have been proven true in the due course of time. Take for example what happened to Gary Webb. A reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, Webb's 1996 three-part series Dark Alliance accused the CIA of supplying a majority of the crack cocaine to the States. From the Wiki entry:
Webb investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had allegedly smuggled cocaine into the U.S.. The smuggled cocaine was then distributed as crack cocaine in Los Angeles, with the resultant profits funneled back to the Contras. Webb also alleged that this influx of Nicaraguan-supplied cocaine sparked, and significantly fueled, the widespread crack cocaine epidemic that swept through many U.S. cities during the 1980s. According to Webb, the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by Contra personnel. Webb charged that the Reagan administration shielded inner-city drug dealers from prosecution in order to raise money for the Contras, especially after Congress passed the Boland Amendment, which prohibited direct Contra funding.
This was a big story, but it took outrage from the communities most affected by the crack explosion of the 1980s to prompt further reporting from other newspapers. And that reporting, sadly, was not good.
Here's a synopsis of what happened penned by the LA Times:
Most of the nation's elite newspapers at first ignored the story. A public uproar, especially among urban African Americans, forced them to respond. What followed was one of the most bizarre, unseemly and ultimately tragic scandals in the annals of American journalism, one in which top news organizations closed ranks to debunk claims Webb never made, ridicule assertions that turned out to be true and ignore corroborating evidence when it came to light. The whole shameful cycle was repeated when Webb committed suicide in December 2004. (I just had to emphasize that.)
Why doubt Webb? After all, governments trafficking in drugs is hardly new. One can only imagine the wealth the British Empire generated keeping China supplied with opium. Closer to home and more recent history, Timothy Leary himself was ousted from Harvard largely by another professor doing work on psychedelics for the CIA. (Leary, Flashbacks, St. Martin's Press, 1990, p. 128.) Why would the other newpapers act as the more recent fifth estate did to less-than-credible "truthers" (albeit in a much less intense fashion) and disgrace Webb so viciously?
It gets back to that Thomas Jefferson quote at the very top. If pressure is put on our television and newspapers to discredit, conflate and confuse facts, people will not be well informed of those facts, and will therefore not be able to correct the abuses. Those that uncover unpleasant facts might just be targeted by those with a vested interest in keeping the facts quiet, perhaps until they are hounded until their untimely deaths. In Webb's case, by the way, that death came from two bullet wounds to the head.
Before his death, Webb himself summed up the situation nicely:
I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing [at his newspaper career] for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job ... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress...
As Ruppert demonstrates, what Webb wrote was probably just the tip of the iceberg.
they can be trusted with their own government;
whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice,
they may be relied on to set them to rights.
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1789
In this installment of my saga, I'd like to suggest a corollary to Mr. Jefferson's observation: "Whenever the people are ill-informed, their government can trust them to do nothing to correct wrongs, no matter how much those wrongs attract their notice."
There are many ways to prevent information from spreading. One can create a cover story. One can use mouthpieces to tear down the reputations of those who dare investigate the story buried beneath the cover version, or to disseminate conflicting versions of the story, thereby sowing confusion. One can simply bury the story itself, quashing attempts to bring the story to light. Provided one has enough resources and accomplices, there is just about no length one can reach to affect the official version of What Happened.
Long-time readers know I've been pointing out examples of such manipulations for years. Some topics so threaten a group vested in maintaining the status quo that they will hire operatives to troll LJ groups and plant seeds of doubt in a given topic, publish articles referencing research that completely misrepresent the research itself (and then deny the original researcher a chance to correct the record), report widely and often on salacious details but fail to correct the record with nearly as much fanfare -- these are just a few examples from just one controversy, examples that barely scratch the surface of what has happened. All one needs, as I've said, is some cash to throw around to "research" groups and foundations and ideologically like-minded newspapers and magazines. The juggernaut will follow, one that may crush hard scientific findings or at least dissuade further research.
When it comes to the truth about certain topics, you see, very few people care. I know, that sounds harsh; but it's pretty accurate. People are interested in, well, what they find interesting. OJ, Jacko, Britney and Paris come to mind. If another topic in question doesn't interest them personally (and many don't), they won't bother digging to see what facts presented in what forums can be called into question. If they check out a story at all, they will most likely ask opinions from folks they know and trust, listen to these opinions, and leave the topic to rest without their involvement.
Since people generally surround themselves with like-minded peers, some information spreads unevenly. One can even track the tendency for some ideas to be adopted by examining where on the political spectrum people holding opinions identify themselves. The graph below, from the linked article, shows what I mean.
Brenden Nyhan created this graph to show the prevalence of which unprovable opinions were being held by people holding which political views. Since Republicans are more likely to question President Obama's presidency (or even the legitimacy thereof), it's no surprise they would grasp at any straw that helps them question his ability to serve. Likewise, those (like me) who chaffed for eight years under President Bush would no doubt latch onto any wild-ass scheme to link him directly to 9/11. This would trash his legitimacy and his purportedly important "legacy."
I find only one flaw with Prof. Nyhan's research: the level to which either story is treated by mainstream media outlets as "legitimate" is amazingly disproportionate.
Therefore, I think how readily one would find information on either topic would greatly affect acceptance. The number of mentions the Birther movement gets is insane in its frequency, especially a few months ago. (Getting actual numbers would prove difficult for me, simply because I would be forced to watch Faux News, the main Birther story outlet. I hate headaches and nausea.) But what about the number of Truther stories run outside the internets?
That's rare. Weirdly rare.
One outlet that most recently tackled the 9/11 topic was CBC's the fifth estate in a piece called The Unofficial Story (you can watch the episode at the link). Since I was just a few pages into a book on that topic, I gave it a watch.
I was surprised.
You see, a few years ago I heard an interview with Steve Alten on kmo's C-Realm. He had just written a book, a fiction work based on another author's writings. I was so incensed by what he had said I ordered his book, The Shell Game. I read The Shell Game as soon as I got it. It's alright; a good story, not badly written, lots of action. What appealed to me most, though, were the concepts behind the story, concepts I had not heard before in all of the news accounts covering 9/11. I was up to then basically a virgin to the Truther movement. I didn't fall head-over-heals into the depths of conspiracy right then, though. I felt it was necessary to read the source for Mr. Alten's claims, Crossing the Rubicon by Michael C. Ruppert. I ordered his book.
I ordered the book. It wasn't available in my small local bookstore. It wasn't available on the shelves of the larger big box book chain. After a few months of fruitless searching through ever more distant and obscure area book dealers, I had to break down and order it.
I mention this because a year after I got the book in late 1998 2008, it started popping up on the shelves. A large book written by a relatively unknown author and published by an obscure publishing house was starting to become more and more popular.
I confess that I didn't read it right away. In fact, I waited over a year before I sat down and cracked the cover. Why did I wait? Quite frankly, those few Truther advocates I have met in public scared me. They seemed to think differently, more intensely when the topic behind the "movement" was raised. They were far more defensive, almost hostile to criticism. And they lost friends easily.
Once I cracked the cover of Rubicon, though, I started to see this was not just complete bull. Ruppert has done his homework, and in a way I approve. When he speculates, he notes the speculation. When he makes a declaratory statement, he cites his sources and lets the reader determine the veracity thereof.
Which is weird. Getting back to the fifth estate piece; here's a blurb outlining the contents:
You’ll meet some of the leading proponents of “truther” theories: Richard Gage, an American architect, explains how the WTC twin towers and the lesser known ‘Tower #7’ could only have crumbled as they did due to explosive charges placed inside the buildings. Others, including Canadian professor Kee Dewdney, insist that the story of the brave fight by the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 must have been a hoax. But, you’ll also hear from others who dispel “truther” theories and try to understand why, from JFK’s assassination to the moon landing to 9/11, a culture of conspiracy springs up around certain historic events. (Emphasis man: Me!)
Let's go back for a second and check out that passage I emphasized. Why in a "news" piece covering 9/11 will a reference "to the moon landing" mean anything? Aren't the two separate stories?
Simply by implying that the two stories are connected, the fifth estate has planted a conflated association. If one is group proves to be whacko, how might we judge the credibility of the other?
In the piece, host Bob McKeown interviews people who claim the big towers could not have fallen from the impacts at all, and had to have been detonated. For evidence, an architect notes pressure blasts blowing out windows leading the collapse. McKeown later interview an architect and demolition expert who refutes this claim . . . and who goes further, to suggest the claim itself is untrustworthy and unpatriotic. They interview one man who asserts that all of the planes that hit the towers and Pentagon were duplicates, identical in every way to the planes that left New York and Boston but never returned. Though they provide no expert refutation to that claim, the look of incredulity on the host's face was all they needed to shoot the legitimacy of that assertion down in flames.
Oh, and note the title of the piece: The Unofficial Story. "The" as a definite article implies that the people being interviewed are the representatives of the movement. I found that very odd indeed, given that I've neither ever heard of these people nor seen their writings on any bookshelves.
Worth further noting: No where in either the blurb or the piece itself will one find mention of Michael C. Ruppert. This book, which as I've said has been making itself more and more common in regular bookstores and which has testable claims, was never mentioned.
Testable claims. That is more than worth a mention. Quite a few events are unfolding right now that seemingly have no connection to the events on September 11, 2001. If Mr. Ruppert is right, though, these events may all be connected in ways that may stand up by themselves as testable hypotheses. I'll try to cover some of those in later posts, though.
I'd like to close here instead to note that several vast conspiracies, once the stuff of scoffing dismissal, have been proven true in the due course of time. Take for example what happened to Gary Webb. A reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, Webb's 1996 three-part series Dark Alliance accused the CIA of supplying a majority of the crack cocaine to the States. From the Wiki entry:
Webb investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had allegedly smuggled cocaine into the U.S.. The smuggled cocaine was then distributed as crack cocaine in Los Angeles, with the resultant profits funneled back to the Contras. Webb also alleged that this influx of Nicaraguan-supplied cocaine sparked, and significantly fueled, the widespread crack cocaine epidemic that swept through many U.S. cities during the 1980s. According to Webb, the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by Contra personnel. Webb charged that the Reagan administration shielded inner-city drug dealers from prosecution in order to raise money for the Contras, especially after Congress passed the Boland Amendment, which prohibited direct Contra funding.
This was a big story, but it took outrage from the communities most affected by the crack explosion of the 1980s to prompt further reporting from other newspapers. And that reporting, sadly, was not good.
Here's a synopsis of what happened penned by the LA Times:
Most of the nation's elite newspapers at first ignored the story. A public uproar, especially among urban African Americans, forced them to respond. What followed was one of the most bizarre, unseemly and ultimately tragic scandals in the annals of American journalism, one in which top news organizations closed ranks to debunk claims Webb never made, ridicule assertions that turned out to be true and ignore corroborating evidence when it came to light. The whole shameful cycle was repeated when Webb committed suicide in December 2004. (I just had to emphasize that.)
Why doubt Webb? After all, governments trafficking in drugs is hardly new. One can only imagine the wealth the British Empire generated keeping China supplied with opium. Closer to home and more recent history, Timothy Leary himself was ousted from Harvard largely by another professor doing work on psychedelics for the CIA. (Leary, Flashbacks, St. Martin's Press, 1990, p. 128.) Why would the other newpapers act as the more recent fifth estate did to less-than-credible "truthers" (albeit in a much less intense fashion) and disgrace Webb so viciously?
It gets back to that Thomas Jefferson quote at the very top. If pressure is put on our television and newspapers to discredit, conflate and confuse facts, people will not be well informed of those facts, and will therefore not be able to correct the abuses. Those that uncover unpleasant facts might just be targeted by those with a vested interest in keeping the facts quiet, perhaps until they are hounded until their untimely deaths. In Webb's case, by the way, that death came from two bullet wounds to the head.
Before his death, Webb himself summed up the situation nicely:
I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing [at his newspaper career] for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job ... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress...
As Ruppert demonstrates, what Webb wrote was probably just the tip of the iceberg.