"Big Bamboozle" 9/11 Truth Author And Family Found Dead

[82_28]

The thing I don't get is that seems like next to nobody understands is that, at that age old "existential level", IT HAPPENED. The point of it was it happening, not the hows and whys. This is why I hunch that the buildings were themselves built to one day be destroyed -- that was their prime purpose. I am not saying they were wired for destruction, but they were psychologically wired to mean something more than just the "face of NYC in every goddamned romance movie ever made" and then get destroyed in a pre-all-ubiquitous-technology-takeover that would commence forthwith. CD notwithstanding, it was the meaning placed upon iconic buildings that were always meant to be thrown away at some spectacular yet humdrum yet meaningful date.

Remember when fucking David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear on prime time TV? Yeah, same thing, just different levels of death, destruction, fear and confusion. Didn't he walk through the Great Wall of China back then too?

I dunno guys. I really don't take to any one side. I have my hunches and ideas, but I certainly think that as opposed to happy amazement, somebody married fear to amazement in order to make a move on a psychological game board that cannot be resisted by most and colors the forthcoming generations in ways they will never know what became of those who came before them.

[barracuda]

Isn't it true of all things? Once they've run their course and had their time, the final disposition was obviously, in retrospect, destiny. Yet in real time it seems to require a mechanism to turn possibilities into the final form of things, so examining those mechanics may be worth the energy.

[Canadian_watcher]

I'm losing my touch.
removed for unneccesary bitchiness.

[FourthBase]

Okay, just to get this stuff out of the way first: Tremendous post, barracuda. I'm a little humbled myself. I withdraw much of that trash talk. You didn't hit 1.000 or shoot 100% or whatever, but you slugged the hell out of it, and your aim was true. Way to rally back for the team. Sorry. And, thank you.

Onto the substance...

Generally speaking, it makes sense to separate the output of an artist or writer from their biography and assess the work on its merits. If you find value in Marshall's research, take it for what it's worth, especially considering that we don't even yet have closure on the investigation into his death. You don't have to condemn or glorify him in order to use his data points.

+100

For instance, I'd consider Marshall's insistence that the hijackers could have flown the planes themselves, by hand, and matched the flight data recordings released by the NTSB to be an important data point in discussions of remote control theories. HIs expertise in the control of the exact planes used in the attack lends weight to his conclusions, and allows him to proceed from that baseline to an examination of just where, exactly, and from whom did the hijackers receive training adequate to this task. Which led him to Pinal Airpark, previously identified by Jeremy Scahill as an intelligence air hub. The theory pointing to Pinal as the flight training base for the 911 pilots is probably the most important tidbit in The Big Bamboozle, especially wrt the connection to Blackwater.



Nice boneyard there.

Yep, and quite a tidbit.

Marshall's research connecting the Saudi financiers of Iran-Contra to the 911 attacks is the closest thing I've seen to a mea culpa for his own involvement in an operation he recognized as extremely shady. Nevertheless, his personal excitement at relaying this aspect of his own history is disappointingly palpable.

I'm personally a little more forgiving of former scumbags who change course for the good, but who still can't help but look fondly back on some aspects of their scumbag exploits. Not as a rule, of course. A slaveowner who has an awakening and frees his slaves should never be forgiven a nostalgic review of how well he used to whip his slaves. But in the dirty, scummy black-oppy world, a certain amount of lingering bravado is, well, predictable. That kind of work surely attracts a demographic of mega-assholes, but even mega-assholes can change, downsize into regular assholes, do more good in their second life than their first, and yet, still be assholes. I can understand your stance, though, your feelings.

The rest of his research on the Sauds should be immediately recognizable to you: Omar al-Bayoumi, Osama Bassan, Bandar bin Sultan, Turki bin Faisal. You already knew this stuff. Anyone who was paying attention knew the Saudis were heavily involved in the operation very early on. The hijackers were Saudis. Bob Graham's inquiry is used extensively as a source in the book.

And yet, how much of the run-of-the-mill conspiracy-culture was focused on the Saudis, despite all the available evidence that suggested that angle? Because, how much of that evidence issued from dreaded super-official sources, sources always presumed to be red herrings, traps, and so, ignored, overlooked, downplayed? Even though it was mostly already all there in Thompson's encyclopedic timeline, all along. The thing that Marshall might have been -- not just done -- is a source with conspiracy-culture street cred, enough to where even Graham's inquiry can be freed from the taint of its official trappings to be taken more seriously by those who only trust anti-establishment outsiders or some such category.

Marshall may have been a hero, an intrepid researcher who may have been horrifically murdered along with his two children and dog, in order to not only silence him but spoil his reputation forever. If that were the case, then nearly the only people in the world, the only place in the world, where his research and reputation would not be subject to automatic dismissal and ruination, would be us, here.

My responses here yesterday were written on a phone while riding a train, and so by necessity, somewhat thin. I hope you'll forgive me for seeking to flesh them out now.

Done.

Anywhere research of 911 as a conspiracy is taken seriously, Marshall's death is being discussed. A cursory search of the web demonstrates the predominance of black op theories surrounding the killings. Google search for "Philip Marshall murder", first page results:

CIA Killed Phillip Marshall for Leaking 9/11 Secrets: Dr. Kevin Barrett ...
http://www.infowars.com/cia-killed-phil ... cret...Mar 5, 2013 – Philip Marshall was killed in a black operation over confessing to having worked with CIA drug smugglers and the potential exposure of 9/11 ...

Philip Marshall 'Murder-Suicide' – A Lack of Evidence
21stcenturywire.com/.../philip-marshall-murder-suicide-a-lack-of-evi...Feb 28, 2013 – Many news reports have been quick to echo what the Calaveras County Sheriffs Department has claimed; Philip Marshall killed his two ...

Was It Murder? Philip Marshall, Author of `Big Bamboozle,' Dead
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/book.. ... er.htmlMar 15, 2013 – March 9—In February 2012, Philip Marshall, a veteran airline pilot, published The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and the War on Terror, which ...

“100% Certain”: 9/11 Author Was Killed in Black Ops Hit | Veterans ...
http://www.veteranstoday.com/.../100-ce ... -bla...Feb 20, 2013 – *Philip Marshall, who had expressed his fear of being harassed or ... all of Marshall's neighbors believe it was a professional murder, not the ...

9/11 and Philip Marshall Murder-Suicide Questions - Before It's News
beforeitsnews.com/.../911-and-philip-marshall-murder-suicide-questi...Feb 20, 2013 – 21st Century Wire says… No one can report they heard shots or screams from the Marshall house, nestled in the quiet small picturesque town ...

Michael Moore politicizes Phil Marshall Death - YouTube
► 3:42► 3:42
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uHtKpkL4rQ
Feb 22, 2013 - Uploaded by danp5648

Two teens killed by father in apparent murder-suicide, officials say ...
More videos for philip marshall murder »

9/11 Conspiracy Author Phillip Marshall & His 2 Kids Found Dead in ...
dcxposed.com/.../911-conspiracy-author-phillip-marshall-m...

by Ed Brown - in 41 Google+ circles - More by Ed Brown
Feb 6, 2013 – Phillip Marshall, a former airplane pilot and author whose works included the 2003 novel Lakefront Airport and The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and ...

Phillip Marshall Wrote About a Conspiracy; Was He the Victim of One?
http://www.santabarbaraview.com/phillip ... pira...Feb 12, 2013 – The official time of death in the Philip Marshall incident is wrong and the ... The guy's dead (Philip Marshall, ex-CIA, accused of murder-suicide ...

Author Philip Marshall murder conspiracy - Ok! Here is the Situation
okhereisthesituation.com/.../author-philip-marshall-murder-conspirac...Feb 26, 2013 – Author Philip Marshall murder conspiracy. Former National Security Agency officer Wayne Madsen says he is “100% certain” that 9/11 ...

Phillip Marshall, airline captain, 9/11 activist, author accused ...
letsrollforums.com › ... › The Town Cryer - Discussion, Intro's...
6 posts - 5 authors - Feb 10
Captain Phillip Marshall has been accused of killing himself, son, and daughter in California. He had no motive to kill himself or his children.

So, within the "culture" of the examination of 911 conspiracy, the notion of Marshall's assassination is the mainstream line of thought. And the people who should be most interested in Marshall's research are exactly those persons most likely to be spurred by the circumstances of his death to visit his material in earnest anew. Unfortunately, I don't see a great deal of analysis of his writings going on, especially with any eyes toward realitically appraising those writings in terms of motivations for some hypothetical assassination of himself, his children and his dog.

And here, dear teammate, is where we should dispense with any false modesty about who we are, what this board is. We, are the best. This board, is a lonely subset of said conspiracy-culture, the subset defined as That Part Which Sucks The Very Least, which is special in both the quality of our deliberations and the quantity of our collective intellectual might. As such, we here ought to feel a special responsibility to uphold the spirit of the board, christened by its dear, mostly-absent-now proprietor in the name "Rigorous Intuition", an ideal so precious on the internet that even the nomenclature alone is what I suspect draws a handful of the world's premier outcasts from the veiled realm of mainstream culture. For the most part, we do uphold that ideal. Even when we don't (you and I above as exhibits 1a and 1b), more and more we recover our senses quicker and quicker, with fewer and fewer of the grudges and pebbles left to spoil the pursuit. It may need to be acknowledged: This board is only improving. Exhibit A, you and I, here, now.

We don't call people heroes for what they might have done. I may not be the brightest bulb in the lamp around here, but it doesn't take intellectual superiority to see that we should take pains to separate Marshall's work (if it has any value on its own) from notions of martyrdom or heroism based upon what we know so far. Because what it becomes is a password, a stamp of approval into the club of 911 conspiracy thought. The assumption that Marshall was killed, that he can be parlayed into a Truther hero, is just the sort of thing that keeps real research from reaching a mainstream breaking point, keeps it marginalized. If you need to praise Marshall, praise his research for what it is. Once you bring his biography into it, then you have to deal not just with Mena and gun running for Ollie North, but also the as yet unprovable speculation regarding a black ops hit.

I must remind you, I try to choose qualifiers with great care, and err on the side of qualifying, for this very reason. Marshall may have been a hero. Elsewhere in this thread or on the board I may have dispensed with the subjective mood and went full-out declarative. But for the purposes of that post you quoted, I was very careful to bold the "may", because that is the crux. That may literally be Marshall's crux, his crucifix. Whether or not we take enough care to consider the "may" of his circumstance. I cling to that "may", for good reason. In my opinion, that "may" is what ultimately separates us, this board, from both the debunkertards and the conspiratards.

I don't know about you, but I've had it with reaching the point in examining an event like this at which any information that comes out from institutional channels like the coroner or the sheriff's investigation is automatically disinformation to cover the trail of an operation. It's confirmation bias at best, and at worst an end to finding out what may have happened. It's already occurred in the Newtown killing, and probably here as well. No matter what the findings of the official investigation are, they'll only have merit in as much as they verify Marshall's innocence. No matter what the wife eventually says, same thing.

I know, I'm weary of that habit, too. Quite. But, it may be the correct call, sometimes.

On the other hand, if his research has merit, it'll stand no matter if he's guilty or not.

Truth. +1000

These self-indulgent, intellectually superior individuals ... tend to stick to what is safe - facts, figures and the opinions of the general consensus.

It's always nice to hear facts being disparaged. They really are pesky and irritating when you're trying to make a point. Strangely enough, they're precisely what you look for on an automotive or bicycle repair forum. Or in 911 research, for that matter.

Perhaps "factoids" would have been a better choice there.
But yeah, facts are all we have. And prejudices, as the quote in someone's signature here declares.

But as far as I can tell by a google search (and an additional look at this thread), the general consensus is that Marshall was killed in a black op hit. The vast, vast majority of returns regarding his name and the name of his book are of this opinion. So who's really toeing the line here?

Again, we are not the general consensus.
We are a subculture unto ourselves, are we not?
Abandon all lines, all ye toes who enter here.

One thing I know, nobody calls you a gatekeeper when you agree with them. That's the safe position around these parts. Keep that in mind, all you impressionable youngsters out there.

Well, then again, you do have to admit that you have a more frequent tendency to give the appearance of keeping gates, that the contemptuous epithet Barricade, while unfair, was not wholly undeserved. Would you concede that carefully-qualified point?

[8bitagent]

8bit, I've carried your comments on Marshall from the other thread to this one to avoid any misconceptions regarding my motivations.

2. Remember my first post in the Philip Marshall thread? I said I had no reason to suspect their was foul play in the murder-suicide. It makes me very angry and sad that any person could do such an evil thing,
so yes it unfortunately sours me on his research even tho i feel its extremely solid work.

Generally speaking, it makes sense to separate the output of an artist or writer from their biography and assess the work on its merits. If you find value in Marshall's research, take it for what it's worth, especially considering that we don't even yet have closure on the investigation into his death. You don't have to condemn or glorify him in order to use his data points.

For instance, I'd consider Marshall's insistence that the hijackers could have flown the planes themselves, by hand, and matched the flight data recordings released by the NTSB to be an important data point in discussions of remote control theories. HIs expertise in the control of the exact planes used in the attack lends weight to his conclusions, and allows him to proceed from that baseline to an examination of just where, exactly, and from whom did the hijackers receive training adequate to this task. Which led him to Pinal Airpark, previously identified by Jeremy Scahill as an intelligence air hub. The theory pointing to Pinal as the flight training base for the 911 pilots is probably the most important tidbit in The Big Bamboozle, especially wrt the connection to Blackwater.

I just cannot stand the pervasive attitude of most conspiracy circles, forums or researchers online. If you believe in something that drifts away from their pet theories, you're a "disinfo artists". It's rare to come across "smart truthers" who have most of their marbles. A smart truther won't be butthurt if solid evidence renders their previous assertions wrong. The "Loose Change" approach and bullhorning days of 2006 was just attrocious.
These hijackers weren't invented in physical form. People interacted with them in America, and there's a long exhaustive spinal column of Islamic militants and circles that can be easily traced since the late 80's...yet many still hold this "no Arab individuals were involved and to believe so is upholding the 'Official Story'. So for me someone like Marshall to come along, well it was refreshing.

But Im with you...intellectually I have not seen anything pointing to a black op, and I think some of us *want* it to be...because the idea of a relatively good person, good dad, normal guy doing that is fucking horrible.
Its not like WWF wrestler Chris Benoit who had advanced dementia and steroid brain.
Regarding the boneyard in AZ, it was established that WTC 1993 and bin Laden associate Whadid el-Hague had procured a large plane from there in the early 90's for Osama bin Laden and somehow managed to get it to
Sudan. As well that area had long been a hot spot of Islamic extremist pilot training, as well as Norman Oklahoma.

When people like Richard Clarke come out and publicly say he believes the CIA was actively preventing the FBI from stopping the hijackers and may have even been protecting/running them, it's scary shit.
The black op thing...it's both wishful thinking(for those that dont want him to be this brilliant researcher AND a cold blooded killer) as well, if one was potentially getting *too close* to the truth or something in that realm,
like Gary Caradori...well...but til then, its speculation til hard circumstantial proof comes out.

[8bitagent]

The thing I don't get is that seems like next to nobody understands is that, at that age old "existential level", IT HAPPENED. The point of it was it happening, not the hows and whys. This is why I hunch that the buildings were themselves built to one day be destroyed -- that was their prime purpose. I am not saying they were wired for destruction, but they were psychologically wired to mean something more than just the "face of NYC in every goddamned romance movie ever made" and then get destroyed in a pre-all-ubiquitous-technology-takeover that would commence forthwith. CD notwithstanding, it was the meaning placed upon iconic buildings that were always meant to be thrown away at some spectacular yet humdrum yet meaningful date.

Remember when fucking David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear on prime time TV? Yeah, same thing, just different levels of death, destruction, fear and confusion. Didn't he walk through the Great Wall of China back then too?

I dunno guys. I really don't take to any one side. I have my hunches and ideas, but I certainly think that as opposed to happy amazement, somebody married fear to amazement in order to make a move on a psychological game board that cannot be resisted by most and colors the forthcoming generations in ways they will never know what became of those who came before them.

I agree 100% with you...it certainly feels like the black wizards of collective consciousness had slowly been weaving the inseperable notion of "the towers" with everything iconic, Americana and New Yawkish.
I mean shit, the Saudi Bin Laden's star architect designed them with Islamic tradition weaved in.

All Im saying is that in a court of law, so far it's been the Saudi angle that has had any effect. Note how both the Bushes and Obama regimes have made sure to squash even the highest law firms(like in Philly) from gaining any
traction with their lawsuits, despite an oceanic level of evidence pointing to direct Saudi involvement. Unless footage emerges of hardhat guys with vhs tape showing them planting explosives in the wtc, the CD angle is something that is as abstract as my occasional esoteric posits.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

I am not a champion of tenets because they are fraught with exceptions and qualifications. Yet the presumption of innocence has a tendency to prevail in my mind nevertheless. And since the presumption of innocence does not require it, I do not spend a great deal of time looking for "the real perps", though speculation can be entertaining.

As far as I am concerned, Marshall is innocent of the final crime he is accused of, just as Been Laden is innocent of the crime for which he was disappeared. I do not have to successfully prosecute "the real perps", for, as hard as it is to believe, it is simply not relevant to the presumption of his innocence. The fact that he is dead is enough for me. Same with the Mister Al Kyda himself, presumed to have sunken to the bottom of the ocean somewhere. Whatever. I won't bother disputing it, but I will presume his innocence.

Just as I presume the rest of the world is innocent of the same crimes. It's not like either one of them is going to get out to kill again. Neither is my belief (or lack thereof) going to ruin the "9-11 movement". And while overzealous attachment to the theory that he was whacked might do a disservice to his research, all conspiracy research is hurt by heading too far down this road or that, including insisting that everyone who is offed must have been on to something. If you haven't figured out that for some people it is all a big game, including the killing, then you have already spent to much time chasing shadows.

So greater emphasis should be placed on his research, sure, but without getting too caught up in whether or not there was a whackable offense in it.

Anyway, be honest. You could broadcast on all major networks forensically sound hi-def video of the whole 9-11 chain of events, including confessions from all the living suspects, and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference. Seriously: What is anyone ever going to expose that will change anything?

[Nordic]

Not saying the Coroner's report is disinfo, but (speaking of confirmation bias) it certainly reads like confirmation bias.

I mean we know already that if someone had murdered the guy and made it look like the fellow had done it himself, the gun would have been placed quite close to his head, perhaps actually wrapped in his own hands and fingers! Also the footprint thing -- same deal --anyone competent enough in these wet ops would know how much such a head wound would bleed and would act accordingly to avoid his or her own footprints from mucking around in the blood. The coroner's report is just stupid, really, in that it doesn't tell us anything except that if it was a hit, that the hitters were very good at what they did to the hittee. But that is to be expected.

What's fucked up is people like Wayne Madsen chiming in. If he's not disinfo he certainly should be, and he should be getting paid for how he fucks up everything he touches, which just tells me that if he's not then he's a stupid son of a bitch because what he does is exyremely valuable to the bad guys, time and time again. All the wY back to the 2000 presidential election when he produced a whole bunch of fake documents "proving" conspiracy in the fraud of the Bush selection. I really hate that motherfucker. If he's on the payroll or not doesnt even matter for the damsge he consistently causes.

[Sounder]

Cuda hits a home run! Thanks, good points and well presented.

And thanks FourthBase for being an instigator, we need more of that around here, with civility of course.

[barracuda]

Well, then again, you do have to admit that you have a more frequent tendency to give the appearance of keeping gates, that the contemptuous epithet Barricade, while unfair, was not wholly undeserved. Would you concede that carefully-qualified point?

As you might imagine, that's not how I look at it. I feel I'm helping in my small way to open the door to higher analyses unclouded by poor logic, default solutions, and wrongheadedness. We don't need to have an echo chamber here. It seems like people have a hard time appreciating this because they tend to focus on my dickish manners and other assorted character flaws. I will admit to an occasional inability to resist pointing out what I see as defects in other peoples lines of thought rather than focusing upon my own perspective. I do actively work on channelling that impulse towards more positive ends. We all have our faults.

Gatekeeping is a matter of perspective. I often see the gate as being tended from the other side. Sometimes people don't like it when I express my opinion or intuition on things because they're against the grain of the typical conspiracy approach even on RI, and I get to deal with their extreme antipathy. I argued against controlled demolition and remote control for years, and was considered a gatekeeper for that. Maybe I still am. But I could never understand how the required acceptance of CD in any way altered a person's political response to 911 as a deep state crime. Because it doesn't, or shouldn't.

So regarding Marshall, the requirement that I, or anyone, should have to accept that he was murdered adds nothing to our understanding of his research and the evaluation of its worth. And my intuition is that he wasn't murdered. This isn't like the case of Gary Webb, in which his life and career were basically destroyed by TPTB long before his actual death. Marshall enjoyed the comfortable trappings of an upper-middle-class life until the day he and his family perished.

Of course, should convincing evidence or argument surface regarding a hit, I'm open to it.

Anyway, thanks for the reprieve, and the thoughtful response.

[FourthBase]

Well, then again, you do have to admit that you have a more frequent tendency to give the appearance of keeping gates, that the contemptuous epithet Barricade, while unfair, was not wholly undeserved. Would you concede that carefully-qualified point?

As you might imagine, that's not how I look at it. I feel I'm helping in my small way to open the door to higher analyses unclouded by poor logic, default solutions, and wrongheadedness. We don't need to have an echo chamber here. It seems like people have a hard time appreciating this because they tend to focus on my dickish manners and other assorted character flaws. I will admit to an occasional inability to resist pointing out what I see as defects in other peoples lines of thought rather than focusing upon my own perspective. I do actively work on channelling that impulse towards more positive ends. We all have our faults.

+hugenumber

Gatekeeping is a matter of perspective. I often see the gate as being tended from the other side. Sometimes people don't like it when I express my opinion or intuition on things because they're against the grain of the typical conspiracy approach even on RI, and I get to deal with their extreme antipathy. I argued against controlled demolition and remote control for years, and was considered a gatekeeper for that. Maybe I still am. But I could never understand how the required acceptance of CD in any way altered a person's political response to 911 as a deep state crime. Because it doesn't, or shouldn't.

+hugenumber

So regarding Marshall, the requirement that I, or anyone, should have to accept that he was murdered adds nothing to our understanding of his research and the evaluation of its worth. And my intuition is that he wasn't murdered. This isn't like the case of Gary Webb, in which his life and career were basically destroyed by TPTB long before his actual death. Marshall enjoyed the comfortable trappings of an upper-middle-class life until the day he and his family perished.

Again, just try to respect the precious "may", it's not just lip, it matters, it may matter.

Of course, should convincing evidence or argument surface regarding a hit, I'm open to it.

I never doubted that, actually.

Anyway, thanks for the reprieve, and the thoughtful response.

You're welcome, and likewise.

It takes all kinds. Like a team sport, there are a variety of positional roles that need to be fulfilled in order to compete, to win. Not every basketball team can be entirely composed of 6'8" wings who can do everything, dribble the ball and make pinpoint passes like a point guard, hit contested threes and dunk with authority, shake and bake down low for the high-percentage layups, guard the rim like a center, etc. In fact, no basketball team has ever been like that, although the Heat (boo!) come close. Here, not everyone can individually embody the ideal of Rigorous Intuition in all its facets, all the time. There are, at any given time, on any given topic, those who intuit, those who rigorize, those who intuitively rigorize, those who rigorously intuit, etc. If this board were a corporation, I imagine we would all be given a personality type test, or rather, a personal philosophy test, dichotomized and rated according to four quadrants of type, like Myers-Briggs. And then we'd have a boss who every morning would assign, based on personality-matching and respective expertise, a certain select project team to synergistically examine each topic. Instead of "Bob, Carol, Tom...you've got the Macy's account", it'd be "8bitagent, elfismiles, barracuda, [insert whomever else]...you've got the Rand Paul filibuster account", or something like that. Such a system might have its upsides, but, naturally, thank christ we are not such a corporation.

[conniption]

And here, dear teammate, is where we should dispense with any false modesty about who we are, what this board is. We, are the best. This board, is a lonely subset of said conspiracy-culture, the subset defined as That Part Which Sucks The Very Least, which is special in both the quality of our deliberations and the quantity of our collective intellectual might. As such, we here ought to feel a special responsibility to uphold the spirit of the board, christened by its dear, mostly-absent-now proprietor in the name "Rigorous Intuition", an ideal so precious on the internet that even the nomenclature alone is what I suspect draws a handful of the world's premier outcasts from the veiled realm of mainstream culture. For the most part, we do uphold that ideal. Even when we don't (you and I above as exhibits 1a and 1b), more and more we recover our senses quicker and quicker, with fewer and fewer of the grudges and pebbles left to spoil the pursuit. It may need to be acknowledged: This board is only improving. Exhibit A, you and I, here, now.

*

It takes all kinds. Like a team sport, there are a variety of positional roles that need to be fulfilled in order to compete, to win. Not every basketball team can be entirely composed of 6'8" wings who can do everything, dribble the ball and make pinpoint passes like a point guard, hit contested threes and dunk with authority, shake and bake down low for the high-percentage layups, guard the rim like a center, etc. In fact, no basketball team has ever been like that, although the Heat (boo!) come close. Here, not everyone can individually embody the ideal of Rigorous Intuition in all its facets, all the time. There are, at any given time, on any given topic, those who intuit, those who rigorize, those who intuitively rigorize, those who rigorously intuit, etc. If this board were a corporation, I imagine we would all be given a personality type test, or rather, a personal philosophy test, dichotomized and rated according to four quadrants of type, like Myers-Briggs. And then we'd have a boss who every morning would assign, based on personality-matching and respective expertise, a certain select project team to synergistically examine each topic. Instead of "Bob, Carol, Tom...you've got the Macy's account", it'd be "8bitagent, elfismiles, barracuda, [insert whomever else]...you've got the Rand Paul filibuster account", or something like that. Such a system might have its upsides, but, naturally, thank christ we are not such a corporation.

*

I wish you'd knock ^this kind^ of shit off, FB. Wtf.

RI is RI. It takes all kinds of people.

We're not special. We're not a cult. (and if you are so fuckin' special, I'm outta here.)

Give it a rest. Please.

Fuck that shit. Please.

[FourthBase]

I wish you'd knock ^this kind^ of shit off, FB. Wtf.

RI is RI. It takes all kinds of people.

We're not special. We're not a cult. (and if you are so fuckin' special, I'm outta here.)

Give it a rest. Please.

Fuck that shit. Please.

Uh...please elaborate?

[conniption]

I wish you'd knock ^this kind^ of shit off, FB. Wtf.

RI is RI. It takes all kinds of people.

We're not special. We're not a cult. (and if you are so fuckin' special, I'm outta here.)

Give it a rest. Please.

Fuck that shit. Please.

Uh...please elaborate?

No. Not right now. Sorry.

[FourthBase]

I wish you'd knock ^this kind^ of shit off, FB. Wtf.

RI is RI. It takes all kinds of people.

We're not special. We're not a cult. (and if you are so fuckin' special, I'm outta here.)

Give it a rest. Please.

Fuck that shit. Please.

Uh...please elaborate?

No. Not right now. Sorry.

Great, well, if you don't mind then, I will.
I won't be giving it a rest, I won't be fucking any shit.

Do you see anywhere else quite like this board? No. You're probably wrong if you say you do. But if there are...great! Let's hear it! Less pressure! Are you afraid of this board drawing attention? Like, maybe we're being monitored? It would surprise me if we weren't. This board must set off keyword nets somewhere dark and deep, every hour, on the hour. And...so? How does or should that make a difference? If not that concern...what, then? You don't like the idea of belonging to a cult, right. Who the fuck said anything about a cult? A cult of what, anyway? A cult of individuality, skepticism, criticism, knowledge, truth-seeking, conversation, speculation? What would be wrong with being special? I can see how being special might be hazardous to our health, if it goes to our individual or collective heads, or (more forboding) if it possibly threatens the wrong people, the wrong institutions. What, is acknowledging any specialness supposed to make any specialness more dangerous? Like, some officer at the Pentagon suddenly grows pale and mutters, "Oh my god, they...they know...they know they're special. Sound the alarm!" LMAO. What might be more dangerous is if we are special, this space is special, and we don't recognize it. And, did I not also say, exactly, "It takes all kinds"?