So, you believe in conspiracy theories, do you?

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So, you believe in conspiracy theories, do you?

Postby tom the mad » Mon Jul 14, 2008 3:54 pm

So, you believe in conspiracy theories, do you? You probably also think you're the Emperor of Pluto......Charlie Brooker

The Guardian, Monday July 14, 2008

I've got a theory - an untested, unprovable theory - that the more interesting your life is at any given point, the less lurid and spectacular your dreams will be. Think of it as a balancing procedure carried out by the brain to stop you getting bored to death.

If your waking life is mundane, it'll inject some thrills into your night-time imaginings to maintain a healthy overall fun quotient. So if you work in a cardboard box factory, and your job is to stare at the side of each box as it passes along a conveyor belt, to ensure they're all uniform and boxy enough - and you do this all day, every day, until your mind grows so dissociated and numb you can scarcely tell where the cardboard ends and your body begins - when your daily routine is THAT dull, chances are you'll spend each night dreaming you're the Emperor of Pluto, wrestling a 6ft green jaguar during a meteor storm in the desert just outside Vegas.

All well and good in the world of dreams. But if you continue to believe you're the Emperor of Pluto after you've woken up, and you go into work and start knocking the boxes around with a homemade sceptre while screaming about your birthright, you're in trouble.

I mention this because recently I've found myself bumping into people - intelligent, level-headed people - who are sincerely prepared to entertain the notion that there might be something in some of the less lurid 9/11 conspiracy theories doing the rounds. They mumble about the "controlled demolition" of WTC 7 (oft referred to as "the third tower"), or posit the notion that the Bush administration knew 9/11 was coming and let it happen anyway. I mean, you never know, right? Right? And did I tell you I'm the Emperor of Pluto?

The glaring problem - and it's glaring in 6,000 watt neon, so vivid and intense you can see it from space with your eyes glued shut - is that with any 9/11 conspiracy theory you care to babble can be summed up in one word: paperwork.

Imagine the paperwork. Imagine the level of planning, recruitment, coordination, control, and unbelievable nerve required to pull off a conspiracy of that magnitude. Really picture it in detail. At the very least you're talking about hiring hundreds of civil servants cold-hearted enough to turn a blind eye to the murder of thousands of their fellow countrymen. If you were dealing with faultless, emotionless robots - maybe. But this almighty conspiracy was presumably hatched and executed by fallible humans. And if there's one thing we know about humans, it's that our inherent unreliability will always derail the simplest of schemes.

It's hard enough to successfully operate a video shop with a staff of three, for Christ's sake, let alone slaughter thousands and convince the world someone else was to blame.

That's just one broad objection to all the bullshit theories. But try suggesting it to someone in the midst of a 9/11 fairytale reverie, and they'll pull a face and say, "Yeah, but ... " and start banging on about some easily misinterpreted detail that "makes you think" (when it doesn't) or "contradicts the official story" (when you misinterpret it). Like nutbag creationists, they fixate on thinly spread, cherry-picked nuggets of "evidence" and ignore the thundering mass of data pointing the other way.

And when repeatedly pressed on that one, basic, overall point - that a conspiracy this huge would be impossible to pull off - they huff and whine and claim that unless you've sat through every nanosecond of Loose Change (the conspiracy flick du jour) and personally refuted every one of its carefully spun "findings" before their very eyes, using a spirit level and calculator, you have no right to an opinion on the subject.

Oh yeah? So if my four-year-old nephew tells me there's a magic leprechaun in the garden I have to spend a week meticulously peering underneath each individual blade of grass before I can tell him he's wrong, do I?

Look hard enough, and dementedly enough, and you can find "proof" that Kevin Bacon was responsible for 9/11 - or the 1987 Zeebrugge ferry disaster, come to that. It'd certainly make for a more interesting story, which is precisely why several thousand well-meaning people would go out of their way to believe it. Throughout my twenties I earnestly believed Oliver Stone's account of the JFK assassination. Partly because of the compelling (albeit wildly selective) way the "evidence" was blended with fiction in his 1991 movie - but mainly because I WANTED to believe it. Believing it made me feel important.

Embrace a conspiracy theory and suddenly you're part of a gang sharing privileged information; your sense of power and dignity rises a smidgen and this troublesome world makes more sense, for a time. You've seen through the matrix! At last you're alive! You ARE the Emperor of Pluto after all!

Except - ahem - you're only deluding yourself, your majesty. Because to believe the "system" is trying to control you is to believe it considers you worth controlling in the first place. The reality - that "the man" is scarcely competent enough to control his own bowels, and doesn't give a toss about you anyway - is depressing and emasculating; just another day in the cardboard box factory. And that's no place for an imaginary emperor, now, is it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... mber11.usa
...comments.....565.....
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Postby massen » Mon Jul 14, 2008 3:55 pm

Was just about to post this.
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Postby MacCruiskeen » Mon Jul 14, 2008 3:58 pm

Allegedly, some people find this guy humorous. His humour is made of pure lead, and you can see how much work goes into it.

recently I've found myself bumping into people - intelligent, level-headed people - who are sincerely prepared to entertain the notion that there might be something in some of the less lurid 9/11 conspiracy theories


Well, "Charlie", that's because they are indeed intelligent and level-headed, i.e., smarter and better informed than you are. It's also because they don't have seven years of fearfully ignorant humour-free smugsterism at the Guardian to defend.
Last edited by MacCruiskeen on Mon Jul 14, 2008 4:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby lightningBugout » Mon Jul 14, 2008 3:59 pm

I *am* the emperor of Pluto. Obey me!
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Postby MacCruiskeen » Mon Jul 14, 2008 4:07 pm

Imagine the paperwork.


Ah fuck off, "Charlie" Brooker. Grow a brain.
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

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Postby 8bitagent » Mon Jul 14, 2008 4:18 pm

Looks like Brooker doesnt read his own paper:

"Pakistani ISI General Wired $100,000 to Atta"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/ju ... eptember11

Also, how does Mr Brooker explain how the Bush administration got into
Iraq? Pure accident?
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Postby nomo » Mon Jul 14, 2008 4:28 pm

So Osama pulled it off without any paperwork?
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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jul 14, 2008 4:52 pm

So Osama pulled it off without any paperwork?


No, demented one, he pulled it off with box cutters. :roll: Scheesh!
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Postby chiggerbit » Mon Jul 14, 2008 4:58 pm

(I wish there was a special smiley for irony.)
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Postby 8bitagent » Mon Jul 14, 2008 5:00 pm

chiggerbit wrote:
So Osama pulled it off without any paperwork?


No, demented one, he pulled it off with box cutters. :roll: Scheesh!


Mr. Brooker should be aware, that anyone who thinks THIS

Image

DID THIS:

Image

and this:

Image


...is the real fool.
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Postby Jeff » Mon Jul 14, 2008 5:05 pm

I can appreciate writing that challenges me to revisit my assumptions and strip out lazy thinking, but this is weak.

FWIW, Charlie Brooker was one of the writers of Brass Eye's Paedoggedon, a 2001 mockumentary about paedophilia. Reading this I can see now how Brooker could find comedy in "paedo hysteria."
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Postby MacCruiskeen » Mon Jul 14, 2008 5:32 pm

It's hard to exaggerate the obnoxiousness of this, this sheer bone-lazy careerist stupidity masquerading as intelligence:

And if there's one thing we know about humans, it's that our inherent unreliability will always derail the simplest of schemes.


"We know". Right. There, in pure form, is the voice of the nervously-complacent bourgeoisie.

Worse: Here, the witless Brooker is "wittily" "citing" the great, impoverished 18th-century proto-socialist Robert Burns, a real writer and a real wit, whose arse Brooker is not fit to wipe. ("The best-laid plans of mice and men...")

Brooker appears not to have noticed the Nazi concentration camps, which were nothing if not bureaucratic, and "successful", and entirely un-derailed. Nor the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the massively successful secrecy that preceded those bombings, in the shape of the Manhattan Project.

And the Northwoods document? Has he even heard of it?

"Paperwork"? Ah, fuck off, "Charlie"; just fuck right off.

[Next week's column from "Charlie": "Well, my last post certainly ruffled some feathers among the craziest coots in the..." Ah fuck off, Brooker. You're as funny as paperwork and precisely as smart as a button.]
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"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

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Postby DrVolin » Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:21 pm

I'm thinking of organizing a debate between Mr. Brooker and Peter Dale Scott.
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Postby nathan28 » Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:41 pm

well, Booker just won a spot in the Reality Priesthood and Normalcy Police Hall of Shame with this one... "the more boring your life..." my life is about average or above average on the interesting scale, but that doesn't keep me from realizing that 1. i'm being lied to 2. i don't know what the fuck is going on. I'm sure he classifies things like the collapse of the real estate market, unpleasant fact that half of all mutual funds underperform broad market indices, false confessions under torture or the Iran-Contra hearings as "conspiracy theory"... but to each his own.
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Reheated disinfo chestnut? No thanks.

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:45 pm

Check ole Charlie Brooker's paystubs to see if there's a bonus sum marked "MI6."

At the very least you're talking about hiring hundreds of civil servants cold-hearted enough to turn a blind eye to the murder of thousands of their fellow countrymen.


That's the most ignorant (deceptive) thing I've read in a long time.

Just what does he suppose happens during war? (Or Katrina or Reaganomics, for that matter. )
Millions die as people do their 9-5 jobs financing and support it.

Image
"hiring hundreds of civil servants cold-hearted enough to turn a blind eye
to the murder of thousands"


Image
Image
"hiring hundreds of civil servants cold-hearted enough to turn a blind eye
to the murder of thousands"
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