Conspiracy!!

So yesterday I walk into my pub and am immediately met by a young woman who I have known for several years now. She is a smart and ambitious woman of 25 who Mrs. Morant and I have "adopted." Her real parents, in addition to being somewhat dysfuntional, don't live in Madison. Michelle is also a big liberal, who knows better than to try and engage me in a political debate. While she is firm in what she considers to be the "right" political philosophy, she is usually far better informed on the details of Anna Nicole Smith than she is on current events. She keeps current only on those things that seem to interest 25 year old females, and that's not politics. Experience has taught her that if she is going to argue with me she had better bring her lunch and she had better be informed. So she seldom picks a fight with me on such matters. Now I like Michelle, and that was what was so disheartening about what she said.

She hands me a newly burned DVD and tells me, "Just watch it. And watch it with your wife. She'll enjoy it more than you." So I ask, "What is it?"

"It's a conspiracy DVD."

Michelle has always been into conspiracies. She wrote a college paper on the Kennedy assassination and is convinced that Oswald did not act alone. So I said "Kennedy?"

"No," she replied, "nine eleven."

This ruins my day. I am absolutely stunned. Of course these wacko theories have been going around since nine twelve, but this is somebody I know. And she is wide eyed with conviction. "I was never one of those who thought this was possible. But this is scientific evidence! There is actual scientific evidence on that DVD."

"Like what?"

"Lots of stuff. It's all these little things that come together."

"And who do these little things all point to as being behind this?"

"The Government."

"Michelle, a conspiracy like that would have to involve thousands of people."

"Exactly."

"And they've all managed to keep it secret?"

"Yes."

"In six years not one of the thousands has broken ranks and talked? Why not?"

"They're afraid they'll be killed!"

"By?"

"The Government."

When I point out to her that the Government is not a monolithic institution of robots, but comprised of individuals, she accuses me of being naive. "The government is a huge and powerful organization. They can do anything they want and get away with it, " she says. "You can't tell me you're 50 years old and don't believe the government is capable of stuff like this."

All I can think of is how can she be so STUPID. I'd like to use a less harsh word, but stupid really is the best one. I try to have her look at the big picture so that she can see for herself how ludicrous this notion is. "Michelle, two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead. This government can't keep the legitimate secrets that are held by the designated secret keepers! Ever heard of the NSA warrantless wiretapping? Yeah? So has Al-qaeda. That same government wasn't able to keep the CIA extraordinary rendition program secret either. So the people you think are the most incompetent boobs in the world, the ones you think got it completely wrong on Iraq, lead by the biggest moron who ever held public office, were able to execute the most diabolical, cynical mass murder in history without leaving a clue. They would have had to have explicit detailed knowledge of the 9/11 attacks in advance. I assume, if it's the government, that some elements of the military would have to have been involved. I mean you gotta have explosive experts right? And these guys would be just fine with one of the planes slamming into the Pentagon? And the politicians who are in on it would be OK with a plane slamming into the Capitol, which is where the Pennsylvania plane was headed. And how did they sneak thousands of pounds of high explosives into the World Trade Center ahead of time? And how were they able to plant them, with detonators, in all the right places? And why did they even have to plant them in the first place? What, crashing the planes into the buildings and setting them on fire while killing hundreds on impact wasn't enough?"

If all you're doing is providing a pretext for war (that's the non sequitur motive) why do you have to bring the whole building down? Oh, and then there's building No. 7. That's the one that collapsed on it's own after the two towers went down. The wackos are fond of saying that it would have been impossible to have happened without explosives. Of course we've never had two buildings of that size collapse under any circumstances, so I don't know to what they are using for reference.

Look, it's one thing to go around speculating on the Kennedy assassination. Sort of harmless fun. But this is insanity. And why did they do it? Oil, of course. You see Dick Cheney only has a net worth of between $30 and $100 million. Obviously that's not enough. He decided he had to murder thousands of his fellow Americans so that Haliburton could prosper even more. And even though he has yet to get his hands on that Iraqi oil, he will soon enough. Then they'll be going after the Iranian oil.

I wrote all this before viewing the DVD so that I could commit to paper the things I knew I'd be thinking while I watched it. I'll write Conspiracy Part II after I watch it.