See other Dead Constitution Articles
Title: Conspiracy nation
Source:
Town Hall
URL Source: http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/ ... g/2006/09/13/conspiracy_nation
Published: Sep 13, 2006
Author: Jonah Goldberg
Post Date: 2006-09-13 22:09:12 by It Is A Republic
Keywords: None
Views: 322
Comments: 23
There is a virulent form of unpatriotism festering in America today. Like an algae bloom that deprives life of oxygen, it starves democracy of the air of reason. It now thrives on what we call the far left, but like a dead zone off the coast, it moves with the tides. I am referring to the seditious dementia of conspiracy theories, the death of faith not in some mere administration or Congress but in America itself. Haven’t you heard? The U.S. government blew up the World Trade Center. Oh, sorry, that’s not right. The planes did knock down those buildings, but the White House was in on it. Oh, no, sorry again, that’s not what happened. It was the Jews. They razed it without leaving any fingerprints — save for the 4,000 Zionist co-conspirators who were tipped off in advance — in order to frame the peace-loving Muslims of al-Qaida. (Those crafty Hebrews are always coming up with clever ways to make Islamic fanatics look bad, like getting blown up.) Bin Laden’s admission that he did it? Well, of course. He’s in on it. Presumably, Bush’s demolition experts applied the same expertise to the levees in New Orleans. That’s another theory in wide circulation today thanks in no small part to Spike Lee, who gave it a fair airing in an HBO documentary. The metaphysical, ontological stupidity of all this defies rational rebuttal. It would be like proving I didn’t have unicorn for dinner in late December of 1987. Here’s a question: How is a president willing — and able! — to bring down the World Trade Center, murdering nearly 3,000 Americans without inspiring a single whistle-blower or attracting a solitary eyewitness, somehow morally or logistically incapable of planting some exculpatory WMDs in Iraq? As for Spike & Co., what took Bush so long? Why wait for a hurricane? Oh, how he must have yearned, his men and equipment long in place, to cleanse America of the Big Easy. Oh joyous St. Katrina’s Day! And yet, Bush failed to plan for the aftermath in a way that wouldn’t defenestrate his poll numbers. Stupidity isn’t the right word for these dark imaginings, because some of these conspiracy theorists are very smart people. Nor is it fair to say they are all left-wingers. Indeed, two prominent 9/11 conspiracy theorists — Morgan Reynolds and Paul Craig Roberts — worked in Republican administrations and have strong conservative credentials. And let us not forget that in the 1990s, sweaty fingers pointed right-to-left. Under Clinton, it was the United Nations — with its satellite office at the Rose Law Firm — that imposed order with its fleet of black helicopters. “Conspiracy theorist” isn’t quite right either. These are priests of the Church of Conspiracy, a heresy of Gnostic heresy which holds that man is the ruler of history, the demiurge of all events that befall us. Powerful and unseen forces lurk in the shadows. The conspiracy theorists know they’re out there, even as the enemy’s name changes almost daily: Big Oil, capitalists, Republicans, or perhaps those eternal pullers of mankind’s puppet strings, the Jews. The masons of dementia build upon a bedrock of one absolute truth: Bad things happen, and someone must be responsible. Upon this bedrock they pile convenient and selective facts like bricks. Contradictory facts are clever lies. When Popular Mechanics debunked 9/11 hokum, the immediate response from conspiratorialists was “cover-up!” and “CIA front!” because in this perverted faith, denying the ultimate truth must be proof of a lie. This rough beast slouches toward sedition because it assumes not that our leaders are knaves or even mere criminals, but that they are murderous Supermen with no loyalty to nation, decency or law. Our Constitution is a fraud, a charade for the rubes some of us naively call citizens. If you disagree, you’re either fool or “in on it.” In his 1964 essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” Richard Hofstadter demonstrated that this fever of the mind is as old as America itself and its outbreaks flare up across the ideological landscape. What is so sad and frightening is that this diseased thinking is reaching epidemic proportions. More than a third of Americans believe the U.S. government was likely to have been involved in 9/11. In the past, when these outbreaks occurred on the political right, liberal hand-wringers fretted about incipient fascism and rising McCarthyism. Today, the best we get from them is a bemused and sterile chuckle.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: It Is A Republic (#0)
(Edited)
bush and his cronies don't stand up to questioning very well do they. is that why you feel compelled to stop people from exploring alternate theories? why do you hate these basic american liberties the way you do? if the basic freedoms we enjoy bother you so much you could find a country where they are stamped out --- these sorts of countries are very common in the world today. under the taliban you would then not have to be so afraid of the free people around you. you would not have to deal with thinking, questioning, free thinking people. you could live with a bunch of cowardly sheep exactly like yourself. now go be a good republican and sell your basic freedoms for a false sense of security. put a chamber pot under your bed so you don't pee your cowardly pants while you hide there little boy.
this is the biggest crock of sh!t i have ever read. enough of the spamming this site with the neocon anti-american scum. post it over on LP. we're not interested.
Hell chrissy just say it... its a crock of SHIT! :P
why don't you make us a list of the questions that you believe bush will allow us to ask and those questions that are forbidden. make a list of the things we are allowed to say and those things that we are not allowed to say. call the list 'Republican/Zionist Freedom 2006' and publish it here. if you hate the freedoms that our ancestors fought and died for you should leave this country and never come back. you are a cowardly little worm who disgraces the term 'American'.
GOLDBERG?????????? Look, It's a Crock o' Shit of a Republic, I've spent the last 4 years finding an oasis away from these neo/ziocons and whammo....you bring them to our doorstep. Say you're sorry......
He only posts Coulter and Goldberg.
"If there’s another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country." - Daniel Ellsberg Author, Pentagon Papers why is this guy so excited about people asking questions about a particularly shady administration? is mr. goldberg afraid that he is not going be able to fool us into dying for israel?
To refute every argument with logic and trash the "Kookery" of 19 Arabs using their special mind-meld to learn of the exact day of a NORAD training exersize that dealt with the idea of terrorists using hijacked planes in suicide attacks. The planes did knock down those buildings... And my oven just imploded upon itself and I can smelt steel with the heat generated by a can of gas and some left over 2X4s. No, really. See, I've converted to Islam. And being Islamic allows me to manipulate the basic laws of physics. Bin Laden’s admission that he did it? Which one? The fat healthy one or the skinny sick one that denied any involvment? P.S. What do you think of George "cut and run" Bush and his agreeing with Osama to withdrawl all US troops from Saudi Arabia. I though only "liberals" gave in to terrorists.
"The more I see of life, the less I fear death" - Me.
Goldberg is an unserious clown and Beltway line spewer. He tipped his hand in the first line when he equates 9/11 gubmint line doubters with the "extreme left" and then continues on with setting up and knocking down his own straw men. The ascendency of the smart assed prep school light weight brigade at NR is epitomized by their resident "Simpsons" expert- Goldberg. His two achievements to date are being the son of an audio tape internet porn seller and popularizing the term "Cheese eating surrender monkies" among ignorant reichwingers and embarassing "Freedom Fry" eating uber patriots. The senior staff of NR who have no say in the running of NR day to day now- have already expressed their deep shame at what that magazine has become- a fascist rag for simpletons.
If this wasn't 100% literally true, why would Bush and Cheney be all assholes and elbows right now trying to protect themselves by getting the war crimes statutes RETROACTIVELY modified? If bush and Cheney, these two knaves, criminals and murderers; hadn't done anything wrong, why would they be so frantic to get the law changed before Congress flips? Only guilty scum bags act like this, e.g., act like Bush and Cheney in the current situation. I also recall a federal judge recently ruling against Bush's wiretapping. Basically calling Bush a criminal in open Federal Court. Recall that a Federal Judge did exactly the same thing with Bush's internment policies. Zf Congress flips we will get to talk about the run up to war. That ought to be really interesting. Bush and Cheney are not however "Supermen" - Goldstein is wrong in this assumption.
.
Lucianne was the first forum I ever posted and read, even before FR. I moved on like so many others. But Jonah's stuck in this rut, repeating the same stupid frenchie jokes over and over.
"If there’s another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country." - Daniel Ellsberg Author, Pentagon Papers Mistah Republic, you are welcome to feed us this slop when the government releases the tapes of the Pentagon crash that the Federal Bureau of Interference has confiscated and gives us the security tapes at the gates that the supposed highjackers used to board the AA and UA flights, or produces the 9- 11 FAA tapes that we understand have been destroyed. Seditious dementia? I'd say that's a disease our government is suffering from based on the shoddy way it treats its citizenry. The State is acting like a sick old man with something to hide. If it's hand were clean, it would show us the goods, and then we'd all have to STFU. But it won't, so we won't. Push this swill somewheres else.
And they are desperate. http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=34606 In their article written for The Nation, Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith write: "The US War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a felony to commit grave violations of the Geneva Conventions. The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush administration is quietly circulating draft legislation to eliminate crucial parts of the War Crimes Act. Observers on The Hill say the Administration plans to slip it through Congress this fall while there still is a guaranteed Republican majority - perhaps as part of the military appropriations bill, the proposals for Guantánamo tribunals or a new catch-all 'anti-terrorism' package. Why are they doing it, and how can they be stopped?"
"If there’s another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country." - Daniel Ellsberg Author, Pentagon Papers I don't know what happened on 9/11. I don't know if Bush was involved or not or who did what. All I suspect is that the official story is a tissue of lies, improbalities, and outright impossibilities. Now some people who think like I do- have gone on to speculate that if OBL didn't do 9/11 then Bush did or our government did. Frankly - I don't know. I have my suspicions. Now if that is "sedition" then so be it. But the facts lead me to smell a rat. And Goldberg can mock and make veiled threats all he wants. He- like Popular Mechanics- doesn't deal with the honest arguments and points- but merely set up straw men arguments few are making. I am sure there were more than a few Stalinists who called those who thought Kirov's murder which set off the Great Terror was an "inside job" to be "seditious" as well. And certianly the Nazis called all who questioned the gubmint story line on the Reichstag fire (at least the Nazis held a public trial for the scapegoats they accussed unlike Herr Bush and his "secret tribunals- and they didn't do it 5 years later after torturing them either) to be "traitors" as well.
My life has been very surreal. Very strange, not just my personal life and experience, but also my connection with far-external things like the timing of my interest in this or that media personality, or my interest in this or that geographical region. Jonah Goldberg ranks among the top 500 Strange Things in My Life. I used to make half-jokes about Switzerland and the Swiss and Mind Control and pod-people and, indirectly, the Devil living in a cave in Switzerland. Well, Jonah was cool, right up until he came back from a trip to Switzerland. The very next column he wrote was a complete topsy-turvey on education and imperialism and many other things. And I wasn't the only one who noticed: the next column he wrote was about all of the people who worried that something "bad" happened to him in "Switzerland." It was very wierd at the time, and I noticed what happened to Coulter, as well. Right after her trip to "Switzerland". Dear God, please keep me out of "Switzerland". Keep me clean. Keep me true. Keep me strong. Please.
Do you know about Davos, SZ?
LOL probably cousins another zio-propaganda plain trash: article, author & poster zio-garbage NO DOUBT
Funny you mention Switzerland and Golberg. I had already severly cut back my reading of Goldberg and NR by the time he wrote this astoundingly idiotic piece- but it was the final straw. After reading that column I wrote off NR as the province of shallow half educated faux poser intellectuals. That magazine went from a serious intellectual journal with some fine heavyweights to its current puerile state today in a very short time period.
No. Do tell.
I quit him well before that. I quit him shortly after his first trip to Switzerland. It took a few columns before I realized the change was real and permanent. A few more out of macabre fascination. Then I just quit in disgust. Same time FR changed. Same time W was anointed. I couldn't see the wall for all the handwriting all over it.
#2. To: It Is A Republic (#0)
#3. To: christine (#2)
#4. To: It Is A Republic (#0)
#5. To: It Is A Republic (#0)
(Edited)
#6. To: Jethro Tull (#5)
#7. To: It Is A Republic (#0)
#8. To: robin (#6)
He only posts Coulter and Goldberg.
#9. To: It Is A Republic (#0)
(Edited)
#10. To: It Is A Republic (#0)
(Edited)
When Popular Mechanics debunked 9/11 hokum, the immediate response from conspiratorialists was...
#11. To: It Is A Republic (#0)
(Edited)
#12. To: robin (#6)
#13. To: It Is A Republic (#0)
(Edited)
This rough beast slouches toward sedition because it assumes not that our leaders are knaves or even mere criminals, but that they are murderous Supermen with no loyalty to nation, decency or law.
#14. To: Burkeman1 (#12)
His two achievements to date are being the son of an audio tape internet porn seller and popularizing the term "Cheese eating surrender monkies" among ignorant reichwingers and embarassing "Freedom Fry" eating uber patriots.
#15. To: It Is A Republic (#0)
#16. To: ... (#13)
#17. To: ... (#13)
This rough beast slouches toward sedition because it assumes not that our leaders are knaves or even mere criminals, but that they are murderous Supermen with no loyalty to nation, decency or law.
#18. To: Jethro Tull (#5)
GOLDBERG??
#19. To: Rabble Rouser (#18)
something "bad" happened to him in "Switzerland."
#20. To: It Is A Republic (#0)
Author: Jonah Goldberg by It Is A Republic
#21. To: Rabble Rouser (#18)
#22. To: Jethro Tull (#19)
Do you know about Davos, SZ?
#23. To: Burkeman1 (#21)
he wrote this astoundingly idiotic piece
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest