Needless to say, Tearfree puts herself in category 2 and most Mummy Bloggers in category 1 (from which they will not emerge until they realize that it’s not bad to judge other people, especially serial killers.)
- People who appear on the news after their neighbour the serial killer is arrested and say, “He was such a nice guy.”
- And people who figure out, before their neighbour the serial killer is arrested, that he is not a nice guy and, therefore, do not let their kids go anywhere near him. These people end up telling the TV cameras, “Yep, we always knew there was something not quite right with him."
Yet another group of people who Tearfree places firmly in category 1 are conspiracy theorists, who never fail not to see what’s directly in front of their eyes because they are so busy imagining all the things that aren’t. Tearfree got to thinking about conspiracy theorists after reading the August issue of Vanity Fair.
An article on 9/11 conspiracy theorists reports that a lot of people believe 9/11 must have been carried out by Muslim-hating Americans because the World Trade Center buildings couldn't possibly have collapsed in the manner they did as a result of being struck by jets. For Tearfree, the essential problem with this theory is the fact that no one on earth had experience with what happens when a plane filled with passengers and jet fuel is deliberatley piloted, at high speed, into a 110 story building. Sure some experts had predicted the building would collapse and some that it wouldn’t but it's not like any of them ever actually had the chance to put their theories to the ultimate test until September 11, 2001.
Now, in such a situation, Tearfree would expect that the experts who had gotten it wrong and said the buildings wouldn’t collapse to say something like, “Hey, I guess I was wrong. And really, with the wisom of hindsight, it’s not all that surprising that a bulding would collapse under those circumstances.” But no, many of the "experts" are sticking with their dubious theories and claiming that the buildings must have been wired with additional explosives, which would also explain why there was a second bang. Now call Tearfree weird if you want, but she also doesn’t find it surprising that in circumstances like the ones faced on 9/11 that there was a second bang. Nor would she be surprised if there was a third or fourth bang. Frankly, she’s a whole lot more surprised that anyone would think a second bang was abnormal, but, maybe that's why she's not a conpiracy theorist.
Another “piece of evidence” that 9/11 wasn’t what it seems, as described by the conspiracy theorists quoted in Vanity Fair, is that the planes" black boxes were never found, presumably because they were incinerated in the buildings while the passport of one of the hijackers was picked up amid the debris on the streets of New York. Once again, Tearfree doesn’t find this the slightest bit strange and she wonders why anyone would, let alone base a conspiracy theory on it.
While Tearfree doffs her hat to the editors at Popular Mechanics, who spent a lot of time and energy with a special 9/11 conspiracy-debunking issue, she’s not sure how much effect it will have. If people want to believe this kind of stuff, is there anything you can really do to convince them otherwise?
Has anyone out there ever succeeded in changing a conspiracy theorist's mind?
Update: While doing blog research, Tearfree came across this freshly-posted classic example of Mummy Blogger thinking. She won't name the Mummy Blogger who posted it because that would be too mean, but it should suffice to refute those of you who think Tearfree is too harsh with Mummy Bloggers. Here goes:
serial killer conspiracy theories 9/11 vanity fair popular mechanics
Now, honestly, would you expect this Mummy Blogger to know there was a serial killer next door?
---------------------------------