A Look At What It Means To Be A Truther
I was recently accused of making "truther comments" and the more I thought about it, I have to admit, it truly pissed me off. To be labeled in such a way. It really stoked me enough to do a bit of research as to what a "truther" really is.
So, in mainstream American culture, a "truther" is almost exclusively someone who believes that the attacks on Tuesday, September 11, 2001 in New York City, the Pentagon in Virginia, and the hijacking of Flight 93 over Pennsylvania, were "inside jobs". In other words, the United States Government had some role in the infamous crimes.
However, this is not the only brand of truther. Other truthers believe in conspiracy theories which range in varying degrees of plausibility; from suspicions that the United States' so-called "War On Terror" is simply a vehicle to justify foreign and domestic militarization to reptilian space aliens at the top of world governments taking over the world.
Almost everyone is a truther to some extent. Media is very tainted with agenda bias today and most everyone, with the exception of the utterly gullible and stupid, question some of what they hear and are told by the government and news media.
It is in this way that I am, myself, a truther. I do not wear tin foil hats, I do not believe in "blue" and "gray" aliens, Illuminati conspiracies, Tri-lateral Commissions, Masonic Cabals, government-conspiracy terrorist networks (a la Glenn Beck), etc. I could go on for pages listing examples ranging in credibility from fairly reasonable to batshit crazy. I think it is enough to say that almost everyone has their own personal views which do not align with popular opinion.
Since opinion and perception are so personal, the phrases "public opinion" and "popular opinion" are utterly meaningless. You are expected to believe something either because most people believe it, or some authority expects you to believe it. Obviously, a truther would not obediently believe anything without skepticism. In this particular regard, I see myself as a skeptic.
And when was it that it became so unpopular to question the United States Government? When did patriotism begin to require it's citizens to believe, without question, the motives or intentions of our government? Was it not Thomas Jefferson who said, "For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate error so long as reason is free to combat it?"
We are free and charged with the task of questioning our government because no government can remain free while unchecked. Many of these truthers are doing your civic duty for you.
I will make this appeal continually because I believe in it that strongly. It is not important for me to remain fashionable neither do I give any weight to the scorn with which truthers are saddled. Albert Einstein said, "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
As for the truther in me, I try very hard not to make presumptions. I look at historical facts and events and then view them alongside the reported and popularly supported government and media views. When you do this, a different picture emerges - one that strains the credibility of propagandized news reports and explanations. It is really that simple.
Some good examples:
1. It is impossible to build a pipeline to bring oil down from the Caspian Sea, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Sea of Arabia with Islamic extremists controlling the region. Islamic fundamentalists (Al-Qaeda or in English, The Law), whose leader was Osama Bin Laden, still occupy the region.
2. Prior to his 8 years as Vice President, Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton. During Bush Jr.'s administration, Cheney was still being paid by Halliburton from a deferred compensation account in addition to his vice presidential salary. Following the Iraqi invasion, Halliburton was awarded contracts of $1.7 billion for just their work in Iraq alone.
3. Bush Sr., former head of the CIA and former President of the United States, was, until 2003, the senior advisor of The Carlyle Group ($140 billion under management) whose primary investors include the Bin Laden family and the Saudi Arabian conglomerate and wealth holdings company for the Bin Laden family, The Saudi Binladin Group. This means the late Osama Bin Laden has family with a financial interest in increases in American defense spending.
4. The men who were pictured as having hijacked and crashed the planes during the infamous attack on September 11th, 2001 were almost all Saudis and were citizens of Saudi Arabia (not of Iraq or Afghanistan).
5. George Bush Sr., as senior advisor to The Carlyle Group, met regularly with family and members of The Saudi Binladin Group.
6. Members of The Saudi Binladin Group were in Washington and at the White House on September 11th, 2001.
7. In the days immediately following September 11th, 2001, CBS news reports aides' notes from Donald Rumsfeld (National Military Command Center) asking for, "...best info fast. Judge whether good enough to hit Saddam Hussein at same time. Not only Osama bin Laden", "Go massive", "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
8. Head of The Saudi Binladin Group, Salem Bin Laden, shares the same father with Osama Bin Laden (Salem is Osama's brother). Osama's body has never been recovered.
9. Since September 11th, 2001, the regime change called for in the Iraq Liberation Act, signed by Bill Clinton, carried out by Bush Jr., has now become full-scale US occupation of Iraq.
10. The US has established a permanent military presence in Iraq, building the largest Vatican-scale "embassy" in the world along with permanent military bases. Now scaled back to a few dozen, the number of bases once numbered in the hundreds. Total amount of US military bases worldwide is around a thousand (that is not a typo) in over 140 countries.
11. War in Afghanistan continues to ensure completion and functioning of The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline to transport oil (value est. at $4 trillion) from the Caspian Sea south to the Sea Of Arabia. US installations in Afghanistan are strategically placed to guard the pipeline.
I do not watch much television and I depise talk radio so unfortunately, my mind is not programmed with the latest views on what I should believe. I do subscribe to a well-accepted concept called Ockham's Razor. Ockham's Razor is the observation that with competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the smallest degree of complexity will most often be correct.
If I look at the historical events that preceded, coincided, or proceeded 9/11, I would be a fool to believe any hypothesis whose claim is that this concert of successive events was unrelated to any desired outcome. Certainly, an individual can arrive at their own conclusions without the misplaced patriotic scorn of some dimwits.
These same dimwits seem to be almost willfully disregarding truth in order to maintain good standing in what can only be viewed as a media-inspired hate machine using fear tactics to create a wealthy fascist white minority regime.
If that makes me a truther, I will just have to find the strength to live with that - as long as a truther is defined as one who questions the interpretation of events, information as presented by the media or their government; someone that does not reject, out of hand, personal accounts, eye witnesses, historical facts and so forth.
If you oppose this line of reasoning, by deduction, does that make one a falser? Do we believe whatever we're told? And who tells us that? It is difficult to accept this because we live in such a perpetual state of extreme comfort and apathy.
However, this is not the only brand of truther. Other truthers believe in conspiracy theories which range in varying degrees of plausibility; from suspicions that the United States' so-called "War On Terror" is simply a vehicle to justify foreign and domestic militarization to reptilian space aliens at the top of world governments taking over the world.
Almost everyone is a truther to some extent. Media is very tainted with agenda bias today and most everyone, with the exception of the utterly gullible and stupid, question some of what they hear and are told by the government and news media.
It is in this way that I am, myself, a truther. I do not wear tin foil hats, I do not believe in "blue" and "gray" aliens, Illuminati conspiracies, Tri-lateral Commissions, Masonic Cabals, government-conspiracy terrorist networks (a la Glenn Beck), etc. I could go on for pages listing examples ranging in credibility from fairly reasonable to batshit crazy. I think it is enough to say that almost everyone has their own personal views which do not align with popular opinion.
Since opinion and perception are so personal, the phrases "public opinion" and "popular opinion" are utterly meaningless. You are expected to believe something either because most people believe it, or some authority expects you to believe it. Obviously, a truther would not obediently believe anything without skepticism. In this particular regard, I see myself as a skeptic.
And when was it that it became so unpopular to question the United States Government? When did patriotism begin to require it's citizens to believe, without question, the motives or intentions of our government? Was it not Thomas Jefferson who said, "For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate error so long as reason is free to combat it?"
We are free and charged with the task of questioning our government because no government can remain free while unchecked. Many of these truthers are doing your civic duty for you.
I will make this appeal continually because I believe in it that strongly. It is not important for me to remain fashionable neither do I give any weight to the scorn with which truthers are saddled. Albert Einstein said, "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
As for the truther in me, I try very hard not to make presumptions. I look at historical facts and events and then view them alongside the reported and popularly supported government and media views. When you do this, a different picture emerges - one that strains the credibility of propagandized news reports and explanations. It is really that simple.
Some good examples:
1. It is impossible to build a pipeline to bring oil down from the Caspian Sea, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Sea of Arabia with Islamic extremists controlling the region. Islamic fundamentalists (Al-Qaeda or in English, The Law), whose leader was Osama Bin Laden, still occupy the region.
2. Prior to his 8 years as Vice President, Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton. During Bush Jr.'s administration, Cheney was still being paid by Halliburton from a deferred compensation account in addition to his vice presidential salary. Following the Iraqi invasion, Halliburton was awarded contracts of $1.7 billion for just their work in Iraq alone.
3. Bush Sr., former head of the CIA and former President of the United States, was, until 2003, the senior advisor of The Carlyle Group ($140 billion under management) whose primary investors include the Bin Laden family and the Saudi Arabian conglomerate and wealth holdings company for the Bin Laden family, The Saudi Binladin Group. This means the late Osama Bin Laden has family with a financial interest in increases in American defense spending.
4. The men who were pictured as having hijacked and crashed the planes during the infamous attack on September 11th, 2001 were almost all Saudis and were citizens of Saudi Arabia (not of Iraq or Afghanistan).
5. George Bush Sr., as senior advisor to The Carlyle Group, met regularly with family and members of The Saudi Binladin Group.
6. Members of The Saudi Binladin Group were in Washington and at the White House on September 11th, 2001.
7. In the days immediately following September 11th, 2001, CBS news reports aides' notes from Donald Rumsfeld (National Military Command Center) asking for, "...best info fast. Judge whether good enough to hit Saddam Hussein at same time. Not only Osama bin Laden", "Go massive", "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
8. Head of The Saudi Binladin Group, Salem Bin Laden, shares the same father with Osama Bin Laden (Salem is Osama's brother). Osama's body has never been recovered.
9. Since September 11th, 2001, the regime change called for in the Iraq Liberation Act, signed by Bill Clinton, carried out by Bush Jr., has now become full-scale US occupation of Iraq.
10. The US has established a permanent military presence in Iraq, building the largest Vatican-scale "embassy" in the world along with permanent military bases. Now scaled back to a few dozen, the number of bases once numbered in the hundreds. Total amount of US military bases worldwide is around a thousand (that is not a typo) in over 140 countries.
11. War in Afghanistan continues to ensure completion and functioning of The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline to transport oil (value est. at $4 trillion) from the Caspian Sea south to the Sea Of Arabia. US installations in Afghanistan are strategically placed to guard the pipeline.
I do not watch much television and I depise talk radio so unfortunately, my mind is not programmed with the latest views on what I should believe. I do subscribe to a well-accepted concept called Ockham's Razor. Ockham's Razor is the observation that with competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the smallest degree of complexity will most often be correct.
If I look at the historical events that preceded, coincided, or proceeded 9/11, I would be a fool to believe any hypothesis whose claim is that this concert of successive events was unrelated to any desired outcome. Certainly, an individual can arrive at their own conclusions without the misplaced patriotic scorn of some dimwits.
These same dimwits seem to be almost willfully disregarding truth in order to maintain good standing in what can only be viewed as a media-inspired hate machine using fear tactics to create a wealthy fascist white minority regime.
If that makes me a truther, I will just have to find the strength to live with that - as long as a truther is defined as one who questions the interpretation of events, information as presented by the media or their government; someone that does not reject, out of hand, personal accounts, eye witnesses, historical facts and so forth.
If you oppose this line of reasoning, by deduction, does that make one a falser? Do we believe whatever we're told? And who tells us that? It is difficult to accept this because we live in such a perpetual state of extreme comfort and apathy.
I am curious. Did they coin a word to brand someone who blindly believes everything they are told and if so, what is it?
CEOjr
Good shit Sam! 4 years later, but good shit.
ReplyDeleteBetter late than never but glad you got a chance to read! I appreciate the compliment! Take care and see you out there...
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