"OBSESSED WITH CONSPIRACY?" NOT US!

I was tidying some of the random piles in my library (and they're all random) when my mind drifted to some of the rhetoric employed by those who seek to keep those of us who sincerely question the Official Story of Sept. 11, 2001 "in our place"--our "place" being, in their view, on the far margins of public discourse with UFO abductees and recent acquaintances of Elvis. Such "skeptical" people are entitled to express those opinions, particularly if they need to maintain their standing as columnists in a newspaper syndicate or as highly-paid opiners on cable television. You can't go out and start telling the truth if you've got car payments to make or are putting children through college. As far as we're concerned, the major difference between fiction and non-fiction is the prefix "non."

Nonetheless, certain of their more egregious semantic techniques should be delineated here, the chief of which is daubing us with the epithet "conspiracy theorist" and asserting that we're "obsessed with conspiracy." To be blunt, every human being alive today is a "conspiracy theorist" of one sort or another, even if they feel that hip-hop music played loudly from passing cars is a vile plot to distract them from accurately grading their Barber half-dollars or arranging their Scroll Victors in strict numerical order. Calling someone a "conspiracy theorist" is like calling Albert Einstein a "relativity theorist." And? So? Your point being?

But to say that one is "obsessed with conspiracy" is another matter entirely. No dilettante is ever obsessed by anything. To those who go around classifying and labeling others we would seem to suffer Attention Deficit Disorder, and perhaps require Ritalin. The truth is that we boast Attention Surplus Disorder, in that we can look at everything all at once, and cross-reference if necessary. The conspiracy at hand, which has made us the target of so much of abuse, more nags at us in the manner of a mosquito buzzing just out of reach or a magazine subscription that needs to be renewed.

The 9/11 Conspiracy has not stayed us from the appointed rounds of our numerous other interests, but it can be as annoying as all get-out. I hope to think of something else this afternoon as I hit the treadmill to relieve myself of those few (dozen) extra pounds.