A Conspiracy of Dunces
It’s a good time to be a misanthrope. I wish that were not so. I don’t enjoy being repulsed, angered and generally disappointed by the stupid and often malicious words and actions of so many of my fellow humans. Not that I’m perfect… far from it.
I’m kind of a “lite” misanthrope, because I believe that most people still have good intentions. But then there’s that loud, attention-getting and growing minority of apparently mean-spirited dunces for whom reason, logic and common sense hold no meaning. For evidence of this, see the gun-toting health care reform Town Hall attendees, “Tea Partiers,” Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, etc.
According to these people, our current government is conspiring to take over every aspect of our lives and turn our democratic republic into a communist, socialist, or something-or-other-ist nation. How the government will accomplish this remains unclear, but apparently to defend against it we must strap on sidearms, gather in mobs and yell like a bunch of witless assholes.Thus democracy shall prevail.
Americans love a good conspiracy theory. From the JFK assassination, to the moon landing, to the 9/11 attacks, to health care reform, theories abound that elements in the government (e.g., the president) are plotting against us, or even against the government itself. For the truly paranoid, it’s not just us against them, it’s us against them against them against us. It gets complicated.
For example, there are still “birthers” who believe, despite straighforward and irrefutable evidence, that President Obama is a foreigner and therefore a secret agent of some sort. And amazingly, there are still “truthers” out there who believe that the 9/11 attacks were committed with the full complicity or tacit approval of the American government.
Which brings me to Charlie Sheen. Sheen, 44, is the star of CBS’s puerile sitcom Two And A Half Men. That fact alone makes it difficult to take Sheen seriously. On the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Sheen appeared on Alex Jones’s radio show (Jones being the king of paranoid wackos) and reiterated the despicable claim that President George W. Bush’s administration was either directly involved in committing the attacks or involved in a cover-up. But there are some things that are beyond the pale, even for Dick Cheney.
Sheen, as quoted in The Daily Mail, said: “We cannot allow governments to continue to advance their political agendas by exploiting forged pretexts and the fact that big budget hit pieces against 9/11 truth are still being rolled out proves that the establishment is upset that the population is waking up to false flag terror.”
Huh?
Hey, I can spout gibberish too. How about this: We cannot allow so-called actors to advance their paranoid agendas by exploiting debunked theories and the fact that big budget torture pieces masquerading as sitcoms are still being rolled out proves that TV studios are pleased that the populace is not yet waking up to false dick-joke terror.
See? It's easy.
Sheen went so far as to write “Twenty Minutes with the President,” a “transcript” of an imagined 20-minute discussion between him and President Obama. We don’t need to be told that its fiction, because early in the “transcript” Sheen has the president say, “Big fan of the show, Charlie.” Barack Obama a fan of Two And A Half Men? Now that's funny.
Sheen bravely exhorts President Obama to investigate the 9/11 attacks anew, tossing out a few out-of-context quotes from members of the previous 9/11 Commission that are somehow supposed to prove that the truth behind the attacks was concealed. Hmmm. This is the strategy of most conspiracy theorists—to cherry-pick certain facts and quotes and present them as “evidence” to support their theories.
Popular Mechanics did a pretty thorough job of debunking the 9/11 myths most often espoused by conspiracists. More amusingly, Penn & Teller took on a couple of these self-embarrassing nutjobs on the Showtime series, “Bullshit!” Penn Gillette says succinctly: “… It’s important to nip this bullshit, paranoid fantasy before it takes root in the national conscience and Oliver Stone makes a shitty movie about it.”
Well said, if to no avail. Conspiracy theories give half-wits, obsessive-compulsives and borderline paranoid-schizophrenics something to do with their time. Now if we can only get Charlie Sheen to go back to acting—or his approximation of it.
I’m going to go practice my anti-misanthrope exercises. Wish me luck.
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