I recommend you set aside a little time and watch this video. The folks as Popular Mechanics spend their valuable time taking apart a complete moron who is making quite a living from accusing the government of murdering 3000 citizens on 9/11.
I suggest you keep an eye on your blood pressure if you’re as susceptible to getting angry at a young, arrogant know-nothing who accuses a family member of one of the victims of being in on the conspiracy. Watching him make a complete horse’s patoot of himself is worth the extra Atenolol for me, though.
Now, consider that over a third of America would step right in behind this guy and pat him on the back. Consider also that the views of those unhinged by their conspiracies are getting premium (and not entirely unsympathetic) MSM coverage. Mary Katherine Ham addresses the “Truthers” and their coterie of the deluded in a very arch column.
The Truthers believe the American government planned and carried out the carnage of Sept. 11 on its own people, and they’re determined to tell the rest of us all about it. Today, the “Loose Change” kids planned to be at Ground Zero handing out free DVDs. On their website, they offer a free DVD to anyone who lost someone in the 9/11 attacks, and proclaim it everyone’s “duty” to watch the film.
I’m sure the relatives of the victims Avery mocks with his “theories” appreciate that.
Among Avery’s tributes to those victims is the part of the film where he alleges that Mark Bingham, a Flight 93 passenger, never talked to his mother from the plane that day, despite the fact that there’s a recording of the call. He alleges that the phone calls that came from the plane that day were somehow created by voice simulators, possibly with the collusion of the Flight 93 passengers.
He alleges that Flight 93 never crashed in Pennsylvania, but landed in Ohio. We are left to wonder just what the dastardly government did with the passengers on that plane if they were on the ground safely in Ohio on the morning of Sept. 11.
He also contends that some family members put their loved ones on those planes with the full knowledge that they would die in a few short hours. That very notion sickens me. What sickens me more is that there are people who believe it so vociferously that, less than two hours after Ham’s column hit the internet, she was getting hate mail. Here’s a sample of one such missive:
What exactly is your problem with finding the truth? You really are a wacko conspiracy nut. You base your beliefs on known lies. We have all the evidence and indicators of guilt on our side.
Crazy mail from crazy people is not so unusual. What is unusual is that some of your friends and family very likely believe the bilge that the “Truthers” are pushing. They read the newspapers and the magazines and they think, “Well, maybe these professors and Congressional candidates, and movie-makers have a point”. They don’t and it’s a travesty that these theories are actually treated with anything short of utter derision. Dylan Avery doesn’t deserve a serious platform any more than someone who believes the Earth is flat or that your body is regulated by four “humours”. He deserves to be ridiculed without mercy.
Unfortunately, since his theories are being bandied about as if they had a picogram of seriousness, it falls to people like the ones at Popular Mechanics to sully themselves long enough to address him as if he were even remotely equal to them in ethics or intelligence.
The video Ham mentions in her column, “Screw Loose Change” is freely available. It’s long – just about three hours – but it’s the only three hours that insane ideas like Avery’s deserve.
