I remember these conspiracy theories from back in the 90s.

Is anyone going to be watching Maddow's Timothy McVeigh special tonight? I don't get MSNBC, but I'm pretty sure that people will hear him say pretty clearly that he's opposed to the federal government and that they aren't on his side.

Just like in that first X-Files movie. To hide the existence of aliens.

@2: It must be really hard being that fucking crazy.

Holy shit, @ 2. You've, uh... you've got some tinfoil sticking out from under your hat. You might want to tuck it back up under there before slogging further.

Either that, or it was just performance art. In which case, Bravo!

@2: tl;dr
Also, what #5 and #6 said.

@2 Not long after 9-11 my students started asking similar detailed questions about a government conspiracy. Seems many of them were watching Loose Change. So I took some time out of my busy schedule, did the research and quickly found that every argument made in that piece of shit was built upon a foundation of lies, half truths, and stupidity. What followed was a fun teachable moment that really taught the kids the nature of bias and hearsay, and the importance of using legitimate sources in your research.

They were 10th graders, and really didn't know better. What the fuck is your excuse moron?

@2 We know where you live.

2: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

This is interesting. I remember going to anti-war rallies during the Bush years and being as frustrated by the loud and annoying Truthers that would show up as I'm sure Tea Partiers are by the loud and annoying racists and Birthers that co-opt their events.

But I do wonder: why has the Tea Party attracted so many Truthers? Is it a fear of the government? Is that Truthers jump on any fast-moving train? Is that they're mutually fucking crazy?

I really am curious.

One underlying assumption behind conspiracy theories is an organization of a large group of people who don't compete w/ each other to gain more power and who don't make mistakes.

Which is a big assumption.

Besides, as far as 9/11 is concerned, if the Bush/Cheney crime family wanted it to happen, they didn't have to _do_
anything. Al-Qaeda & bin Laden were committed to attacking the US in any way possible. The only thing required was for the White House to do nothing. Which is what they did.

Now, their might be other reasons, gross incompetency being quite plausible. So I'm not convinced it was deliberate. That being said, the attacks certainly worked in their favor, and they milked it for all it was worth. But who knows? They could just have been rapid opportunists.

"Mutually fucking crazy." Yeah, that sounds about right.

Now, if you really want crazy, there's always this guy:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=…

I am totally surprised by this. Why, oh why don't they blame Obama? Clearly it must have been a teenage Obama who was doing the bombing so he could take over the government one day! Clearly! IT WAS OBAMA!!!!

I totally thought you were going to blame Milton Bradley.

If you saw "Loose Change" you will appreciate this parody called "Unfastened Coins."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saHs6J0OX…

The older the population gets, the more likely that a larger proportion will either be loopy due to increased usage of prescribed and unprescribed medications, or that they are suffering mild or moderate forms of dementia.

Except to see a surge in these paranoid conspiracy theories as the baby boomers start to retire.

Now get off my lawn.

The idea that the OKC bombing is a government conspiracy is obviously a government conspiracy.

@18, so... @2 is an agent provocateur? That explains a lot.

If conspiracy nuts ever learn how to write succinctly I might start paying attention to them.

Well, this isn't succinct, but I'll say it anyway. The problem with "conspiracy theory science" as a whole and almost all conspiracy theories individually is that they have already made a conclusion: That the prevailing scientific theory explaining the events is flawed, and that a network of individuals has put forth an effort not only to commit a complicated crime, but to cover it up perfectly and somehow marginalize anyone who comes forward to disagree. Amazingly, the media is also in on it.

Unfortunately for the conspiracy theorist, this pseudo-scientific process (of starting with your conclusion and working backwards, only cherry-picking evidence which supports the theory) is bullshit, and the whole world can see it.