Goin' Down to South Park, Gonna Set Off Controlled Demolitions
David Weigel | October 16, 2006, 8:24am
Last week's episode of South Park tackled the so-called 9/11 "Truth Movement"* with the kind of ballsy bitterness that can only be fully deployed against people no one takes seriously. Quick recap: Cartman, a 9/11 fantasiast, accuses Kyle of plotting 9/11. In uncovering the truth, Kyle is abducted by President Bush, who reveals that he blew up the WTC. But Kyle and Stan escape the White House and find that the 9/11 conspiracy is actually a government conspiracy cooked up to make the feds look competent - if the president can cover up the murder of 3000 people, is Joe Six Pack going to risk evading his taxes?
During the episode, kooks referred to 911Truth.org as the site to find out the best September 11 nuttery. Lo and behold, the website has latched onto South Park as a marketing device.
Hello, South Park Fans!
To those of you who already know that we don't know what happened on 9/11, you're definitely not alone--our Zogby poll in May found 45% of Americans want a new investigation because we know we were lied to! (Final report here). And for a long list of people within the government and military who also know, check out patriotsquestion911.com.
Another post on the site takes a darker view of Parker and Stone's tomfoolery.
In this episode, they resorted to channeling Beavis and Butthead by spinning out a whole show which was essentially a 30-minute excuse for asking: "How many different alliterative ways can we say "take a shit"? (Heh, heh, he said "fudge dragon"!)
It's funny the first couple of times, but it gets tired. Just like the refusal to face aspects of our collective reality gets tiring. Here's hoping for a fairer portrayal of 9/11 skepticism next time.
It's like Scientology, without the joiner fees.
(*This is the only Truth Movement I want to know about.)
James Anderson Merritt | October 16, 2006, 3:06pm | #
db: My point was to express doubt about whether the airplane fuel was a primary contributor to the major damage in either the WTC or the Lidle cases, not to suggest that the small amount of fuel in a private plane could cause the same amount of damage as the large amount of fuel in a jet airliner. I studied thermodynamics and chemistry, too.
Isaac:
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but also the third WTC building that was hit by nothing. -me
The third WTC building was hit by the facade of one of the towers which actually did fall away from the tower. So much for "controlled demolition". -you
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Well yes, there was falling debris from the other buildings, but the official explanation uses this as the kickoff point for a series of events that culminated with a fire and a similar collapse in building 7. So much for the "thousands of gallons of jet fuel" explanation (though the "working hypothesis" of some investigators is that the fire in building 7 was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that was in the building to power generators -- they cannot prove this, nor can they prove that jet fuel actually did horrible things in the building). We are asked to believe, in one case, that impacts and thousands of gallons of jet fuel were needed to create the freak pancaking collapse of the two big towers, but that the third building basically went down from the impact of falling debris and its consequences. It seems more credible to me that the bigger towers also were damaged more by the impact and its consequences, then by the "thousands of gallons of jet fuel." Clearly, flammable jet fuel could have made things worse, but the official explanation apparently argues for the creation of a raging inferno inside the buildings even without it.
Also, Isaac:
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Whoever was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, if there are good answers to the above questions, those answers have not been publicized. -me
Every answer I gave above is either from a NOVA episode on PBS or the Popular Mechanics debunking articles. -you
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As are most of the online replies to questions about what happened on 9/11. Clearly, this is mass publicization at its finest, a good deal of echo-chamber effect on both sides of the controversy. Still, having AN answer doesn't mean you have a GOOD answer, and the officially blessed explanation -- which I have also seen from the sources you cite and others -- just seems too rube goldbergish to be credible. That doesn't mean it can't be true -- people have earned good money entertaining crowds with real-life rube goldberg contraptions -- only that it seems very unlikely to be true. I'll believe that the experts and investigators are onto the truth when they can replicate anything close to the events of 9/11 by setting up similar conditions and initiating similar causes. Until then, I remain very skeptical.
Also, Isaac:
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The WTC area was a crime scene. Why did officials cart off all the evidence without serious examination so quickly? -me
They needed to remove debris to recover remains. There was no room to store it on site. Exhaustive examination was conducted on materials (everthing from structural steel to the fireproofing) at the offsite locations they were taken to. -you
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Are you trying to tell me that you believe the same care was taken with that evidence as we would hope would be taken in a regular murder investigation? That chain of custody rules were scrupulously observed? That evidence was effectively locked away from tampering or even garden-variety damage or corruption? That pieces were adequately photographed before being moved, tagged, and then kept together or otherwise organized so that their physical orientation at the crime scene might plausibly be recreated, or at least considered, in subsequent investigation? If you believe it, then what is the basis for your belief? The say-so of some official? Multiple testimonies of people who have little reason to lie? Photographic or videotape evidence of how the investigation was handled? How do you know what you know, well enough to criticize those who express reasonable doubt? Getting at remains (or, even better, survivors!) is a good reason for clearing debris, and even for being a little rushed and sloppy about it. But the more rushed and sloppy you are, the less even exhaustive study of the compromised evidence will tell you anything with certainty.
Hardly a day passes before we learn that some new official report or another on some important topic is incomplete, politically biased, or otherwise compromised. Why do we want to put so much trust into the official tale in THIS case? That's the real question of interest to me. Is it just that we need to believe so badly that, deep down, the people we put in charge of our country are good and have our interests at heart? The profligate spending, budget deficits, and immense national debt are compelling evidence that our leaders don't really care about what happens to this country, as they keep taking us further and further into uncharted, dangerous waters when they could choose another, more responsible course any time they wanted. So pardon me if I don't have that same blind trust. I don't need a President to be my "commander in chief." I don't need Congress to perform greenback liposuction out of my wallet and turn into financial collagen injections for politically determined "worthy projects." I don't need Senators instructing me in moral behavior. Do you? I'll tolerate them and their activity to a point -- a point which was passed long ago, in my opinion -- but expecting me or anyone else to actually trust them, or to accept their pronouncements without a lot of push-back, is just asking too much.
As far as the independent experts consulted by PBS, Pop Mech, etc., my reading of their ideas and conclusions doesn't support conspiracy theories on the one hand, but it also doesn't lead to an explanation of what happened on 9/11 that one can accept without a great deal of faith. Those who scoff and jeer here do so as if the matter were settled, all the hard facts known, and robust conclusions reached. In the sources cited and elsewhere, I see mostly the refutation of conclusions that one alleged piece of evidence or aspect of the case, or another, indicates nefarious conspiracy. I see very little in the way of coherent, testable narrative about how the disaster actually happened as it did. There are lots of "working hypotheses," but we're still a long way from a real explanation, as I see it.
Again, the many holes in the official account provide ample space for conspiracy theories to grow. Add the fertilizer of the political corruption or incompetence scandal of the day, and a thousand conspiracy theory flowers will surely bloom.
Kevin | October 16, 2006, 3:57pm | #
"I've got a Raging Clue!"
The South Park epidsode was funny, and Parker/Stone clearly put 911truth.org in front of the public, which is more of an even-handed treatment then you'll see in most commentary.
I didn't even know there WAS a controversy until recently, and that was when I heard about the third tower---which, let's face it, is a pretty damned strange thing to have to explain. I just read the Popular Mechanics article, which btw is at: http://tinyurl.com/rjjpt
It would appear that the debunking isn't quite complete yet...
There's a clip of the aftermath of a B-25 bomber that struck the Empire State Building just after WWII on Youtube. There was a fire. As you probably know, the ESB is still standing. (Granted, the B-25's not a 757, but it's a better comparison than the bicycle/tank analogy.)
I'm not convinced, just suspicious. (Imagine, a libertarian who believes in conspiracies!) One argument that really stands out on the "debunking" sites is that 911 would require too much co-ordination by the government. It's too complicated to be true.
Hmmmm. "Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone..." According to most surveys, most Americans don't believe that one either. Then I thought about Salvador Allende, Diem, Gulf of Tonkin, Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Shah of Iran.
More recently, in 1990, Walter Hickel was elected governor of Alaska. He was elected as the candidate of the Independence Party, which advocates the secession of Alaska from the United States. On election night, I remember watching on tv, how all the networks called him an Independent---without mentioning the rest. Of course, he was only an independent in the sense that he wasn't a democrat or republican. There is a difference, you see? It wasn't George W. Bush or Bill Clinton's fault, as far as I know. But you didn't know about that footnote in history until just now, did you?
James Anderson Merritt | October 20, 2006, 11:16pm | #
A few comments, after having been away for a while:
1. Buckshot - I don't have a mental problem, and although you make a big show of being polite and even-handed, to suggest that I do have a mental problem is to show your true hand. I am surprised that Thoreau seems to be chortling along with the gang in here; he always seemed to be a classier guy than that, but you learn something new every day. I have seen him being treated as something of an insider around here in recent months; perhaps he has caught what I like to call "Jonah Goldberg" disease. Or perhaps it was always there and needed only the right environment to flower.
2. Earlier, someone mentioned the Reichstag Fire, and why 9/11 wasn't an homage. Others have said that conspiracies cannot be kept secret for long. Please keep in mind that the Reichstag fire happened in 1933, and it wasn't until 1946 -- after Hitler's defeat and death -- that people stood up in court and testified about how that fire really happened. One of those testimonies included an anecdote about how Goering claimed responsibility on a knee-slapping, joking way (though apparently taken seriously by the witness) in 1942. So the question of "who really started the Reichstag fire" was still a matter of rumor and innuendo as late as 1942 -- NINE YEARS after the deed. Would the culpability of Hitler's own goons EVER have been uncovered by law enforcement or courts, had Hitler WON his portion of WWII? We'll never know. But we know that an effective lid was kept on a conspiracy that changed not only a nation's fate, but the world's, for at least nine years.
The point being that you don't have to keep a conspiracy secret forever -- just long enough until it is water under the bridge and we all have to put it behind us and move on.
3. MainStreamMan: Thanks for the link. Yes, I have seen computer simulations. I asked above whether there have been physical simulations that confirmed the engineering theories and/or computer simulation predictions. If so, I asked, why haven't those movies been played -- or those experiments repeated -- ubiquitously for the past several years, as they would surely serve to quiet many would-be critics of the "official story." As entertaining as the website was, it didn't address my issue.
4. I finally saw the South Park episode in question, and I can now appreciate how comments I had initially taken to be just rude were actually intended-to-be-hip parrotings of lines or attitudes from the episode. That will teach me to participate in a thread that is based on a cultural event, without studying said event first. The irony, of course, is that I am a great SP fan and have seen every episode and the movie, just not that one until a few days ago. I completely appreciate now how comic my first comments in this thread were. Glad I was able to amuse you all.
All I am saying is that, by and large, you all don't know as much as you claim to know, or would like others to believe you know. Unless you personally analyzed all of this evidence and independently came to your conclusions (it sounds as if some actually made that attempt, and my hat is off to you), you are taking a lot on faith. Your government has given you ample reason to distrust it over the past couple of decades, and I suggest that the mental problem in play here is the desperate desire to believe that the people in charge know what they are doing and have the population's best interests at heart.
I have never claimed that there WAS a conspiracy of anyone but "pissed off muslims" to bring down the towers, etc. But even for entertaining the possibility that others might be involved, perhaps even others in our own government, I get jeered in a so-called skeptical forum. Given the subject matter of the SP episode, and the attitudes and lines of dialogue it contributed to the atmosphere in here, I can understand that initial reaction. But as the discussion has progressed, I have been rather appalled at the level of patronization. Are you folks compelled to set upon the unwary, like screeching bands of baboons? It seems so. I detect a deep desire in the alpha-participants in this forum to be mainstream opinion leaders. Anything that threatens to give them even the scent of the unorthodox, or to link them to fringe elements in any way, is to be beaten down, swept away, and vigorously denied and denounced. Such behavior is reminiscent of the cliche college fraternity, which isn't that far removed from the pack of baboons I mentioned earlier.
For those who sincerely tried to broaden my own perspective on this matter, thank you. I think the question of whether the government had a hand in this (it certainly BENEFITTED opportunistically, regardless) is very separate from the mechanics of how it all went down. It is perhaps a red herring, or at least futile, to hope that one can discern a smoking gun in the recordings and the rubble, and trace that gun back to perpetrators who are different from those we have been told to blame. But, when all is said and done, if it is established that NONE of the alleged anomalies hold water, if it is established that the government was neither at fault nor to blame for any of what happened on 9/11, this still will not give ANY evidence in support of the proposition that the government, much less the current regime, is actually trustworthy. Unfortunately, I believe that the need to cling to the belief that the government is trustworthy muffles a lot of 9-11 related criticism, and stifles a great deal more investigation, which might actually address a broader range of questions than we have seen answered so far. Don't play along with that; please.
