State sponsored history, the version touted in public schools, and preached over the mainstream media is the mythology of the state, and it is as essential to its existence as creation stories are to any religion.
In America there are a lot of people who call themselves skeptics, and wear that label like a badge of pride, but in reality many of these people are not real skeptics at all, and what they try to pass off as logic and intellectual objectivity is just a different flavor of blind belief.
Now first of all I consider real skepticism a virtue.
State sponsored history, the version touted in public schools, and preached over the mainstream media is the mythology of the state, and it is as essential to its existence as creation stories are to any religion.
In America there are a lot of people who call themselves skeptics, and wear that label like a badge of pride, but in reality many of these people are not real skeptics at all, and what they try to pass off as logic and intellectual objectivity is just a different flavor of blind belief.
Now first of all I consider real skepticism a virtue.
Real skepticism is an attitude of doubt, a tendency towards disbelief, a critical disposition that takes nothing for granted and which suspends judgement when faced with new information. Real skeptics question everything, especially their own assumptions. A real skeptic studies the principles of logic and first and foremost endeavors to apply those principles to themselves.
These fake skeptics that I’ve been alluding to seem to think that the fact that they give lip service to science and don’t believe in god qualifies them as rational and skeptical, but when those same people debate politics you’ll often find they have their own variety of religion that they adhere to. The religion of the state and the state sponsored version of history.
The ultimate threat to the religion of the state is to challenge their official version of historical events especially when those events are recent and their interpretation is still being used to guide policy. State sponsored history, the version touted in public schools, and preached over the mainstream media is the mythology of the state, and it is as essential to its existence as creation stories are to any religion.
To question the official story, especially when that story has political consequences, is heresy, and they even have a special slur that they’ve invented for the heretics, one that is designed to marginalize and discredit them from a distance. They call them conspiracy theorists or extremists, occasionally adding the token left wing or right wing on to the end of the slur to amplify the effect. These are an Ad Hominem attack, the most common and low form of logical fallacy.
The Ad Hominem logical fallacy takes many forms, but at its essence it comes down to drawing attention away from the logical arguments in a particular debate by placing attention on the person speaking and making that person look foolish in the eyes of the audience. This is a very effective method of winning in the eyes of an uneducated crowd, but it is Sophism, the opposite of rational debate. Those who use these tactics are not appealing to your intelligence, they are appealing to your ignorance.
So when you hear someone throwing around the term conspiracy theorist or conspiracy kook or any of these kind of slurs be cognizant of this. Understand that the speaker is intentionally skewing the debate, and attempting to use your prejudices against their opponent.
This behavior is a symptom of the herd mentality, it is actually same cult psychology that false skeptics like to attack in groups that they deride, but ignore when it rears its head in their own ranks.
Now you might have noticed that I specifically pointed out Americans here. This isn’t a casual reference. America stands out like no other country I have ever encountered when comes to this . In the five plus years that I have spent living abroad in the course of my life I have observed the psychology of the people in each region. What I have found is that even in third world countries where the level of education is absolutely abysmal, the degree of openness to new information is much higher than even what you find in university graduates in the United States.
Let’s just take for example the events of September 11th 2001.
If you haven’t heard of building 7 it was the 3rd building that fell in New York, the one that no one talks about. Unlike the other two buildings that fell that day WTC7 wasn’t hit by a plane. No one denies that it fell, no one claims that a plane hit it, no one defending the official story can explain why it fell straight down into its own footprint at 5:20 PM on September 11th, and no one can explain why the BBC reported that it had fallen 20 minutes earlier while it was still clearly standing.
When you show this kind of evidence to the average European the the thought of attacking the person who points out the inconsistencies doesn’t even cross their minds. Their reaction is usually amazement that the coverup was so poorly executed, and not once has any European that I have presented this information to resorted to low grade tactics like calling me a conspiracy theorist.
Why is this? Why is that French and Germans can look at the same information an form a rational conclusion where as highly educated Americans will react emotionally before even allowing themselves to consider the evidence? Why is it that Americans get so defensive when you point to a gaping hole in the fabric of their historical mythology?
I’m sure there are multiple variables that contribute, but it seems to me that the predominant factor in this equation is American exceptionalism and its tight coupling with the group identity of the American people. This phenomenon is present even in political factions that would never admit it openly, even in ideological groups that perceive variations of this pattern in others but are unable to see it in themselves.
Europeans don’t look at history with stars in their eyes. They were never raised to believe that their nation was the one nation which did not fall for the temptations of empire, or that their government was incapable of committing atrocities against its own people for political gain. Europeans have a more realistic sense of history, and are therefore much less shocked to see evidence that places the U.S. government in the same category as the 3rd Reich.
The thing is most of what fake skeptics like to call conspiracy theory isn’t theory at all, it’s just historical evidence that doesn’t fit the official narrative and which may in fact indicate that the official narrative was an intentional fabrication. The absurdity is that over time documents are declassified, and events such as the Gulf of Tonkin which for years was the realm of so called conspiracy theory become acknowledged as as historical fact, but only after it is far too late to stop the war that the lie was used to promote.
To call it pointing out inconsistencies in the official version of a historical event a conspiracy theory is the opposite of skepticism and it indicates a lack of critical thinking skills. As a culture we need to hold people who resort to these kinds of illogical tactics accountable.
