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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
"Why do 9/11 deniers see an alternative story in pictures of the attacks? Because we all interpret images according to our biases."
Of course Farhad, you do know that your theory applies to you as well.
I see lies. I see the evil that men do. I don't see Bin Laden anywhere in those pictures.
There is more to 9/11 Truth than photos.
...Brightstar65 will jump in with his theories about life on Mars. And so it goes...
Historians have been grappling with the issues raised in this excerpt for decades involving how we interpret documents and construct narratives about the past. Differences in interpretation persist no matter how many new documents are produced or how close to the present they were created. Historians disagree as much about the 1990s as the 1790s.
Only the most naive would think that photographs can make something definitively true; photos and video are merely new kinds of documents that people will disagree on. There is nothing particularly special about the biases and interpretation of visual media that we haven't already been dealing with for generations.
It is unfortunate that Mr Manjoo continues to use the entire concept of "conspiracy" to minimize the obvious deficiencies in the official 911 explanations. Somewhere there is a quote from Dick Cheney that explains how to marginalize any thought outside the mainstream by labeling it the work of "conspiracy theorists".
By spending a bunch of column inches on someone like Mr. Jayhan this article plays the VPs hand exactly. It is obvious to most thinking people that no missles were used on WTC1 or WTC2 and a plane did strike the Pentagon. It is also obvious to most thinking people that there has never been a satisfactory explanation for the vertical collapse of WTC7. By promoting fringe ideas Mr. Manjoo makes getting to the truth harder.
It is obvious that we don't have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about what happened that day.
That the two links in this paragraph
Polls show that a large percentage of Americans question the official story of 9/11;
were broken when I clicked on them. On most any other subject it wouldn't be so conspicuous!
. . . that I don't think that this means all accounts are equally true. It is up to the community (scholarly, public, what have you) to weigh the various interpretations and the evidence and reach a consensus on what is more likely than not. Conspiracy theorists like the ones in the article will continue to be at the margins because their theories will never be able to withstand close scrutiny.
The rub is that not everyone finds the same things significant, so even if we're watching the same event, you and I might see different things. What you notice in a photograph or a video is a function of a personalized calculus -- an idiosyncratic, unconscious filter, built up over a lifetime, that you apply to all that you take in.
Gosh, it sure sounds like truth has become an impossibly anachronistic notion! We had best get used to just agreeing to disagree about reality, huh?
Except that Farhad Manjoo never gets around to making the obvious point, which is that we have (or used to have) at our disposal — as skeptical, thinking human beings — the ability to critically examine our own selves and our own assumptions. We can (or once could), in other words, become conscious of our unconscious filters.
To assist us in the effort of critical self-examination we have access to a wide variety of tools — principles of logic, philosophy, and rhetoric; statistics; the precepts of skeptical self-inquiry. Unfortunately, after thousands of years of honing these tools our civilization has literally started forgetting how to use them, and thus we see Manjoo's trend emerging.
So "9/11 deniers" come along, instinctively distrustful of a government that they know to be deceitful and underhanded, and skeptical about the official account of an unprecedented and personally terrifying event.
But due to poor training in tool use, they're epistemologically incapable of making a distinction between skepticism on a particular point (say, Bush's claim that "we could not have foreseen this") and skepticism in general. Once they take a dive down the rabbit hole, in other words, pretty much anything and everything becomes equally plausible.
The shame of well-behaved mainstream thought is that the opposite principle applies as well. For every conspiracy nut out there, there's a serious, modest, sober-minded New York Times-reading citizen who must accept everything he receives from authoritative sources — because to question any of it, no matter how absurd, is to open the possibility that everything is equally subject to dispute.
In point of fact we're surrounded by good ideas and bad ideas in equal measure — fact and fiction, truth and lies, straight talk and spin. A truly rational person may doubt the motives of high officials and question the veracity of official reports without thence concocting elaborate global conspiracies or questioning the Holocaust.
What's a shame about "9/11 deniers" is that they don't understand that you don't need to imagine Mossad, secret rockets, cruise missiles, stealth fighters, demolitions teams or anything of the sort for there to be a lot of very disturbing unanswered questions about the Qaeda attacks, what the White House knew and should have known, and why it sat idle for nearly a year beforehand. And these aren't questions that involve photographic evidence — just a little skepticism in the face of what are inarguably extraordinary claims by our government.
Yet because of chauvinistic attitudes like Farhad Manjoo's own tendency to dismiss any deviation from official history as psychic white noise, there are very few critical voices still asking those questions in the public sphere. The "9/11 narrative" has been fixed — a terror organization that was predictable, well documented, and well understood circa 2000 had somehow become an unknowable and unforeseeable threat by 2001.
And the man who failed in his responsibility to stop their attacks has escaped, unscathed and unquestioned.
Should work now.
Now you've gone and done it.. ;)
I look forward to monitoring this thread.
I do accept and believe the "official" version, if there is such a thing. I fall in the category of people who may put some spin on the subject: 9/11 was an expression of failed foreign policy, perpetrated by both Democratic and Republican leaders, and that it was a conspiracy -- one perpetrated by al-Qaeda, funded by rich Arab patrons (including Saudis and Egyptians).
I accept such things because of the lenses through which I view the world: as an ex-hacker, as an ex-security professional, as someone with a criminal bent and a conniving mind.
I know that a determined group, underpowered, and using low-technology methods, can penetrate the most sophisticated systems. It is hubris which leaves holes in security, hubris and denial.
I was awake that morning early, and I watched most of it on TV. The first thought that entered my head was this: "brilliant, elegant."
Crude, murderous and savage are appropriate terms for the attack. But there was a beauty to the simplicity of it.
Perhaps I see what I want to see -- a well executed tactical ploy perpetrated by an opponent who was at a disadvantage.
But I do not see a false flag operation, or a nefarious government scheme, or any of the things "truthers" see in the attacks.
To me, those theories are implausible and absurd. Ours is not a government with the skill and ability to pull such a thing off.
If you ask yourself the question: "who benefits?", and you ask it honestly, then the answer must be Islamic extremists. While a negative answer to this question is not exculpatory, the fact that as events unfolded al-Qaeda reaped the benefits of our policy blunders following 9/11 bolsters my argument.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
