theory

Once again, 9/11 is upon us. I speculate that the people at MSNBC will not run all day coverage of 9/11/2001. Nor do I think that they will broadcast, like they did last year, the unfolding of the morning of 9/11/2001. I may be wrong but, I don’t think MSNBC or CNN would like to show the images of planes going into buildings this year. Perhaps it might make the viewer think, 7 short years after 9/11 and one Muhammaden slip by Obama bumbling about his "Muslim faith" and the fact that his middle name is Hussein, just how absurd it is that this man is even being considered for the job of President.

If you don’t wish to watch coverage like this please tune into Chimpsy Radio. All day on 9/10 & 9/11, we will remember 9/11 in our own way www.chimpsyradio.com/ctl.html. It will begin at 1pm Est and end with my show at 9:30pm Est. I will speak about Obama and ask not where Obama was but, what exactly what was he thinking just days after 9/11. I will not be talking about 9/11 truthers. Been there, done that so many times.
Of course, with every year approaching 9/11 the truthers come out. I’ve often advocated beating the fuck out of them when they approach you with your ideas but I think now it’s just a matter of tuning them out. Some of you may know them. They might even be your friends and while I’ve ended a couple of friendships over this scurrilous viewpoint. No, I don’t think you should do the same. But if you must engage them, please bring common sense. The truthers hate that shit.

For instance, truthers like to make wild claims that building 7 was brought down in a controlled demolition. First, do you really think that a truther understands laws of psychics? Why bother with that? Simply use common sense. Ask them, can you explain to me why collapse would begin at exactly the point where damage was inflicted, since the conspirators would have had to been able to predict exactly where debris from the fallen North and South Towers would strike WTC 7? And while the makers of the documentary Loose Brains comment that WTC 7 "fell straight down, into a convenient pile," the TRUTH is that the pile of debris was 12 stories high and 150 meters across, hardly the kind of "convenient pile" described by shit for brains like Dylan Avery and Corey Rowe.

These brain dead losers will go as far to say that not only WTC 7 but the WTC 1&2 were controlled demolitions as well. Again, common sense. Please say: Dumbass, since the building was wired for a controlled demolition and targeted to be hit by airplanes why not just do the controlled demolition, ditch the airplanes and blame it on the terrorists of your choice? Go further. Doesn’t prepping a building for demolition takes considerable time and effort? Usually a building targeted for demolition has been abandoned for considerable time and partially gutted to allow explosives intimate contact with the structure of the building. But since all of the WTC buildings were occupied right up to 9/11, how did the government gain access to wire 3 towers for complete demolition without anyone noticing? Imagine trying to sneak wires and bombs into buildings while thousands of people are working in offices, riding the elevators and milling about in the halls that scenario is HIGHLY unlikely.

They love to start talking shit about the Pentagon.
Their claim that the plane never crashed and that a missile or a bomb did this damage. We’ve heard it before and the mentally impaired like to refer to this as Pentegate. Again, remain composure and let common sense prevail. Say this: You poor fool. A speeding Boeing 757 will not leave a snow-angel style impression of itself in a concrete building (vs. the mostly-glass exterior of the WTC buildings, which did leave an outline of a plane). And the contention that no remains of Flight 77 were found at the crash site is simply absurd. Many pictures taken of the area around the Pentagon crash site clearly show parts of an airplane in the wreckage. Allyn Kilsheimer, the first structural engineer to arrive at the Pentagon after Flight 77, spoke about his own observations as crashed. "I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane
with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box. His eyewitness account is backed up by photos of plane wreckage inside and outside the building. I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts."

You might want to follow up that factotum with: I guess Kilsheimer is just another Bush loving nea-con to you, huh? Who made up the fact that he was traumatized by holding peoples arms and legs? Take your medicine.
When discussing Flight 93 with a truther it might be difficult to keep composed. For most of us, Flight 93 was a valiant effort by heroes to fight back and stop further destruction and loss of life. Not to a truther. I know, it may be hard at this point to fight the urge to take the anti American piece of shit by the throat and choke the stink out of em! But, common sense is like the force and may it be with you.

Truthers have often claimed Flight 93 had landed safely in Cleveland. This has been rejected by every credible news outlet in the country. Then the unsupported assertions that the main body of the engine and other large parts of the plane turned up miles from the main wreckage site was too far away to have resulted from an ordinary crash. This is incorrect because the engine was found only 300 yards from the main crash site and its location was consistent with the direction in which the plane had been traveling. Let’s not forget the black box for the flight records the struggle onboard preceding the plane’s crash. Those are facts. Let common sense prevail: Excuse me you infinitesimal minded crack pot. Why would the same U.S. government that allegedly destroyed the WTC shoot down Flight 93 before it could cause similar damage to other buildings?
I can sit here and go on pages more. It’s your choice whether you wish to debate this subject, beat someone to a pulp or turn the other cheek and ignore. I personally recommend ignoring the ignorant. Remember, these are the same people who believed that George Bush was responsible for Hurricane Katrina by blowing up the levees because he hated black people. These are also the same people who for years believed that JFK was killed by the government rather than a lone and known Communist. And to them, the government that killed JFK is always a conservative government because, after all, they’re evil. Meanwhile, the JFK administration was liberal democratic. I guarantee you that if JFK was a conservative republican, Oliver Stone would’ve romanticized Lee Harvey Oswald instead of vilifying the government.

Finally, pity these fools. Seriously. Some conspiracy theorists themselves don’t really believe what they are saying. The main appeal of 9/11 conspiracies is that they are easy to understand and to accept. Like children, they are easily led to believe this easy brush off of a catastrophic event in which we, citizens of the United States, were the target. For most of us proud Americans who understand this catastrophe and know who did it to us, we realize how precious and fragile human life and liberty are. And perhaps that may be the greatest rebuttal to those who wish to live life pursuing delusions.

Suppose that you are playing a game in a hilly landscape, and the object of the game is reach a higher altitude than any other player, and all you've got is your own feet & eyes (no GPS, etc.)  What do you do?  Well, presumably you try to find the highest hill you can spot, and head straight for the top.  But what if you're playing in a thick fog, and can only see a few dozen feet in any direction?  In such conditions, you can determine what your local slope looks like, and climb up it.  And you can reach the top of whatever hill you're on that way, just by always climbing higher and higher until you run out of up.  But... what if that hill is not, in fact, the highest hill?  You'll be at a top, but not the tallest top.  What then?

If you're on top of a hill, but it isn't the highest hill, then you are at what AI researchers (among many others) call a local maximum.  Many problem-solving tasks can be modeled as playing this sort of foggy hill-climbing game.  And one always runs into this basic dilemma: make your problem-solver too risk-seeking, and it'll trade away a perfectly good hilltop for bupkis; but make your problem-solver too risk-averse, and it'll trap itself in a local maximum, unwilling to climb a little bit down in order to have a chance at finding an even higher hill to reach the top of. 

From the conversations that have been going on on this site, it seems to me that the right today is in a real danger of being caught in a local maximum.  We know that the coalition that has worked at least since Reagan is no longer working.  After Bush and Rove and Iraq and Katrina and... well, the independents just don't seem to trust the right anymore.  To the extent that they are interested in McCain, it's because they accept that he's not really a right-winger (as many around here are happy to agree.)  And the demographics are against the right, too, in terms of the youth vote, Latinos, etc.  Trying to just keep pushing forward with this coalition -- staying put on top of this particular hill -- is a recipe for short-term electoral suicide.  Maybe the left will burn itself out in a few cycles, but I wouldn't count on it; they've learned from their losses in the mid-90s, and from watching the GOP meltdown in this century.

And it's worse than that, even, because the current coalition is fraying.  There are too many tensions that have become too clear in the last decade.  We can't have both lower taxes and an invasion of Iran.  We can't have a smaller, less intrusive government and unlimited domestic security powers.  We can't have a laissez-faire government and a government that continually helps out agribusiness, or the airline industry, or the banking industry.  Yet all of these are elements that have been crucial to GOP electoral success thus far.

The right needs to climb down a little, before it can climb higher.  And what that means, in cashing out the metaphor, is that some elements of the current coalition are probably going to get jettisoned in order to better pursue new voters that haven't been reached before, or who have recently been lost.  Some might think that "just return to our conservative roots!" is a solution that avoids this difficulty, but that's an illusion -- much of the reason that GOP legislators vote for government- and deficit-expanding measures is that there are some voters that these actions keep in the GOP fold.  Ditto with, e.g., Medicare D.  To propose more small-government conservatism is to propose to lose those voters.  Maybe the true-blood conservatives whose votes will be gained will more than compensate for the kitchen-counter voters who will be lost.  But it's a hard answer to determine one way or another, in the current fog.

Let me be clear that I am not advocating here any particular rejiggering of the conservative coalition, nor am I making any suggestions as to which groups of voters are those that are not currently in the coalition but which should be pursued.  But I think it's important to face up, as clearly as possible, to the difficulties being faced standing here at the top of this no-longer-dominant hilltop. 

(Promoted from user blogs. -Patrick)

In the Marxist political narrative, capitalism collapses in on itself and gives way to a dictatorship of the proletariat. This temporary form of government would oversee the initial implementation of communism, but would then wither away as it is no longer needed.

Of course, a middle schooler could see the problem with this scenario. Who decides when 'true' communism has been accomplished? And who will make sure those running this dictatorship peacefully give up their power? To their credit, even self-professed Marxists could recognize the challenge, especially after a few years of the Soviet Union.

Curiously enough, libertarians, and to a lesser extent conservatives, have a similar theoretical challenge. That is, our philosophy is based on the assumption that government is inclined to serve its own interests and therefore should not be entrusted with more power than is absolutely necessary.