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Faulking Opinions - Sep 15, 2005 - Printable Version
- The Rational Middle
by Robin Buckallew
(Editor's note: Robin Buckallew sent me this as an addendum to her article "I Am Not a Kook". I've posted it here because I feel it is vital to The Faulking Truth that we consider both sides of the argument on every issue....well, not every issue, but you know what I mean.) For the past couple of days, I have been heartsick to the point of losing sleep. You see, for years I had been struggling with a dilemma. I had been trying to decide which I thought was the worse phenomenon – folks who went around all the time believing every conspiracy theory in the absence of any supporting evidence, or the people who dismissed every bit of news of duplicity or fraud, no matter what the evidence, by ridiculing it as “conspiracy theory”. Recently I made my decision. Convinced that the people who allowed fraud to continue unchecked were totally dangerous, and people who saw conspiracy around every corner were mostly harmless kooks, I settled my dilemma. I decided we were far better off investigating bogus conspiracy claims than allowing others to ridicule the evidence of true and terrible wrongdoing as just another conspiracy theory. I was wrong. And for that, I am truly apologetic.
It was with heavy heart that I read the stories alleging that the levees were blown up with explosive devices to make them fail during the recent hurricane events in New Orleans. I feel this story is the most dangerous conspiracy theory I have heard in a long time. The tragedy that befell New Orleans was truly a tragedy, and our government truly did have a hand in it, but the name of that hand was apathy, not conspiracy. For years, the engineers have been aware that the levees were unlikely to withstand the force of a Category 5 storm. In fact, many engineers predicted they would be unable to even withstand a Category 3 storm. In 2002, a researcher with Louisiana State University predicted that New Orleans would suffer through a killer storm within the next 50 years. I am sure he is horrified to find out how soon his prediction was proven right. The failure of the levees was no mystery. It did not require a conspiracy. It simply required that the human mind ignore a looming tragedy that was many years in the making. Now, it frightens me to think that a belief in a conspiratorial governmental bombing directed at the New Orleans levees would lull people into a false illusion that the levees themselves might have been safe, leading to a repeat of the recent tragedy, or perhaps even a worse tragedy. The levee system itself was to blame for this tragedy, not some nefarious plot cooked up in the boardrooms and inner chambers of our national leaders. Our leaders were responsible for apathy. They were responsible for underestimating the risk. They were responsible for the slowness of their response. But there is little evidence to indicate that they were responsible for bombing the levees. I fear that the acceptance of such a conspiracy theory could potentially lead to tragedy and disaster far worse than that we have already witnessed.
Yes, I advocate the investigation of evidence of government wrongdoing or even conspiratorial behavior. There is little to convince me that it is irrational to look at such bits of evidence that indicate that our government might lie to us, and engage in international adventures that are not in the best interests of peace and prosperity in the world. We should investigate evidence of corruption and malfeasance, even up to the highest levels of our government. These investigations should be undertaken with the utmost of care that we follow carefully the appropriate methodology of science, history and law, and that we should not allow our emotions and our passions to run away with our sense. We need to be highly circumspect in what we accept as evidence, and not run wild accepting every possible eyewitness account that appears to validate our beliefs, while ignoring all evidence that runs counter to what we accept.
I urge, in short, for the rational middle. Most of the time, the conspiracy theories I hear are harmless and possibly foolish (no, our government is not hiding aliens in a fort in the desert, but I suppose no one has yet been hurt by that rumor, and Roswell, NM, has gotten quite a bit richer on it); however, there are at least a handful of conspiracy theories that are unsubstantiated by much more than wild suspicion, and are at their core quite dangerous. On the other hand, for those of you who are so skeptical of anything that smacks of people getting together and planning some dastardly doings, keep in mind that there are times in this world where bad things happen not just because someone made a “bad decision”, but because someone planned them that way. History has shown that sometimes this can include people we have entrusted with the highest powers in the land. Most of these plans have been uncovered through sheer hard work and solid evidence gathering, not through wild speculation. For the most part, the reaction of the people who gather the most damning evidence is initially one of utter disbelief. Check yourself. If your first reaction to a wild conspiracy theory is automatic acceptance, you may want to back up, take a deep breath, and reconsider it in the rational light of day. On the other hand are the folks who automatically reject well researched, thoroughly documented investigations as just another “conspiracy theory”. There is great danger in the extremes.
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