Generalizations really tick me off. The subject in question here is the 9/11 Truth movement. Dead horse, I know, but I happen to like beating things. Anyways, I was browsing around some sites recently and began to notice a trend. Among sites that discussed 9/11, the ones that supported the idea that it was an inside job and/or that the government perpetrated the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon were heavily liberal (of the far left flavor). Sites that debunk such conspiracy theories or simply make fun of them tend to be heavily conservative (moderate to far right). I can kind of understand the split here, but after reading through the comments on certain sites, I really wish this wasn’t how it was split up.
I am a libertarian at heart, but I tend to lean more liberal than anything. I also believe that 9/11 was an act of terrorism caused by the hijacking of airplanes by fundamentalist Muslims. The government wasn’t involved in any way and failed to act properly due to shoddy intelligence and confusion surrounding the events. In other words, I’m no 9/11 truther.
This puts me in a rather awkward position. Because I’m fairly liberal, conservatives tend to assume that I’m off my rocker and think that little green aliens told George Bush to fly remote control airplanes into American buildings. And because I don’t believe in the conspiracy theories, liberals tend to assume I’m a neo-conservative government crony and/or brainwashed. Both are clearly wrong and are a direct result of the oversimplifying of the situation here.
9/11 truthers are composed of people from all over the political spectrum. Some, like Alex Jones, are conservatives. Others, like the 35% of Democrats who think Bush knew about the attacks beforehand, are more moderate or liberal. I wish people would realize this, especially on the conservative side of things. Perry Logan (no relation) is a lot more liberal than I am, but he also debunks the claims of 9/11 truthers. Even so, he’s still attacked by more conservative blogs (especially DUmmie FUnnies) for being a liberal, which means he must be a truther. Exhibiting other traits often connected with truthers (such as being against the conflict in Iraq) also garners a person a reputation as a weed-smoking hippie truther.
Blogs like Screw Loose Change seem to be a little smarter when it comes to realizing that not all liberals are moonbats (my research indicates that word is only used by conservative blogs with nothing important to say), but that’s not saying much for the commenters, who still seem to be of the type to criticize anyone with a slightly liberal slant. Honestly, people. It’s all well and good to have an opinion, but attacking anyone who varies from that opinion in the least is bad form and makes you look like a jackass. I’m talking to both sides here. Truthers need to stop thinking I’ve been brainwashed or that I’m too ignorant to see their truth, and debunkers need to stop assuming I’m a truther because I’ve always thought the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea. False correlations are the sign of someone with a big mouth and a little brain.
And please, if you’re a truther, stop getting all surprised when you tell me to make my own conclusions and don’t agree with your version of events. Expecting me to believe everything you say makes as much sense as believing everything the government says, wouldn’t you agree?
Signal-to-noise
It’s always difficult to find good online communities. I was hanging around Reddit for a long time, but I deleted my account today because the community was going downhill fast. When I first signed up, people were willing to participate in intelligent discussions and half of the links on the main page were actually interesting. More recently, however, almost every link has been about politics of some sort (I’m sure most of that has to do with the upcoming election) and rational discussion is almost impossible. If you disagree with the popular Reddit opinion on an issue, you’re downmodded into oblivion and few people are willing to debate with you. What’s worse is what the popular opinions often are. Any article about police will have a highly-rated comment about how all police are pigs and should be shot on sight. It’s depressing that anyone would agree with a sentiment like that. It’s the same with religion, politics (especially politics), and even technology. Not as bad as Digg with respects to hating Microsoft, but you still see the occasional dollar sign in place of the letter “s”.
I suppose I could have ignored all that for the good links I do sometimes find, but those links are few and far between, buried amidst all the noise of articles about how dumb Sarah Palin is, or the antics of some religious group, or stories about how the police tasered a guy who may or may not have attacked them first. I know what you’re thinking. “Cody! Unsubscribe from the politics, religion, and atheism subreddits!” I did, and somehow political and religious links still snuck in, under the guise of the funny subreddit or the WTF subreddit. It just wasn’t worth sticking around if I wasn’t getting what I wanted out of the website. What did I want? Interesting links, complete with intelligent discussion of said links. What did I get? Uninteresting links, complete with unintelligent babble about how the government is going to take over everything and use religion and Tasers to force everyone into submission. The gradual transformation into a mainstream version of /b/ didn’t help, either. Yeah, there were some pretty awesome memes (100 pushups, anyone?), but memes aren’t a good substitute for worthwhile comments and there are a lot of meme comments on Reddit.
My absence from Reddit probably won’t last. I doubt I’ll create another user account, but I did get a fair bit of my news from Reddit. Maybe the community will get better sometime in the future. Maybe not. I suppose I can’t avoid what I don’t like forever.