Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Quit Raging a

Conspiracy theories.……the behind the scenes stories and “cold, hard facts” that are favorites of many political dissidents and wannabe activists, usually revolving around shadowy figures tirelessly working behind the scenes, with such sinister motives such as “population control”, world domination”, and “mind control”…….usually involving colorful, skin tight costumes. Ok, so maybe the last bit might be copyrighted by Marvel. But pretty much anything else is fair game as far as conspiracy theories go, and some sound even more far-fetched than superhero stories. I’m looking at you, lizard people believers.

And why am I even writing this you may ask? Well, the main reason seems to be that I just can’t escape from it. My dad was bombarding me with books and videos from as early as I can remember, and even now, away from that, I have multiple guys I know from work that just love to sit around and have water cooler talks about world domination, the Bildeburgers, and sinister corporations that are controlling the world’s governments. When I was young and the internet was just a screaming baby that people laughed at and mostly ignored, it was just books and grainy videos that could easily be ignored. Now, the internet has made everything much more accessible. Even the slowest mouth-breather on earth can Google “Illuminati,” and then spend hours reading forum posts from undercover spies deep in the Illuminati headquarters, and maybe even learn how to fashion his very own tin-foil hat to keep out the mind control rays. And then you have to hear about all this from said guy on a daily basis. Now I’m certainly not calling all conspiracy theorists mouth breathers, that’s not even close to the truth. One of the smartest men I know has jumped headlong off the conspiracy theory deep-end, and basically won’t talk about anything else unless carefully steered. His problem isn’t that he’s stupid, merely that he’s a little older, and still takes random things written on the internet by random people as meaningful facts far too often. Notice the “meaningful” qualifier before “facts”. It’s important.

So it begins. My childhood was a “little” strange, as compared to most childhoods. I spent a lot of time inside reading encyclopedias, basically never watched TV, rarely watched movies, played minimal video games, read very little fiction, etc. None of it my choice, really, and looking back I’m kind of sad I missed out on a “normal” childhood, but it has had its perks too. I loved military history, especially WWII, and would go to the library and come back with an armful of random WWII/military related literature. I read every single book in the WWII section of our library. I would be excited when a new book would show up. Basically, I was just a hardcore WWII history geek (along with my brothers) from an early age. Well, enter conspiracy theories. As anyone well versed in conspiracy lore would know, WWII is no stranger to the full gamut of strange and weird. And this is where the lines crossed for me. Most of the books recommended to me by my dad at first were of the modern type, with cool stuff about the coming apocalypse, blacks vans and helicopters, secret prison camps, and the like. Well, as I became more and more of a WWII buff, he started feeding me books that related directly to WWII, with good stuff like Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories and how Hitler was a secret Jesuit and such. He would hand these books to me with a wink and a nod, basically hinting to me that my childish view of WWII was about to be changed forever. And promptly, my bs-o-meter pegged out. You see, I was certainly no world politics historian, but known historical facts and reasons related to WWII I did know quite well. And just so much of what was in these books was blatant historical fact abuse, some of it so rough it was probably illegal in multiple states. Finally I’d pretty much had enough and started arguing some of this stuff when he would bring things up while watching documentaries. And that’s when I realized……..he really was quite ignorant about actual WWII history. I’m going to digress here with a very simple point he brought up from a random book, and one that I started debunking with just pure WWII knowledge.

It was a Pearl Harbor documentary we were watching, and it was showing the layout of the ships from an aerial point of view. As you might know, the American ships were lined up in nice, neat rows in the harbor, double stacked in some places. He then made the comment to the effect of, “Look at the way those ships are lined up, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, no one would line up their entire navy in one place like that unless they were planning on them all getting attacked.” Well, here goes. First of all, yes, the way the ships were lined up was completely normal. This was a naval harbor of a country at peace. A quite tense peace, to be sure, but no one expected any sort of surprise sneak attack by the Japanese. Also of major importance……aerial attacks on naval ships was brand spanking new, basically all Navy Admirals still considered aircraft carriers and their aircraft to be nothing more than spotters for the big guns of battleships….. Pearl Harbor was basically the coming out party for aircraft carriers and aircraft. The British had executed a devastating aerial attack on an Italian Navy base in Taranto over in Italy a year ago, but that was the first of its kind, and while it gave the Japanese the idea that it really could work, it was certainly not the kind of thing to base your entire naval doctrine around. Naval strategy previous to Pearl Harbor revolved around big battleships and cruisers lining it up and duking it out, not launching aircraft from 200 miles away. I could bring in relevant points about the rise of aviation, Billy Mitchell’s being blackballed from the Navy, the old German battleship Ostfriesland, the Washington-Naval treaty, and what all of this had to do with the improbability of basically anyone in the world thinking that a navy launched aerial attack could devastate the US Navy base in Hawaii in a single day. Even Yamamoto himself had serious doubts as to his aircraft’s ability to deliver a significant blow to the US Navy. If the majority of the Japanese admirals had had their way, they would have just sailed up to Pearl Harbor with 14 inch guns blazing. It would have been a much more effective way of starting the war in most people’s minds. Also, by a huge stroke of luck, what turned out to be the most important part of the US Navy’s fleet, their underused and hitherto considered rather worthless aircraft carriers, were out on training exercises, and so were completely unaffected by the attack.


Now what on earth does all that have to do with conspiracy theories you might ask? I didn’t debunk anything; really, I just spouted a bunch of somewhat related facts. Well, here is the thing. To even have a fairly intelligent conversation on that subject, that’s all basic stuff that needs to be firmly planted in your mind previously. Your brain needs to be processing arguments based on this information, not taking in this information for the first time as you try and reason through an argument or theory. Taken without any of the aforementioned information in mind, many random facts you can bring up concerning Pearl Harbor seems extremely damning and “coincidental”…*wink wink*. Taken in the proper historical setting and when viewed from a perspective closer to what people were actually seeing at the time, however, things get a lot muddier, and those random seemingly damning facts start falling into place in a world completely devoid of tightly-clad, colorful superheroes. Now, sure, there is still evidence perhaps pointing to some prior knowledge, but those things can be explained away, and now you’re basing your theories on ideas and opinions, not facts. Suddenly, “logical reasoning” based on “proofs” and “solid evidence” starts beginning with things like, “I would think…”, and “If you consider….”
This is the point. Knowledge is an amazing thing, and the internet is a veritable goldmine of it. But therein lays the danger as well. Just by randomly (or carefully) selecting facts, you can make almost anything sound sinister and evil. The facts aren’t wrong, or even mis-used much of the time, merely applied without all the knowledge needed to actually make an informed decision.

I’m going to briefly delve into another conspiracy theory goldmine, 9/11. I’m actually starting to be able to pick out which video/website a truther has been visiting merely by arguments that they bring up. One gem I’ve heard far too many times, so I will use as an example of mis-applied facts. The simple phrase, “we decided….to pull it”. It was uttered by the owner of the very misunderstood, oft-cited Building 7 of the WTC. If you’re talking to a demolition crew, “pulling it” means to “start the implosion”. Quite simply, blow it up. Add those two random facts together and suddenly you have tons of fuel for a conspiracy fire. Googling “pull it” and demolition will lead you to tons of 9/11 sites (for and against the conspiracy), and hence, is of little use for actually researching 9/11, as they’ll obviously be biased for whichever side they are supporting. But dig down far enough, and you’ll find it does indeed mean to take a building down in demolition terms. A rather archaic term, but used nonetheless. Wow, that sounds pretty damning doesn’t it? Yes, I must agree, take those two facts, throw them together, and that sounds pretty bad for Mr. Building 7 owner (and President Bush and his evil cronies). So what do you say in the face of such evidence? If you know nothing about it, and intend on keeping it that way, you have no rebuttal, and you’re basically forced to admit you have no idea. ACTUAL research, and looking at both sides reveals, however, that “pull it” is also a firefighting term and means, obviously, get everyone out NOW. Taking Mr. Building 7 owner’s full conversation in mind, it’s exactly what he is referring to, and sadly, he was too late in “pulling it”, as some firefighters lost their lives in Building 7. Now with that in new information in mind, which version sounds more plausible? Is he an evil super-villain hell-bent on killing thousands of his own people, or was he just trying to save the lives of some firefighters? You can make your own decision, but I’m pretty decided on the fact that he wasn’t sitting back in his chair smoking a fine Cuban cigar while listening to Beethoven’s Ninth, watching the world burn. He was just trying to save people’s lives. And there are many such cases and arguments in the whole 9/11 mess that sound perfectly plausible without ALL the proper information. And I don’t pretend to know all the answers or have all the information. I know just enough to realize that neither I nor any other random armchair general I’ve known has spent enough hours actually researching to make an intelligent, informed, conclusive decision.