False gods

Why would any rational person be a 'truther'? When I saw a trio of them manning a sign by the bus stop on Douglas and Fort I suggested to them it would be a lot simpler if they just wrote 'idiot' on their foreheads with a magic marker. Actually, I was a little surprised they looked so normal...clean-cut young men, not dreadlocked, wild-eyed, drooling, drugged out refugees from a Hornby Island commune. I should have stopped and spoke when one of them replied to my sarcasm by asking me if I had 'proof.' "Proof," I thought, "is this some sort of metaphysical question?"
It would be as if he had asked me if I had proof that the world was round or if my thigh bone was really connected to my hip bone. The whole world (except for reprobates like me who don't care for TV) saw it happen over and over again. Airplanes truly flew into those buildings. The buildings truly did collapse as a result. Thousands of innocent people truly died in the conflagration. Another jetliner did fly into the Pentagon, and still another crashed into the ground which was aiming for the White House. Some courageous passengers sacrificed their lives to frustrate this last scheme. All four of the planes were hijacked by Islamic terrorists. The whole operation was planned and organized by Al Qaeda, an organization dedicated to conducting a war on all infidels. Anybody will do in a pinch but they especially hate Jews, who are called apes and pigs in the Koran. Jews are prominent in the financial world, so the World Trade Center was the target of their dreams, smack dab in the middle of the Great Satan, ie the USA. They did it with help from Saddam's Iraq.
That's the story. All that's left is to fill in the details. The evidence is available for all to see. So why were these young men trying to sell passersby a harebrained story about it being an "inside job,' a diabolical conspiracy by an assortment of villains-- Haliburton, Bush/Cheney, Big Oil, the Jews, the Pope and anybody else they can think of?
Now, it's perfectly legitimate to look behind any event to see if hidden factors might be involved, and that's an entirely honorable exercise, no matter how far fetched the theory becomes. Some people get carried away and become delusional about these theories. We've all known people like this, and sometimes they turn out to be right, but more often than not they become cranky old bores--and wrong. Some 'truthers' clearly belong in this last category.
But what about these young men on the corner of Fort and Douglas? I really don't know. They looked sane. In fact, they looked professional. They reminded me a little of the clean cut young men and women I met when I was a young sailor in San Diego. They were very friendly, and the girls were pretty. They asked me if I wanted to come to a party with them. There would be a live band and lots of people would be there. What young sailor can say no to an offer like that, especially when it's accompanied by a pretty smile? I got in the back of their car with a couple of other sailors and we drove through the streets for about a half hour. New to San Diego, I had no idea where we were and started to feel a little uneasy. However, eventually we arrived--at a church. We went into the basement. There was a band, all right, and they were playing church music. But this was not at all like Catholic church music. This was a rock n' roll band, and they were really rockin', rockin' for Jesus. The next few hours I spent trying to avoid being converted. I am a fairly religious kind of guy but I don't like being sold a bill of goods. Eventually I escaped and found my way back downtown, but I had learned a good lesson: beware of smiling faces. It's stood me in good stead as I've deftly avoided involvement in all sorts of movements since then. There've been a lot of 'em. Moonies, Scientologists, Jehovah Witnesses, Latter Day Saints, Vegans, and many others. And now 'truthers.'
I feel absolutely no obligation to refute any of these ideologies. Why should I make an exception for 'truthers'? It is a kind of religion, isn't it? Just not as interesting as most of the others I've mentioned. A type of faith in the unseen is involved that cannot be shaken by mere evidence. True faith is not like that. True faith seeks a dialogue with evidence. They are two ways of 'knowing,' and one helps the other, like the right hand and the left hand.
But is there more to the truthing phenomenon than just a few superheated imaginations gone awry? Maybe dastardly villains do lurk in the shadows, pulling strings, dimming the lights, building sets, teaching the actors their lines and footing the bill. But who might they be? Why are they doing it? This is a conspiracy theory that might be worth pursuing, and I think the trail starts with one name: George Soros.