So I'm reading this
artnet.com article about the artworld's first reactions to 9/11, and at the very end, outta nowhere, the author starts spinning these conspiratorial connections between suspected and confirmed acts of terrorism, including "Multiple witnesses saw Middle Eastern-looking men accompany Timothy McVeigh in the days before the Oklahoma City bombing."
The author adds: "Through it all a sense has lingered in progressive circles that our government was clumsily trying to protect us from the truth, to prevent mass panic." I dunno about that. This idea is less the provenance of the left than conspiracy theorists and fringewatchers of all types. You know, the government is witholding THE TRUTH about aliens/the Kennedy Assassination/mutant diseases because if it didn't, civilization might crumble, etc.
Still, is this ever a reasonable assumption? Or is it a rhetorical cop-out from those who have more in the way of wild imaginations than concrete evidence?
Can you think of any confirmed instances where the government withheld information, not so much out of a desire to protect sensitive intelligence sources or to prevent those in power from looking stupid, but to prevent the public from going absolutely nutzoid? (I can, I think: those balloon bombs that hit rural areas in the West Coast during World War II.)
― Michael Daddino, Tuesday, 23 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
Hey, they got you in new answers.
Do drug tests on civilian populations count?
― Tom, Tuesday, 23 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
Ooh. Forgot about that, Tom. Still -- does keeping those tests secret
count more as a panic-preventative measure, or as a method of getting
shit done without interference from a whiny public complaining about
such trivial matters as "morality" ? (I freely admit, though, that
the aims of panic-prevention and intereference-prevention probably co-
mingle rather promiscuously.)
― Michael Daddino, Tuesday, 23 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
I R not being much of a interlektual, but I R thinking this nothing
new.
― inturlektual Fatnick, Tuesday, 23 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
Ever noticed how alien-obsession is an American thing? I reckon the
U.S. government invented them too keep you all scared of being
abducted - to replace God-fear. The vital flaw in my idea being that
Americans are so religious that God-fear doesn't really need to be
replaced. Oh well.
― toraneko, Thursday, 25 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
Seinfeld made a smart joke about this: they're walking along
discussing conspiracy theories, and they step over a homeless person
without noticing them
― Luke, Thursday, 25 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)