Conspiracy Theory poll!!!

[ColbertWatcher]

Consider this scenario:

You're observing a debate on some random topic. There are people arguing for the idea and those arguing against the idea.

It is a great debate, going back and forth, points made on both sides, when all of a sudden ... someone accuses the other side's argument of being a "conspiracy theory."

Is the mere suggestion of a conspiracy theory enough to influence your opinion one way or the other?

[TexasObserver]

1. The person who accuses the other of "conspiracy theory" is saying "I'm losing this argument."

It's the single most dishonest argument heard in today's discussions, with all its silly corollaries - tinfold hat, drink the kool aid, etc.

[ColbertWatcher]

2. Yes, and it gives those doing the accusing a justification for dismissing the other's argument!

I have heard FOX does it all the time.

[JeanGrey]

4. Or it just might mean that the other person is living in la la land.

:rofl:

[tom_paine]

8. It might And you're right. Watergate, and the Tuskeegee Experiments. Foolish liberal conspiracy

theories. Why these idiotic conspiracy theories were ever investigated in the first place, is beyond me! What a waste of resources!

:rofl:

You're so funny. In spite of the fact that you are the greatest gift a corrupt tyrant could ever hope to have in his subject populace, I find you amusing precisely because for the moment we are safe from what you always allow tyrants to do, which is whatever they want without investigation or opposition from the likes of YOU.

Because who would like to look like a Crazy Liberal Watergate Conspiracy Theorist, right? Not you. Calling for inevstigations is wacky Liberal Conspiracy Theory, isn't it?

You and the Hannidiots would agree fully on this topic, as I am sure you know.

:rofl:

Nixon, as the Coincidence Theorists said, never could have done the things those crazy Conspriacy Theorists said he did.

And I agree.

:sarcasm: :rofl:

[JeanGrey]

23. You go right ahead and believe in any theory you wish.

[TexasObserver]

9. No, it means they've lost and they lack the intelligence to argue maturely.

Your post is exemplary of the lack of thought such room temperature IQs produce.

[JeanGrey]

24. Sure. If someone doesn't automatically buy into anything

the other person is saying, why, they are just stupid. :-)

[tom_paine]

28. What a complete black and white ignorance of the process of critical thinking and weighing evidence

Sure, you were kidding, but of course you were "kidding on the sqaure" which means that is exactly how you perceive people you consider conspiracy theroists.

It would be a waste of time to try to acquaint you with the nuances of critical thinking and with the concept of unceratinty and ascribing probabilities to various likely and unlikely scenarios, so I won't.

You project your own weak-minded traits onto others, "conspiracy theorists", is what it appears to me.

I don't really want to know more about you. If you must reply with bile, you are free to do so, but I really have nothing more to say to you.

You are a depressingly common archetype, one I have wasted too much time on, already. Life is too short.

You may return your head to the dark place it's residing now. I officially give up trying to shine a light in your tiny hole of a cave.

Read Plato, though you probably won't understand. When someone talks like you do, I have discovered time and again, it's probably too late and that menatlity is set in stone.

How old are you. Over 40? Probably too late to change who you are now.

A pity. Maybe you want to give it a shot. Maybe it's not too late for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave (I'd follow it up by reading Plato's Republic - your first steps to a new world of critical thinking)

Read Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World", also.

It can help you.

[JeanGrey]

31. A very nice post. However you will forgive me if I don't agree

that not buying into conspiracy theories is "weak minded". Enough said.

[TexasObserver]

32. Yes, it does mean such people are either ignorant or stupid.

As evidenced by the use of smilies.

[Ohio Joe]

7. Your right!

We should immediately begin an investigation into "no planes on 9/11"... well, wait, we can't because "Bush declared marshall law" and threw all opposition into "The FEMA death camps".
:sarcasm:

Sorry, I agree it is sometimes pulled out when it should not be but on the other hand sometimes it needs to be called exactly what it is.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. You obviously work for the pharma companies.

They're paying you to post that.

[TexasObserver]

17. No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

[123infinity]

3. Conspiracy theories are not the same as scientific theories. They are just notions;

not even up to the level of hypothesis, let alone theory. Which doesn't mean there are not plenty of conspiracies - by definition any two or more people who "breathe together" - that is, plan something, are conspiring. It may or not be with evil intent...although the nefarious connotation has become the most accepted one among the unwashed masses. Not much, for good or otherwise would ever get done without a conspiracy.

[JeanGrey]

25. Now now stop that. You cannot survive the flames on this

board unless you conspire to each and every conspiracy theory, otherwise you simply cannot "debate".

[tkmorris]

5. It depends a lot on the validity of the claim

For me, the answer could be a flat "no", or it might even make me think they are grasping at straws and bias me against them, but first I would need to evaluate the claim being made. Seriously, has no one ever heard an actual conspiracy theory being used as an argument? I certainly have. Mind you, just because an argument implies a conspiracy does not make it incorrect, real conspiracies abound.

[tom_paine]

6. Coincidence Theorists are very touchy about their crazy whacko makes-no-sense theories.

Yeah, right, twelve guys with boxcutters executed an operation unequaled in all of history by even a national intelligence service, carrying it out with amazing precision.

Yet, for all their apparent operational brilliance, they left a trail a mile wide of inciminatiing evidence for the FBI to find as if they were toddlers planning to raid the kindergarten milk supply.

Coincidence. Just coincidence. Same way it was just coincidence that the first thing out of Milt Bearsden (former CIA Afghani Station Chief, I believe) on 9/11 was, "There is no way this was al-Qaeda. This (9/11) had to be pulled off by an intelligence service, nothing less, to get precision and results like these."

:rofl:

Same way it was a coincidence that George W. Bush was in Dallas the day JFK was killed. Or how he, just like a guilty person, tried to deflect the blame on an innocent person on the day of the crime in question.



:rofl:

Coincidence Theorists are so invested that bad people never do bad things (that seem to have happened in EVERY SINGLE nation and era of history EXCEPT OURS) that they will do anything to hold onto that fantastioc and crazy worlview, that human nature STOPS at the shores of America.

:rofl:

Not very bright, are they? I would call it "willful ignorance" more than anything else.

Bad people in power don't do the same things other bad people in power have done everywhere else through history. Balderdash and out of the question! Not even worth looking into!

:rofl:

See what a massive suspension of reason it takes to be a sneering Coincidence Theorist?

[Octafish]

12. I always found that Bush-Dallas FBI Memo intriguing, Tom.

This one, too. Dated a week after yours, it concerns a "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" getting briefed by the FBI in regards to the assassination of President Kennedy.



Small world.

[seemslikeadream]

15. Oswald didn’t do it

:hi:

http://www.winonadailynews.com/articles/2008/11/17/news/05oswald.txt


Oswald didn’t do it’: Area author says his book exonerates Kennedy assassin
By TERRY RINDFLEISCH | Lee Newspapers

.
ONALASKA, Wis. � Harlan “Hawk” Jensen believes he has written a book that finally exonerates Lee Harvey Oswald.

The 70-year-old Onalaska investment and insurance broker who served with Oswald in the Marines said his self-published book, “Atsugi Assassins,” shows Oswald was the subject of CIA mind control, wasn’t President John Kennedy’s assassin and never fired a shot on Nov. 22, 1963.
Jensen said he doesn’t know for sure who shot Kennedy, but he believes the assassination was a conspiracy by some factions inside the CIA.

Jensen said he, too, was a subject of mind control serving in Atsugi, Japan, which was the headquarters for the CIA’s top-secret MKULTRA mind-control program and the U-2 spy plane project.

“Oswald was used as a mind-controlled guinea pig,” Jensen said. “When he said he was a patsy, he wrote his death warrant because I believe at that moment he realized and they realized he remembered things he shouldn’t have remembered.”

Jensen thinks the book, published in March, might get more attention with the 45th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination.

“I’m not a nut-job. I’m of sound mind and body,” Jensen said. “I wanted to restore Oswald’s name and remove his dishonorable discharge for his family.

“His daughters have had this stigma over them since childhood of their father having killed the president of the United States,” he said.

Jensen said he sent his book to Marina Oswald Porter, Oswald’s widow, and they talk weekly by phone. He said Marina liked his book, and she is more convinced than ever that her husband did not kill Kennedy.

[Octafish]

18. Joan Mellen: ''Who was Lee Harvey Oswald?''

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=140245

Thank you for the heads up about Mr. Jensen, SuperDreamy!

The things you learn by reading...



...could fill a book!

[tom_paine]

16. Come now. To assume such Hippie Craziness would be to assume that crooks sometimes plant false

trails, particularly when they are members of LE.

No, no, I won't HEAR of such nonsensical RUBBISH and BALDERDASH.

A person is a silly ridiculous lunatic if they even devote ONE SECOND of thought to such RUBBISH and BALDERDASH!

First of all, in the United States of America, there are no criminals in LE. None. And if they were they would surely be cowed by being ferreted out by our magnificent Cable TV WatchDogs of Liberty, who make Woodward and Bernstein look like Limbaugh and O'Harrassment.

Second, if George HW Bush said it happened that way, then it happened that way. It's the Official Record, isn't it?

And only crazy lunatic ridiculous moonbat Conspiracy Theorists believe stuff ever happens that isn't documented in our glorious Cable TV News of Record.

(do I really need to add :sarcasm: ? not for you Octafish, but for the Coincidence Theorists out there...)

[Octafish]

19. Three Letters

From the good people at the Mary Ferrell Foundation:

The CIA and the JFK Assassination

The three letters C.I.A. recur over and over again in the Kennedy assassination saga, with many unanswered questions. Were the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Fidel Castro somehow related to JFK's murder? Did the CIA conduct a cover-up after the assassination, including hiding a relationship with alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald? Was Oswald in fact an agent of the CIA? Why did the CIA bury some of its knowledge of Oswald's trip to Mexico? What have we learned from the voluminous CIA declassifications of the 1990s? Was the CIA involved in the Kennedy assassination?

This new starting point explores these questions, and traces the history of the assassination investigations in terms of what they revealed about the Agency. Filled with links to essays and primary source documents, it is a launchpad for exploration of these troubling and unresolved questions.

Mehr licht, mein Freund.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. You mean like this?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=4448926

[ColbertWatcher]

11. LOL! This poll is not based on any particular DU thread! LOL n/t

[seemslikeadream]

13. (*_*)

"Coincidence Theory: By sheer chance things just happen repeatedly and coincidentally to benefit their interests without any conscious connivance by them, which is most uncanny. There is also: Stupidity Theory, Innocence Theory, Momentary Aberration Theory, Incompetence Theory, Unintended Consequences Theory and Innocent Cultural Proclivities Theory."

- Michael Parenti

[JeffR]

20. This poll is nothing but a conspiracy to make me express an opinion.

:crazy:

[ColbertWatcher]

21. Shh! n/t

[NutmegYankee]

22. I guess it depends:

Some debates may get out there, but others just run into invincible ignorance. We all have dealt with it. It's that Republican who isn't misinformed, he just doesn't want to accept the facts; or the young earth creationist who just will not let go of a 6000 year-old earth despite whatever evidence you present. Those can NEVER be won by the opposing side, and are best just aborted before you get too frustrated. It's not that you couldn't argue with facts, it's that facts are useless.


Great example - I have a co-worker who will not believe that Obama is US born. No matter what I show him, be it factcheck.org etc, he just discounts them all and continues to spout out that Kenyan Muslim Bullshit. Why bother continue?

[ColbertWatcher]

29. "No matter what I show him" Are you sure about that?

Do me a favor, have your co-worker look at the Obama page on the truthiness encyclopedia (http://www.wikiality.com/Obama).

There's even a section for his birth certificate.

Then after he's taken in the whole thing, tell him all the rumors about Obama started with Stephen Colbert.

Let that simmer for a few days.

Then come back and tell me what happened.

[cobalt1999]

26. Depends on the evidence, just like any debate.

If someone goes off on a premise without evidence then, yes, that does influence my opinion.

Also, you can't argue facts with a conspiracy theory believer, they don't want to hear.

[ColbertWatcher]

30. I;m not saying anyone believes there is a conspiracy ...

... I'm saying someone is accusing the other's argument is baseless by calling it a conspiracy theory.

[cobalt1999]

33. By definition it is baseless if there is no evidence.

Since conspiracy theories tend to operate in the realm of little or no evidence, then, yes, once a conspiracy theory is invoked, that means the person is now out of hard arguments and is resorting to conjecture.

[gollygee]

27. It depends - sometimes people really do conspire

so "conspiracy theory" doesn't = impossible and/or stupid.

BUT chances are most of them are false.

I look at everything individually.

[pampango]

34. Here's more fuel for the conspiracy theory fire.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4506848

[tismyself]

35. Standing by option #2.