Why some Conspiracy Theorists Are Interesting....

Write More About Skull & Bones
Secret societies? UFOs? The truth about what *really* happened on 9/11? The media cowers
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, October 27, 2004




Mark Morford



I get this a lot:
Hey Mark, you're a rather weird, unconventional columnist, why don't you quit toeing the typical blasé journalism line and renounce the corporate-controlled news feeds and standard pop-culture drivel and instead write about the real truths, the real and sinister power structures at work in America and the world?

Like for example how both Kerry and Bush are members of mega-yuppie Yale secret society/boys' club Skull & Bones, and therefore suckle at the same tit of nefarious primeval Illuminati power and draw their ideas from same trough of covert draconian ideology, the one that is right now running the world via an insanely intricate network of corporate fronts and Swiss bank accounts and invisible spaceships and ancient cabals featuring really elaborate handshakes that would make "The Da Vinci Code" seem like a day at the sandbox? Hmm?

And why, furthermore, don't you talk about the real truths of 9/11? Like how BushCo not only allowed the tragedy to occur to further his administration's snarling agenda but also how he actually made it happen, signed the order himself, with the full and complicit cooperation of the FBI and the CIA and the Saudis and maybe even Enron and the Wal-Mart heirs and probably the Olsen twins.

And by the way did you know the planes that crashed into the WTC were fully radio controlled? And Dick Cheney was commanding the entire thing from the ground and they had been rehearsing the attack for months and it was all part of a master plan decades in the making and by the way what about the Pentagon?

Haven't you seen that amazing video on that Web site? Those incredible and damning photos? Noticed the weird cover-up? That wasn't no 747 that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, buddy. Look a little closer. See? And what about Building 7? Why did that 47-story tower adjacent to the WTC collapse when it had no fire and no plane crash and no reason to fall? Why isn't the media reporting any of this? Where is the outrage? Goddamn frightening, is what it is.

This is what they say. Mark, don't be a typical media lackey, avoiding the real truth in favor of safe, predigested corporate news tripe. What are you, scared? Repressed? I mean, who cares about the price of raw sweet crude or rampant overfishing when there's astounding crop-circle phenomena and suspicious Air Force inactivity and grainy aerial photos from Area 51 to stare at with a magnifying glass and huge doses of mistrust?

Does this make you laugh? Scoff? It is, after all, incredibly easy to dismiss conspiracy theories as ranty silly unproven wishful thinking wrought by desperately lonely fatalists and nutballs and geeks, fringe kooks ever reaching for some eternally just-out-of-reach meta-explanation, some sort of proof of massive cover-up and of the existence of a very real Matrix, and it's all best explained by the mad brilliance of the books of David Icke.

But you know what? It's not that easy. And it ain't so silly. These people, they have a point. They are indeed onto something quite large and ominous and it very much has to do with the media toeing the line of "safe" information and not really asking truly difficult or radically off-track questions of our leaders or of the strangeness happening in the world. Reptilian super-races from the fifth dimension walking among us and secretly mind controlling your child via MSG and fluoridated water? OK, maybe not. But look just a little deeper.

After all, there is indeed ample evidence that the U.S. government, long before 9/11, had already discussed the quite plausible possibilities and strategic benefits of unleashing a "Pearl Harbor"-type event on America for the purposes of creating havoc and fear and furthering certain agendas. This much is a given. And it's just the tip of the iceberg.

Look. There are plenty of strangely unanswered questions about 9/11, about the stunning inaction of NORAD and Bush's stupefying nonreaction upon hearing of the attack, not to mention his administration's incredible attempts to halt any independent 9/11 investigations, and have you ever read a fully satisfying account of how this whole atrocity could have happened, one that answered all your questions and quelled your lingering doubts and squashed, once and for all, any hints of dread you had about our government's potential role in the tragedy? Neither have I. Neither has anyone.

Of course, no one in any major media will touch this stuff. It is professional suicide to dare suggest an alternate truth to the one supplied by the Pentagon and regurgitated by the media, despite the fact that most every journalist, trained as they are to be suspicious and wary and fully cognizant of the fact that there is always more to a given apocalypse than meets the eye, every journalist knows that buried just beneath the slippery surface of any good conspiracy theory is a gem or three of real truth, a question that begs to be solved or at least researched and, yet, most likely never will, because it has been cast into the madhouse of "outrageous" impossibility and is therefore rendered impotent and hopeless.

Look at it this way. Much of the world believes in UFOs. Or ghosts. Or telekinesis. Or past lives. Or alternate realities. Or the paranormal. Or all of the above. Most of us fully intuit that we are not the center of the universe and that it's rather narcissistic and outrageously arrogant of us to think we are. Whether or not this means shiny blinking flying saucers and androgynous Gumby-like aliens with almond-shaped eyes is beside the point; most sentient bipedal creatures know there is more to all of this than just puny and egotistical little us.

And yet, go ahead and try to get any serious public figure or mainstream pundit to openly admit this belief, this fact, in public. Try to find more than a glossy and supercilious feature in, say, Time magazine (i.e., "UFOs: Gosh, are they really here?") Won't happen, so surrounded are such topics in hokum and wide-eyed ranting and fringe intellectual cheese.

The world of conspiracy theories, it is like a zoo. It is like a black hole. It is the place we as a culture toss ideas that don't fit quite right, that unsettle and disturb and cause us to shudder and shake off the queasy feeling.

And it is the place the Powers That Be will toss any sinister and dark questions about their behavior, safe in the knowledge that anyone who goes to look for the answer will have to dive into that gnarled world and will look foolish and silly and will be probably be laughed off the stage.

Sometimes it's all you -- or I -- can do to hint at the existence of these radical notions and illuminate the frightening possibilities and scream into the Void, hoping to agitate and inform and inspire while still covering your professional butt. A copout? Maybe. But then again, if there's an alternative, I have yet to find it.

And the truth is, we don't really want such unstable questions answered. We simply cannot tolerate to have our world, our leaders, our foundations so questioned. We prefer stasis to growth, security to true knowledge, blind faith to chaotic sticky self-defined wonder.

After all, once you allow the real possibility of UFOs or psychic healing or crop-circle phenomena or the notion that we could very well have a hugely malicious, criminal U.S. government capable of pulling a 9/11 on its own citizens, well, the happy capitalistic all-American Christian world begins to implode. Foundations crumble. Trust in our institutions vanishes. Gods fall and doctrines crumble and televangelists spontaneously combust and everyone starts reimagining the social order in ways that absolutely terrify those who now hold the reins.

Real truth, after all, often means anarchy, disorder, revolution. And God knows we can't have that.

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