We are not "afraid" that "our whole lives" were based on lies. We don't think that the Government "always says the absolute truth". There is a loooooooooooooooot of different colours and shades between "sheep" and "berated idiots".
I can't speak for everybody in here who supports the official version, but in my case this is what I think:
-First of all, the Government is not a magical alien thing full of inhuman beings. In a democratic country, specially one with a complex system of checks and balances as the US, Governments are supposed to be composed of normal people which can be elected and dismissed every few years. There certainly are corrupt Governments out there who lie and manipulate for their lives, as a way of controlling population, in places without any citizen supervision. The US though, has a powerful legislative and a heavily inquisitorial media who would eat them alive if caught lying (see: Nixon, Clinton, Bush).
In other words, I can believe that there can be corrupt officials, or that every politican will try to paint their actions in the best light to get their points across or just to be reelected. But that's human nature, and that's why we can vote them out if we feel they are
too human.
What I just cannot understand though, is the idea that the Government is part of a crazy millenial plot orchestrated by some mysterious people in charge of everything and who are behind everything that happens. Mostly because you can't keep such a ridiculously complex plot going on indefinitely. Quoting Lincoln: "It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time".
tl;dr: If a Government lied to us all the time, we'd end up finding out and voting their asses out of our way. Nixon demonstrated.
- Second: trust. It is bad to blindly believe everything you are told is true all the time; it is equally as bad to blindly believe everything you are told is false all the time.
As human beings, we deposit trust on other people. You go to a doctor who has studied a career in medicine because you trust he'll know about your illness, you go to a lawyer who has an official degree because you think he'll advice you properly, you go to a restaurant people have recommended because you trust X people won't be too wrong about your tastes. In this case, people will trust investigators with investigating cases and their elected officials with managing politics.
It's true that some people will not go to doctors because they believe in Chinese energy therapies, will reject lawyers as they believe they'll try to undermine them instead and won't go to any restaurants in fear of being poisoned or will believe a random guy on the interwebz who claims to know the truth instead of a police speakperson, but most people will "put their defenses down" and generally give trust to people until they break it. It's not a matter of "brainwashing", just of human nature. We live in societies, we can't be wary of everybody all the time. It's not healthy.
So now let's go into the actual case. I saw:
- A fairly large, chaotic and complex situation that would have required from insane coordination if it was an act, but would have been perfectly natural if it had just been what it looks like, a situation of chaos.
- Policemen and investigators, who are supposed to investigate, conducting an investigation and arriving to some results. Since I haven't followed their logic, I can't be sure they arrested the right people, and I know they have made mistakes very, very often in the past, so I won't just accept everything they say. But then the suspects happen to be included in a terrorist watchlist since 2011, attack policemen, do nothing to clear their names, and even accept their involvement. Since I don't know exactly how the investigation was developed but there were lost of people watching and reporting live, several witnesses to the interrogations, etc, I'm inclined to believe them.
-In turn, I see people resorting to undated ("naked suspect", which could have been taken in 2008 for all we know), partial ("unharmed suspect", where we can only see a side), blurry pictures (virtually all of them), some of them openly manipulated (see: picture of the Sandy Hook principal, which is photoshopped), misjudged ("Army Lt."), etc., and my opinion is: "Oh, look, people already made a picture of an "Evulz Guvmint Lie" and are looking everywhere for any small detail they can twist into serving their narrative". Most of all, all reasons seem to be designed
from the basis that everything was a lie. This is not a logical sequence of pictures, details and all assembled in a way to open the possibility of a cover up; it's a bunch of pictured assembled from the basis that everything was a lie and therefore there must be errors somewhere.
- Then, there is Occam's Razor: the easiest explanation for anything is usually the correct one. There is no saying which is easier: two crazies setting off two bombs for ideological reasons or thousands of people staging an evil plot for some reason.
- Furthermore, there is no real explanation for this. The "declaring martial law" thing would be okay except no martial law has been declared anywhere that I know of and "turing the US into a dictatorship" has the small problem of being illegal and unconstitutional, meaning any lowly district judge from Alabama has the power to overturn that declaration, the Congress can impeach him and the political pressure from everywhere would be barely bearable- not to mention that would be most likely to create a civil war scenario as a huge chunk of armed people in the US are either independent or under States' jurisdiction.
Taking our gunzz? Well, again, it's unconstitutional, and if *insert number of people dead in shootings as of now* hasn't been enough of a reason for the Republicans to accept even some small gun control measures, three more people WON'T change a thing- and indeed haven't.
"Covering up" the fact that the Republican-controlled House has passed CISPA for the second time in a year? Well, that's kind of stupid as a) the House passing a law doesn't mean anything in itself, and b) the Ivulz Democratic Guvmnt does not support it and, in fact, would profit from going all "hey look, the Republicans are passing this law. Young people/internet users mostly from cities, this goes against your interests! Vote for us, we'll overturn it again!" on TV. They gain nothing from "covering it up"! And, in case you didn't hear it, it was the Democratic-held Senate that voted CISPA down less than one year ago and made that law passed by the House a worthless piece of trash paper. And the same Senate controlled by the same people is planning to do the same thing this year with the law the House just passed. And the evul leader of the Guvmint, Obama, has vowed to veto that law since, you know, without his signature, any law is a worthless piece of trash paper.
So we have a extraordinarly intrincate plot, that would require thousands of people from several agencies, the army, the police, the administration, you name it, being "in the know" and not telling anybody; and instead making stupid mistakes as "not feeding the right info to TV's" or "allowing witnesses to see the truth" and even take pictures of it, which sounds incredibly amateurish for such a complex plot.
And we don't know any logical reason why the Government would do that when they already have enough power of their own, and their actions do not follow the sinister "martial law coming any day now!!" theories, which have been said a million times with no martial law having been declared yet.
In the 30's, the German Parliament caught fire and Hitler took the chance to blame a communist, send all communists MP's to jail or just kill them, and illegalize the party, reducing the amount of votes he'd need to pass a law declaring himself dictator, as it finally happened once he managed to get rid of enough opposition MP's. I can understand conspiracy theories arising then as the Government had a very good reason to do so, profited handsomely from the event and was perfectly capable of pulling it off, since it only required one crazy grunt and the Nazi Party had thousands of those at their disposal. But here? I don't see any way in which a conspiracy theory would make sense other than the general mindset of "the Government is always evil and everything bad that happens must be their fault somehow". And I can't follow that logic, sorry.
Also- just saw the update. Who is that doctor anyway? A guy calling himself a doctor on the internet talking about pictures and off-hand descriptions of the event? Sounds something I wouldn't doubt a second to ignore when writing any story at work.
(Also dropping this here:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#51653479 )
