Alferd_Packer
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61% Of Democrats Are/Were 9/11 Truthers
- Thread starter Walter Ego
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Sam.I.Am
Illuminator
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It's always been my observation that most of the truth movement back in its heyday was populated by people with a strong democratic party leaning whose main target was smearing Bush with anything that they could think of. They started to let up when their party of choice took the congress in 07 and almost entirely disappeared when Obama took office in 09.
All that's left is the same old black helicopter crowd on the right and the die hard lefties who invested so much of themselves in the effort that they can't let go. Add in the nutjobs from the center and the snake oil salesmen and that's what it's reduced to today.
All that's left is the same old black helicopter crowd on the right and the die hard lefties who invested so much of themselves in the effort that they can't let go. Add in the nutjobs from the center and the snake oil salesmen and that's what it's reduced to today.
DavidJames
Penultimate Amazing
My experience, from the original LC forum and from before there was a dedicated 9/11 CT forum here is your observation is not true. Sure left of politically center political beliefs are represented, but the common denominator is their propensity to believe in CT's, in general, not political bias. Early on I often asked and found they believed OKC, Waco, were CT. If there was a political bias, it was anti-government in general and more specifically against whoever one was in power at the time.
Of course both of our observations (or at least mine is) just anecdotal.
Sam.I.Am
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No, you're correct, it was anecdotal. I don't think that the TM was started by the people I described but that instead they latched onto it to try and smear Bush with it. It does help to explain why the TM started to start dying out in 2007 and then pretty much sputtered to a halt in 2009. In other words I think that they wanted to believe it because it was inconvenient for Bush but that once it started to be inconvenient for their guys they stopped wanting to believe it.
Alferd_Packer
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Many Chemtrail nuts migrated to trutherism once the chemie thing died out.
Walter Ego
Illuminator
I was paying zero attention to the 9/11 TM before about December of 2008 but I was following the popular liberal blogs during the midterm elections of '06 and '08. (I believe the heyday of the TM is considered to be '06 to '08.) I saw no mention of Bush having "foreknowledge" of the terrorist attacks in any of those blogs much less that he was responsible for them.
As Bush's popularity tanked, largely as the result of the debacle that was the Iraq war, I think more and more people who don't normally entertain conspiracy theories began to cynically believe that Bush or the CIA "knew in advance" that terrorists were going to attack this country and took no action to stop it and that he used 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iran. (Note that 18% of republicans in the poll believed Bush "knew in advance.")
Such beliefs are widespread. I remember my father telling me as a child that FDR "let" the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor in order to get us into WW2. (He believed in other CTs too... but that's another story.)
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Ambrosia
Good of the Fods
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~99% of Democrats (or Republicans for that matter) have more than the average number of legs.
The number of highly intelligent people approximately matches the number of retarded people, who can't vote. Therefore there are more voters above mean intelligence of the nation.
McHrozni
Walter Ego
Illuminator
A Final Word
This subject seems to be exhausted and I have no interest in pursuing it but for those who are interested in how political party affiliation may lead to believe in conspiracy theories (specifically 9/11 truth and Obama birther theories), I found two articles by David Paul Kuhn of the Real Clear Politics blog.
The followup article can be found here.
http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/08/14/truther-denial/
This subject seems to be exhausted and I have no interest in pursuing it but for those who are interested in how political party affiliation may lead to believe in conspiracy theories (specifically 9/11 truth and Obama birther theories), I found two articles by David Paul Kuhn of the Real Clear Politics blog.
The followup article can be found here.
http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/08/14/truther-denial/
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The number of highly intelligent people approximately matches the number of retarded people, who can't vote. Therefore there are more voters above mean intelligence of the nation.
McHrozni
Actually, that's a little simplistic. The distribution of intelligence is not symmetric about the mean. If you go by IQ, the mean is defined to be 100. The theoretical minimum is 0, but it's not actually possible to get that low without being dead. On the other hand, it's entirely possible to get over 200. So even looked at simply, it's obvious that it's possible to be get further above the mean than you can get below it.
But it's actually more complicated than that, since even if you assume that the maxima and minima are equidistant from the mean, that still does not mean there is any symmetry. A large number of people falling slightly below the mean could be balanced by a much smaller number a larger distance above it, or vice versa. I believe that one of these is the case, although I can't remember exactly which way round it is. I think it's more people falling below the mean.
Finally, it turns out that different populations don't behave in the same way. Looking at race, or even trying to define race in a meaningful way, is unlikely to get any sensible discussion. On the other hand, it's well known that men and women have different distributions of IQ. Men tend to fall further from the mean than women. That means that the prevalence of acknowledged male geniuses over female is not just a cultural artefact, men are genuinely more likely to be geniuses. On the other hand, they're also more likely to be retarded.
Of course, when it comes to voting, as you note, you're not looking at the general population but only those who are allowed to vote and actually choose to do so. I have no idea how that would skew things, and to be honest I doubt anyone else does either. I suspect that even counting the severely mentally handicapped who aren't allowed to vote, there will still be more eligible voters with below mean IQ, but I have no idea what proportions will actually choose to vote, or even if intelligence has anything to do with it at all.
In the US they can, and do.
Some individuals might be unable to carry out the procedure (going to the polling place, etc.) which is a shame because it suggests that they are not being provided with the general level of care and assistance they need. But there is no law preventing them from voting.
Respectfully,
Myriad
Brainster
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The Scripps poll came up with a total of 50% of Democrats who thought it very likely (22%) or somewhat likely (28%) that Bush knew in advance of the attacks. Let me point out as well that Howard Dean openly speculated about this in September 2003.
That said, I suspect it's a case of people misinterpreting the 8/6/01 PDB. Wasn't it the NY Post (hardly a liberal paper) that ran a headline reading "Bush Knew"?
That said, I suspect it's a case of people misinterpreting the 8/6/01 PDB. Wasn't it the NY Post (hardly a liberal paper) that ran a headline reading "Bush Knew"?
lomiller
Penultimate Amazing
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In addition to the questionable extrapolation mentioned above, the questions are not sufficiently well worded to determine of someone was a truther or not.
There is plenty of information to suggest that various US intelligence agencies had enough information to piece together the 9/11 attacks, and that it’s possible of even likely some of this went to the president himself. There is, however, no evidence or particular reason to believe anyone ever connected the dots.
The truther position is that someone either the US government deliberately caused the attacks or at some point connected the dots and knew the attacks would happen and failed to act.
The questions don’t sufficiently differentiate between these two possibilities.
There is plenty of information to suggest that various US intelligence agencies had enough information to piece together the 9/11 attacks, and that it’s possible of even likely some of this went to the president himself. There is, however, no evidence or particular reason to believe anyone ever connected the dots.
The truther position is that someone either the US government deliberately caused the attacks or at some point connected the dots and knew the attacks would happen and failed to act.
The questions don’t sufficiently differentiate between these two possibilities.
Walter Ego
Illuminator
OK ... Not My Final Word
My point in the OP was that we should not use truther logic or use truther tactics to label people we disagree with on politics or anything else as truthers. If we do we are playing the game by truther standards.
To wit: A poll commissioned in October 2006 by CBS and The New York Times gave the following results.
Truthers added 53 + 28 + 3 = 84 and trumpeted the results as showing the overwhelming majority of Americans were coming around to the views of their movement.
Keven Barrett on the Bill O'Reilly Show.
"84% of the American people do not accept the 9/11 Commission report." (beginning at about the 00:50 mark)
Wikipedia has a good summary of national and international opinions on 9/11 according to polling data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_opinion_polls
My point in the OP was that we should not use truther logic or use truther tactics to label people we disagree with on politics or anything else as truthers. If we do we are playing the game by truther standards.
To wit: A poll commissioned in October 2006 by CBS and The New York Times gave the following results.
Truthers added 53 + 28 + 3 = 84 and trumpeted the results as showing the overwhelming majority of Americans were coming around to the views of their movement.
Keven Barrett on the Bill O'Reilly Show.
"84% of the American people do not accept the 9/11 Commission report." (beginning at about the 00:50 mark)
Wikipedia has a good summary of national and international opinions on 9/11 according to polling data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_opinion_polls
BenBurch
Gatekeeper of The Left
My experience helping run a Democratic forum is that ~ 5% were truthers, and we ran most of them off by calling them on their crap after first putting all of their posts in a 9/11 topic to keep them from bugging everybody.
CORed
Penultimate Amazing
Well, that's the beauty of it. you can make up any number your want to.