Our "behaviour" is consistent with skepticism: we want convincing evidence, or we express skepticism of a claim, and do not accept it.
If you say so. There are many instances where a blank check written in faith is issued e.g. 'actionable intelligence' with 9/11. The government has claimed that it did not have said information. They have not proven this, but have instead withheld information of that variety to be released. The "skeptics" POV here over that is, "There was no actionable intelligence."
That is why Aepervius pointed to the Tuskegee experiment as an example of the US government behaving nefariously, why plenty of posters have noted their disbelief in WMDs in Iraq and belief that the Bush administration and Blair government spun the intelligence for WMDs to make a case for war. These claims have an empirical basis and they have convincing evidence to support them.
That's fine and good, and demonstrates a working knowledge of at least some U.S. History, but all too much what is known, such as what Aepervius cited is completely thrown out the window when looking at any of the legitimate conspiracies about the U.S. Nowhere in their rebuttals or exchanges on controversial U.S. events is there a hint of the slightest bit of suspicion. That is strikingly odd.
No matter how suspicious you are of the 'enormously powerful', you still have to pony up evidence to make an accusation stick.
Obviously.
Despite your vague handwaving about 'the enormously powerful', the overwhelming majority of conspiracy theories concern actions supposedly conducted by the US government, not business elites or foreign governments.
I consider the U.S. Government to be one of the most 'enormously powerful' institutions our species has ever known.
Business elites have a variety of conspiracy theories attributed to them, as do foreign governments.
The typical CT discussed in this section rejects documentation in favour of a fantasy explanation. Pretty much any terrorist act, or any mass shooting, is labelled a false flag, denying that terrorist movements and mass murderers might have any agency of their own, and reducing them at best to puppets of some other power.
Top shelf antics, as to be expected by the professionals like Jones who makes millions of dollars a year doing what he does. Him and others like him are not persuasive. However, when they cite accepted mainstream sources, it is those sources that are persuasive. Perhaps too nuanced for others here, but there is a sizable credibility gap between say Alex Jones and the
New York Times. So when Jones or those like him go off the rail into no-source land that is generally always because there isn't a credible source for them to cite. When they do cite from sources like the
NYT though, I at least give the
NYT the respect to look at what they have to say. Sometimes they're the only major publication running any particular story, but sometimes, like with the Snowden leaks or 9/11, it is hard to find a publication that hasn't published extremely controversial information previously withheld, which often pops official lies.
History is a double-edged sword here. Over time, nefarious and arguably illegal acts by past governments and other elite groups come to light because details are declassified, leaked, or revealed. That is how the Tuskegee experiment came to light, for example. But CTs are not interested in working out whether there are unknown crimes during the Hoover administration or committed by the founding fathers of Harvard, they are focused on the present.
Not entirely. History is important. The house we live in now was designed and built before today. And I don't succumb to the idealistic notion that all bad things come to light eventually.
On the other hand, CTs have an appallingly bad track record of making past accusations stick. In the 1950s the Alaska Mental Health Act was the FEMA death camps sensation of the day, for the right wing. There was nothing to it. Indeed, 'FEMA death camps' has been around long enough that it too must be regarded as a product of CT hysteria, a groundless claim asserted to stoke up fear and justify claims of the conspiracist Rapture.
The internment camps of World War II were the FEMA camps of today. Re: FEMA camps, it is interesting to note that given a catastrophic enough event to unfold, the government (all levels) has the authority to intern people. 'Mandatory evacuations' is real too, which for a person refusing, feels like being renditioned.
This is why skeptics are skeptical of everything coming out of Alex Jones' mouth, just as they are skeptical of an evangelical fruitcake predicting the end of the world.
Right...because they have the authority, capabilities, resources and will to do whatever the hell they want to do to you...
Talk about ********** up priorities here, man.
If you want to be considered a 'skeptic', then be f'n skeptical with everyone. Or do you think it is better to be skeptical of a snake oil salesmen like Alex Jones rather then say, the Director of National Intelligence? Does the DNI get a free pass in your book, or are you skeptical of everything coming out of his mouth like you are with Alex Jones?
