Even an idiot has his day.

I don't really like Kanye West. Why? A myriad of reasons. Quite a few of the directly correlate with why I no longer look or listen to Mos Def with a modicum of respect. Kanye West has repeatedly shown himself to be a pompous, egotistical blowhard, trumpeting himself as masterful, and already worthy of great annals of history. I also lose a bit of respect for him because his writing is simply atrocious. I'm sorry, but I cannot take anyone seriously whose sentence structure is punctuated with 2's. It looks sloppy and simply unprofessional. Besides, how hard is it to write "to" instead? Also, there's the little matter that Kanye believes the government gave Africans AIDS so they could steal their diamonds. This coming from a man encrusted in diamonds.

As for Mos Def, hearing him state on Real Time With Bill Maher that the brutality and murder of those who refused to convert during the Muslim conquests after Mohamed's death was "a very convenient revision of history," really lowered my opinion of him. I know Mos Def is Muslim, and that's fine, but to blatantly selectively ignore history like that is insane. It's idiotic. It's refusing reality, just like Holocaust deniers. To top things off, Mos Def does not believe that Al Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

But this is all just bullshit, right? So what if two very prominent musicians are kinda nutty and believe in mumbo jumbo conspiracy bullshit, right? Musicians are pretty well known for being eccentric and kind of kooky and say dumb shit all the time. Like Alicia Keys saying that gangsta rap is a government ploy to get blacks to kill each other. (never mind the fact that most of the government was trying to ban it for years) Apparently Mos Def, Kanye, and Keys aren't alone in their conspiracy theorizing and selective information alternate reality. A poll done in 2006 showed that slightly over 1/3 of the 1,000+ asked people believed, in some varying degree, that 9/11 was a conspiracy.

Personally, I find this to be appalling. That means, if we use that poll as a national view, that 1/3 of the population is delusional. The cornerstone of all variety of 9/11 conspiracies involve selective information, incorrect information, lies and distortions. This is also what is used to illustrate evolution is a falsehood. Some of of Darwin's theories were wrong, (survival of the fittest, for example) but the over-arching premise was correct. Animals do mutate and change, resulting in a slow progression of new species. I have heard many times, "if evolution is true, then shouldn't there be tons of new animals popping up all of the time?" What? Why? From where? That's not how evolution works. These straw man arguments presume an untrue facet of evolution in order to discredit it. That's not being rational and, furthermore, that's not being intelligent. Let alone "smart."

This is fine and well if this was just opinions on a subject, but it's not. These are ideas that fundamentally shape your world view. Rejection of evolution means a rejection of the core understanding of biology. Believe it or not, but there has never been a single peer-reviewed article published in any scientific journal denouncing evolution or promoting intelligent design. This is a fact. To say otherwise is to lie. It is to invent the truth to serve a purpose. It is a removal from reality in an attempt to create your own.

So why do these conspiracies and myths float around, and why do so many people believe them? Because people are not informed. They are not intelligent. They do bother to learn or understand the world around them. It's like the game "Telephone," where a phrase is whispered from person to person and it slowly evolves into something drastically different. Except this isn't just gossip. It's not about the neighbor's affair or about Angelina's babies. (all 2.6 million of them) It's about understanding fundamental aspects of out life. It's like understanding that the Earth rotates around the sun and that it spins on an axial tilt. You can choose not to believe that, but that is the case. It's a fact and is true whether you want to believe it or not.

I was quite relieved when I saw Jon Stewart's interview with Rick Shenkman, the author of Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter. No one wants to think that they are dumb, but when 70-some percent of Americans thought that Saddam was behind 9/11 in the months prior to invading Iraq, and I bet a large chunk continue to think so, that is a good example of our collective idiocy causing real world problems. When people take untrue information and construct a fantasy world, especially when this is done en masse, then you have a nation that refuses to accept or admit reality. If roughly 3/4 of the population is completely delusional and unwilling or uncaring to educate themselves on important information pertaining to the world they live in, one has to wonder, "what the fuck is wrong with us as a society?" We have information at our fucking fingertips! How the shit do you think I composed this? Perhaps the scariest in all of this is that it is reasonable to assume that portions of these delusional, unwilling to self educate people run important parts of our lives, including government functions. Apparently a decent number of them work in the entertainment industry.

Another popular conspiracy seems to be the more mundane "Bush lied" conspiracy, which doesn't hold up either. Want to know the truth? The CIA was duped by a cab driver. Seriously, that's what happened. The CIA, for whatever reason, thought Rafid Ahmed Alwan's stories to be credible. Bush used this information to make a case to go to war. The American people were a bunch of idiots and unable to properly digest any of the information, supported the war, and so we invaded Iraq. Even the Rockefeller report (which was touted as proof that bush lied) says that all the information the President used was substantiated. Bush didn't even have to lie. So many people were so fucking stupid that they let Bush and company do it. So many were uninformed, ill-informed, and just outright complete idiots that they didn't even need to hear Bush's reasons for war, the American people had already conjured up their own delusional reasons to go to war: Saddam was the mastermind behind 9/11.

To be fair, I don't think everyone is stupid, but it worries me when I see that, potentially, 1/3 of the population has eschewed critical thinking for . The 9/11 Truth movement isn't interested in finding the truth. They are interested in validating their version of the truth, which is exactly the problem. No matter how many people believe in a 9/11 conspiracy, it does not make it true. No matter how much people want to believe that Bush deliberately lied to go to war with Iraq, the facts simply do not support such a claim. You cannot cherry-pick information and create your own reality. To do so is delusional. To do so is to ignore the reality of the world around around you. And when the confederacy of dunces is backed by a veritable mass of dunces, suddenly the inmates are running the asylum.



Makers of the Loose Change 9/11 conspiracy video
Vs.
journalists from Popular Mechanics.
the debate starts around the 17min mark