Deconstructing Anti-Conspiricists: America's Transcendental Decline

[JBFRAME at aol.com]

The P-listers criticizing "conspiracy theorists" should consider the 
following:

Conspiracy theory is not inherently "crazy."  Any elementary logic text 
teaches that it would be a fallacy to believe all conspiracy theories are 
irrational merely because some may be. 
  
The conspiracy skeptics are not necessarily logical or sane in their 
criticism.  For example, they make their own illogical leap when they assume 
that all "conspiracy theorists" believe that any single CIA/governmental 
misdeed in itself constitutes absolute proof of further misconduct.

  

"Real" reporting can include—in fact, has ample room for—rationally 
speculative commentaries & even "leap of logic" pieces that serve as art—in 
other words, pieces that stimulate readers to examine a list of events, 
think, then draw their own conclusions.  Most readers know the difference 
between a writer speculating and asserting a fixed & final conclusion.  When 
Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein first looked into the Watergate conspiracy, 
they had no smoking gun.  They made no apologies for occasional "leaps of 
logic" during their process of investigation.  The movie _All the President's 
Men_ shows Woodward & Bernstein discussing circumstantial evidence.  In one 
scene, the reporters point out that if a person should happen to turn on a 
radio & hear nothing but classical music without commercials for a given 
length of time, that person could reasonably conclude he was listening to FM 
rather than AM radio.  (This was a "leap of logic" that made sense at that 
time.)
The point of the Woodward/Bernstein illustration is that a person can draw 
rational conclusions from circumstantial evidence using inductive, instead of 
deductive, reasoning.  It wasn't until late in their investigation that 
Woodward & Bernstein were able to connect all the Watergate dots, but at the 
time nobody suggested their use of inductive reasoning & early explorations 
of mere circumstantial evidence amounted to a "crazy conspiracy theory."

in agony,

jbf
    
    
    


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