Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Flying the Paranoid skies

I'm becoming convinced that there are a lot more crazy people than there used to be!

Check out this article: Transportation Safety Agency knew 'dry run' terror alerts were bogus. The picture that emerges out of all of this is that a bunch of bureaucrats turned out to be completely incompetent. Wowee... The funniest part is the old lady who was asked by security officers if she knew Osama bin Laden- wouldn't it make it a lot easier if actual terrorists responded to that question with: "Well, actually I do know Osama, or as we call him 'Ossie'! Why do you ask?"

Anyway, I had a good chuckle at the thing, and then I read the comments and they depressed me greatly. Which leads me to an interesting question- how do you feel about batshit crazies who you sort of agree with? I mean, I guess in some sense I agree with these people- none of us are too crazy about Bush or how the war on terror is being handled. I certainly don't like how much power the state is taking right now. But, holy shut-ins, Batman! I'm not at all convinced that the cabal of Jewish Haliburton Nazis is installing the fascist police state, man! Dude, look at the pyramid on the dollar! Now compare it to the skull and bones fraternity logo! It's all there! One commenter even compares the TSA to Pol Pot, Hitler, and Stalin! For asking an old lady stupid questions?

I mean, is it just me, or are people a lot more unhinged than they used to be? And what could be causing this?

2 comments:

Holly said...

I'm pretty sure people have always been insane, it's where some of our best ideas come from. But the internet has made it possible to broadcast the nuttery, shrilly and with great gusto. For my money, the comments were way more interesting than the article. CNN is one of the internet's foremost purveyors of crap, and I know at least 3 other major news sites go there regularly looking for headlines. (koff*bbc*koff) So the stupidity spreads pretty fast.

They almost touched on some interesting ideas there in the comments, but then veered off into punctuary abuses before accomplishing any competent discussion about it.

Why indeed frighten people during the height of tourist season? What's the value in lying about what is essentially a non-incident? Perhaps more importantly, who was being lied to, and about what? And why wouldn't CNN want to trumpet the fact that they'd been duped, instead of making a big scoop? (Well, duh...)

If going with the gut is the new rational analysis, I'm going to throw it out there that someone's looking at awkward questions about "How effective IS your department?" and "What are you DOING with all that money we gave you?" and it ultimately has little to do with terrorism at all.

... but it's more FUN to screech and howl about how THEY are fucking with our heads, man! They've devalued the dollar!! They've taken over the media, or can't control it, depending who you ask! They've been doing insidious crowd control things! The Jew-run media is the pawn of the neo-proto-Nazi-establishment!?! (Cognitive dissonance for the win!)

Sure, those commentators are right about some of what they've said... but probably sometimes in ways they don't even notice. For instance, sure, there's a huge amount of crowd control/populace guidance going on. That's The Government. That's what government DOES. If they picked up techniques from Hitler (or any other grand schemer) that's actually good, it means they're learning something from history. It IS better leadership, to have those being led do things on what they believe to be their own free will. That's not rocket science.

No one in power always uses their power for good. And not everyone agrees on what is good. But I think we can all agree that the passengers flying with multiple large blocks of cheese should NOT be allowed to bring that on the plane.

Rufus said...

Speaking of cognitive dissonance, how many of these people believe that the evil cabal is both:
1. Complete and utter morons, and
2. Installing a police state in America behind everyone's back?

Hitler started out as a mass politician, and in some senses remained one while also becoming a dictator. So, it makes sense that there would be some similarities with other mass politicians. I always laugh when people say things like: "George Bush uses campaign posters- Just like Hitler did!"