R/Conspiracy Is Just Asking Questions About 9/11

Mike Rothschild

Virtually every major new media technology, from the printing press to lithographs to radio and TV, have been adopted early by cranks and conspiracy theorists.

So it went with the nascent internet which was immediately embraced by cranks. A 1999 book called “Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture” describes the early 90’s USENET as a fertile garden of posts about government plots, UFO’s, JFK, and “on topics such as who runs the Federal Reserve, Lyndon LaRouche’s [conspiracy] theories, and the credibility of well-known conspiracy theorists.”

When the September 11th attacks hit, then, the internet was perfectly poised to become a virtual ground zero of accusations that the attacks were “an inside job.” For years, conspiracy theorists and skeptics battled it out over the tiniest details about the attacks, with a variety of plots put forth (The government did it with bombs! The government let it happen to invade Iraq! The Pentagon was hit by a missile fired by…someone! Flight 93 was shot down! The planes never existed!”) and beaten back with evidence.

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Rush Limbaugh Doesn’t Think Hurricanes Are Fake

Mike Rothschild

Let me get this out of the way now: I think Rush Limbaugh is a sausage casing stuffed with norco-infused Twinkie filling. I think he rots brains and poisons hearts and has a truly harmful effect on the people who listen to him.

But I don’t think he thinks hurricanes are fake.

You’ve probably noticed we’re in the middle of a hurricane pandemic, with Harvey having laid waste to Houston, Irma bearing down on Florida, and Jose and Katia forming up. If this were a SyFy Channel movie, we’d be at the point where all the hurricanes merge into a hypercane, and the war-happy president orders the hypercane be broken up with nukes, but all the nukes do is make the hypercane a nuclear hypercane, and the only person who can stop it is Michael Dudikoff, or his millennial equivalent.

(side note, I will absolutely write this movie for money)

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North Korea Has the H-Bomb. Does it Matter?

Mike Rothschild

The news that North Korea had apparently carried out its sixth nuclear test rattled a lot of people’s Labor Day weekend. Okay, it rattled MY Labor Day weekend.

What was even more unnerving is that the device they tested wasn’t the run-of-the-mill nuclear warhead that they’d popped off five times before, but a thermonuclear warhead, the dreaded hydrogen bomb that can level cities and kill six figures in seconds.

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The World War II Myth That Will Never Die

Mike Rothschild

78 years ago today, the military of Nazi Germany crashed across the border of Poland and began the Second World War.

On that first day of battle, a skirmish took place between German and Polish troops that would become mythologized as an example of both Polish stupidity and the awesome power of the German war machine.

In what became known as the “Charge at Krojanty,” a group of Polish mounted cavalry supposedly rode headlong into German tanks, either because they’d been tricked into thinking they were fake, or because they simply weren’t smart enough to fight a modern mechanized war.

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Here’s How President Trump Can Be the Hero of Harvey

Mike Rothschild

On my last appearance on the late, lamented Got Your Attention podcast (did I mention I make a charming and erudite podcast guest?) I mentioned that the drama in the White House mattered because it reflected the Trump administration’s ability to handle a crisis.

If President Trump couldn’t keep his own organization free of personnel churn, leaks, and factional warfare; how could he handle something truly dangerous like a pandemic, sudden foreign war, or natural disaster.

Well, we’re getting the answer to that question, because Hurricane Harvey is unquestionably the biggest event of the Trump era so far.

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