One popular video, which already has 134,000 views, was made by the producers of a popular 9/11 Truther film. “Just as the movie ‘Operation Terror’ shows the 9/11 attacks were a made-for-TV event, so too were the mass shootings … There can be no doubt that Sandy Hook was a staged event,” the narrator intones. He goes on to say that the adults who participated in the media coverage of the shootings “should be prosecuted as accessories after the fact in a mass murder” — i.e., the parents whose children were murdered in the massacre should be thrown in prison.
The Internet, wondrous source of all manner of information that it might be, can be a real cesspool of humanity at its absolute nadir. The Wild West of the Information Age, being the democratizing force it is, can also be home to some of the most profoundly ignorant intellectual flat-liners imaginable.
It’s offensive and mind-boggling enough that there are people addled enough to believe that 9.11 was staged by the Bush Administration (they may have been evil and despicable, but they certainly weren’t THAT evil and despicable). It was just plain silly and willfully ignorant for people to believe despite all evidence to the contrary that President Obama was not born in the U.S. Now it would seem that we’ve hit rock bottom. Now the government is involved in massacring our precious snowflakes in their craven effort to take our guns. TO THE BARRICADES!!!
As sick and twisted as it may seem, there are actually people out there who’ve convinced themselves that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School was staged by the Obama Administration. Now that Barack Obama no longer has to worry about re-election, so the theory goes, he’s free to pursue his unstated nefarious agenda- destroying the 2nd Amendment and separating Americans from their guns. At least that’s what those world would implode in the absence of a conspiracy theory would have us believe. Alex Jones may be an ignoramus and a screaming ninny, but he represents a deeply suspicious and paranoid school of thought with deep roots in American culture. Willful ignorance is not just an American phenomenon, it’s a deeply held conviction that the world is a deeply and unshakably evil place where the powerful and influential spare no effort to extend their wealth and influence at the expense of good and decent patriots.
I could spend a good deal of time, energy, and column inches debunking this silliness, but that would be granting the conspiracy theorists more attention than they deserve. I’m just dismayed that there are those who see in every event, no matter how tragic or senseless, a plot to take their guns.
Memo to the loons: It’s not about you. Not everything that happens is a manifestation of Barack Obama’s alleged hatred of America and desire to take your guns. Perhaps if y’all weren’t so arrogant and thoroughly self-absorbed, you might recognize Sandy Hook for the tragedy it is…but that would mean not trying to refocus the spotlight on y’all, wouldn’t it?
