Writing about politics

Writing about politics.

I know that I said I would stay away from political posts, and I mean to do so, for the most  part, but sometimes things come up and slap aside the head, and you have to respond.  I mentioned that I have been doctoring and healing and that kind of thing, so I have spent a little time in front of the TV.  Last week I  plopped down in front of the TV and clicked on the C-Span channel, where there are a variety of sources of entertainment from all sides of the political spectrum.  What popped up on my screen was something called THE AMERICAN SCHOLARS SYMPOSIUM.

After a forty plus year career as an American Scholar, I had never heard of such an organization so I sat back with curiosity to see what was going on.  The first thing I realized was that this group had NOTHING  reasonable related to scholarship (though they did have a speaker or two who marginally qualified as scholars) it was totally related to advocacy of an insane conspiracy theory.

In my experience of reading passionate political blogs I have read about Moonbats (liberal Democrats) and Wingnuts (conservative Republicans), but the participants in this group deserve a totally new name.  I considered Dingbats, but Archie Bunker overused that in referring to his wife in ALL IN THE FAMILY.  Perhaps they might appropriately be called Wingbats or Moonnuts or Dingnuts, but whatever they are, they deserve somekind of  appellation that refers to passion and rhetoric without rhyme or reason.

These dipsticks (??? Maybe we ought to have a naming contest) spent two hours (I think, I tuned in after it started and only saw a little over an hour an a half of it) trying to establish the concept that the 9/11 attack was phony, that the Trade Center buildings were destroyed by demolitions set by secret elements of the government, and that the airplane crashes were camouflage to cover over the real process.  I was particularly depressed by the presentation of one Steve Jones (I think) who was introduced as a professor of Physics from BYU who set out in a convoluted explanation of the pool patterns of melted steel to prove that airplanes loaded with fuel couldn’t create enough head to make such patterns. (Sic-em Mahndisa, go gettum)    Another distinguished speaker was Charlie Sheen the dramatic star of TWO AND A HALF MEN in a rambling piece of hate mail to the current administration which indicated that the source of much of this was leftist in origin (Maybe they could be Leftbats, or Leftnuts (oops)) though the antagonistic talk about the current Democrats in the government demonstrated little or no love or admiration in that direction.

One speaker from the floor asked for an explanation of what happened to the original passengers  in the two planes that did hit the Trade Center and was promised that an explanation was immediate forthcoming just as the program came to an end.

The entire program was a tribute to passionate rhetoric without any coherent logic or evidence, but with a lot of self congratulation by the radio talk show host who seems to have developed this, and periodic rants from a  Teddy Kennedy clone with white sideburns who was (I think) identifie as Jim Garrison (yes, that Jim Garrison from the Kennedy Assassination conspiracy theorists)

This was a program filmed in June, and repeated last week, and I find myself embarrassed by  the fact that even C-Span would give it enough credence to spend money (some of which could probably be traced to all of us) on this  bull----.