posted 08-22-2006 12:07 PM            

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I was listening to Hewitt on the talk-back radio today, as we don’t call it, and a fellow dialed in to rant about 9/11. It wasn’t a terrorist attack; the government took the towers down. He defied the host to have the makers of the “Loose Change” documentary on, and I was prepared for him to bark out something about how THEY SHOULD CALL YOU JEW JEWITT, because the host did not believe the Twin Towers were brought down by explosives. What interested me, for a moment, was the passion of the caller. But he wasn’t nuts. People who are nuts think giant invisible space lizards are sending coded messages through their livers, and they can’t drive a car because they see pteradactyls EVERYWHERE. No, he was sane. But he believed a crazy thing. It made me wonder what he would be equally angry about had 9/11 not happened.

I’m serious. Conspiracy theories fill a great aching void for some people, and I wonder how they cope when there isn’t a conspiracy sufficiently vast to fill the hole. And I wonder about people for whom an actual real-life conspiracy that stretched across the continents and brought down two towers wasn’t vast enough.

Whatever happens today, or doesn’t, there will be those who doubt their lying eyes as a matter of course. Conspiracy theories are a narcotic, inhaled in endless lines; the addict looks at himself bent over the mirror and thinks: you agree with me, don’t you? Then I’m not alone.

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