Conspiracy

Okay, I'm not a big fan of Limbaugh, but the AM sports stations were on commercial break so I switched over for a minute. I wish I hadn't.

There is now a new conspiracy theory about the levee's and lack of evacuation of New Orleans. The funny thing about Rush spouting off about it is that this theory originates with one of Rush's perennial opponents: Louis Farrakhan. Basically Farrakhan made a statement during one of his many pointless speeches that he had it from a "very reliable source who saw a 25 foot deep crater under the levee breach. It may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry." As Farrakhan has proven his racist point of view through the years I'm not at all surprised to hear the kind of nonsense coming from him, but as they say on infomercials, "Wait, there's more!!"


Here's where it gets even better. A caller from Charlotte, NC named Moses calls in to defend Farrakhan's statements saying that Farrakhan said 'blown up' to disguise his source. The caller claims that Farrakhan didn't think the levee had been blown up necessarily but that it had been destroyed to get rid of the blacks and protect the whites. The callers logic for this was that Blanco had wanted to get rid of the major welfare drain in the slums part of New Orleans and so orchestrated the destruction of the levee's combined with hindering the rescue and reconstruction efforts.

So we have one theory that claims the levees were destroyed to get rid of the black part of NO. Add to that the theory that Blanco was behind it all to get the welfare families out of LA and lower the resource drain. So now we have a state government conspiracy to run the blacks out of New Orleans and spread them out to other states so Blanco would have more resources to work with. I just kept waiting for the caller to say something about the AIDS virus being released into Lake Ponchatrain before the storm so that people caught in the water would get infected.

Now I would expect even a moderately rational person to dismiss both of these claims out of hand. The frightening thing is that Rush started talking about how Moses might be onto something. So now we have Rush latching onto a crackpot theory with absolutely NO proof behind it. Am I the only one thinking that it might be because he really, really doesn't like Blanco? I would say this theory rates right up there with Farrakhans "rode in a spaceship" belief.

Pleas, please, please people use your heads. Don't just swallow the tripe that you're being fed by 'experts' or talking heads. If someone claims something go look it up to make sure it's right. Analyze what you're told and decide after thinking and research whether or not it's right. Don't assume that because someone has a talk show or you've heard their name before that they know what they're talking about.

Both of these asinine ideas above are demonstrably false but that doesn't stop people from acting like they are Gospels handed down from On High. If people applied a bit more skepticism in their daily dealings we wouldn't have near as many inane ideas floating around as fact. We'll always have con men like Farrakhan or Koresh around but we'll be able to limit the damage they can do if we can get more people to think about what they're listening to.