I blame the media and its rush to be the first to report the news. If it wasn't for all the erroneous reporting, we wouldn't have all these whacked conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theorists have a form of mental illness. I have a friend who was a large trader at the CBOT. A few years ago he was worth millions, married to a knockout woman, 3 great kids and a brownstone in a tony section of Chicago.
About 3 years ago we were having dinner and he tells me 9/11 was a set up and it was to fund a trillion dollar war on terror. I knew right then he’d lost it. He started trading on these theories and soon lost everything.
Usually a respected trader with a good track record can get some sort of backing except he’d been telling folks about his theories and no one was willing to back him.
Fast Forward...He’s now living in a studio apartment bagging groceries his wife has left him.
I just saw him recently and he comes out and say’s Sandy Hook was a set up by Holder to take away our guns.
“Over the weekend, I spoke with a friend whose co-worker is an aunt of one of the victims.”
Is that from a SNL skit? Seriously- it made me laugh.
Back in the days before the 24-7 news cycle, cable news channels, satellites and instant video feeds, news choppers, cell phone cameras, instant messaging¸ the world wide interwebs, Twitter, Facebook, etc., even going back to the days before TV, a “real” news reporter had to actually investigate and interview and vet numerous eye witnesses and the police after the fact and not all in the heat of the moment. They had to go back to their newsrooms, if necessary find a phone booth to call in the very first sketchy words of a breaking story but had to go back to the news room, get on the phone, leave the newsroom and interview more people, and then actually sit down and write a full news story and that story was often reviewed by an editor and a fact checker before going to “press”. Now days, every channel, every news outlet wants to be the very first to report the very latest breaking news, even if that “news” is nothing more than rumors and innuendo and conjecture by so-called experts called in to fill in air time, and completely unreliable supposed witness accounts which often end up being false or what they over heard someone say to someone who heard it from someone else who heard it from someone……
I think we all too often think that life is like a TV show like NICS or Law & Order or CSI where the crime is perpetrated, investigated, intricate forensics performed, lab results come in, the perp is interviewed by the good cops and either breaks down and confesses in very great detail as to method and motive or it goes to trial and a surprise witness tells all and the good guys win, all of course in the span of 60 minutes less commercials.
I blame the sensationalist, first to report even if what they are reporting is false media, but I also blame the brain addled, instant gratification ADD public who demand nothing less from them.
Within mere minutes of Sandy Hook and Aurora and other such events, people (even some around here dare I say) demanded to know the name and complete background of the perp, his complete history including his complete medical history, the names of all his family, friends, educational background, religious upbringing, the name of his kindergarten teacher, what he last ate for dinner, his favorite TV show, a complete ballistic report, exactly how many bullets were discharged, complete interviews of anyone within a 10 mile radius ….. and so on and anything less than 100% accuracy in reporting within those first few hours or even days, was part of some sort of conspiracy, a cover up or purposeful misinformation or misdirection of the “facts”. (OK, perhaps that is a bit of an exaggeration but you might get my point.)