"The internet needs a 'gatekeeping' function."
-Hillary Clinton
Posted on 11/16/2001 1:05:35 PM PST by MindBender26
This entire series of posts and threads on the loss of the AA flight is an amazing display of 2001 sociology. If we thought the internet was going to change people’s commercial activities but not our core behaviors and underlying thought process, we were certainly wrong.
Many of us have been following the crash aftermath here in FR. This is not an indictment or criticism of any one poster, not will this post attack anyone. It will ask the question, who are these internet people, and what are we all becoming because oft hem. Even more, it is certainly not a criticism of FR itself, JR, etc. He has done great work for America.
There is a certain suspension of rational thought process going on here. People are making, defending and angrily supporting crash theories based on some rumor someone else says a friend told them was heard on the radio. People are angry because others seek to apply basic rules of physics to an argument. Others propose the wildest theories, and defend them ad infinitum. Last year, some poster claimed TW800 was caused by ghosts of a 1948 Navy electronics experiment gone wrong, and other chimed in to agree!
At least eleven mutually exclusive theories as to cause of this week’s accident have been proposed, and if one is determined to be the real cause, the proponents of the other ten will all probably cry "foul" and "government cover-up."
People are accusing the government of fraud and murder because they haven't yet determined the cause of the crash, or grounded the Airbus fleet. Others demand an answer right now, before any laboratory testing is complete. This failure to deliver a verdict before bedtime is taken as further proof of negative government intervention.
This post is certainly NOT directed as criticism at any one person, but rather as an amazed wonderment of what is going on in supposedly Conservative society. Does the anonymity of the internet encourage people to suspend the rational judgment process? Did Clinton and Clintonism so skew American thinking on the issue of government dependency that anytime our government does not give us what we want, and deliver it to us gift wrapped and right now, we begin to have our little internet temper tantrums?
Another amazing observation is how there is little attempt to understand who is posting fact and who is posting mental masturbation stories. In ordinary conversation, there is a constant "reality checking" processing going on in our minds. It seems absent here. If we were down at the Grange Hall, high school homecoming, or even Harvard, we would be using all our senses to help us understand what is going on here. If some person joined the conversation and began to blame the crash on a weight and balance problem or wake turbulence, we might listen for a moment. But when we saw he was 9 years old, wearing adult diapers and had a throazine bottle in his hand, we might tend to discredit his theories! On the net, he will have a brigade of followers within the hour.
Old pilot's ditty: "Fish gota swim, planes gota fly; and sometimes they crash when they try!" Crashes occur, but this one seems to have brought out a demonstration of a change in the way we think.... or don't think. What do these post crash threads say, not about the crash, but about us
Again, certainly not a criticism of anyone, just a wonderment, that with all the technology in the world, have we again become the Clan of Grug, Druhr, Mogor and Allihia arguing by grunting over our cave fire, while the Cave Bear waits in the near distance recovering from his wounds of 1992?
Hello merkin- took your advice, had a nice nap, thought I'd share this with you, from the American Heritage Dictionary- merkin: A pubic wig for women. Alteration of obsolete malkin, lower-class woman, mop, from Middle English, from Malkin, diminutive of the personal name Matilda.
"I don't know about you, buddy"
I'm sure you're a very nice person, and I'm not prejudiced, but your screen name makes me nervous, I'm afraid I'd rather not be your "Buddy"
Not that there's anything wrong with calling yourself a pubic wig for women, it's just not my style.
Answering a question at a press conference, "All signs at the present time point to structural failure", or, "at this time we have found no evidence of terrorism" is NOT a "verdict". Every investigator I've heard or read has gone to extremes to point out that they are not ruling anything out at the present time.
However, you do a rather nice job of making MB's point.
"The internet needs a 'gatekeeping' function."
-Hillary Clinton
I agree that it's irrational for people to expect the gov't to be able to tell us exactly what happened before there is even the slightest investigation. I also submit that it's ridiculous for gov't investigators to be ruling out terrorism before they even arrive on the scene. I'll credit the President and Ari Fleischer for not taking this tack...but everyone else seems to have done so...it's this rush to judgement that causes so much suspicion. Tommy Thompson, Tom Ridge, the FBI and CDC were all guilty of this kind of action a couple of weeks back during the height of the anthrax scare. People are right to be suspicious.
Sorry, but I've got to ask. Why in the world would a woman need a pubic wig???
>>"This failure to deliver a verdict before bedtime is taken as further proof of negative government intervention." <<
I agree totally. This is silly, of course. We shouldn't expect a verdict that soon.
Equally trublesome to me, however, was the assertion I heard from almost all major media quarters and government spokesmen the instant after the crash occured.
I watched on TV while the plane was still crackling in flames, minutes after the crash, too hot even to touch with oven mitts. The mantra immediately began, "There is no evidence to suggest..."
They had not even found the flight data recorder or the voice recorder, and couldn't come within feet of the plane because of the intense heat. Of COURSE there is no evidence! Nor is there evidence to support that this was *not* a terrorist attack.why not say, rather, “The cause of this is not known at this time”? This insults my intelligence.
Maybe this was done to "avoid a national panic." If that is the case, it is quite brotherly of them to decide what information we "can and can't handle." However, I am not three years old.
Not advancing any crackpot theories here, but my rationale forces me to make a not-so-giant-leap in logic to believe there is a high likelihood that this was a terrorist action, given the circumstances we find ourselves in.
Just this morning on MSNBC, Robert Hager, the grand poobah of aviation reporting declared that the AA's crash was an accident. Based on......? A declaration like he made must indicate that he too is devoid of a rational thought process.
Two glaring examples of a bureaucratic mindset hardened in concrete became evident very shortly after the crash. Within an hour or two, there were bureaucratic pronouncements dutifully passed on by a compliant media that there was no evidence of terrorism in the crash. Rush to judgement? How could they possibly know that, as the site of the plane crash was still on fire?
Example number two was film footage of an unsecured, un-cordoned off plane engine being hosed down by firemen, thereby eliminating any potential evidence. We are to be reassured by that?
When, and if, the truth comes out about this crash, the alleged mindless Freepers that you decry will accept it, if it is credible.
I guarantee that at the very least, 50% of the American public, many of whom have never been on the Internet, do not believe this was an accident. Are they irrational too?
You've been on this kick since Monday. Now you've taken to lecturing us in your very own essay. I suggest you relocate for the duration where your immense rationality will do the most good.
It's sad to say, but in all of this kind of descision process (both within the government and within industry) lives = money and there is always an attempt to strike balance, to decide how many lives we're willing to lose to keep industries and companies afloat. And one plane going down, with no evidence yet that it went down because of a catastrophic design flaw is simply not enough lives for that much money. Especially given the high view avionics people still have of the DC10, compared to the low view the average citizen has of the same plane. Nobody is going to be quick to risk killing a good plane because of one crash that might have been caused by bad maintenance procedures.
You will understand the problem facing us all, and make progress to resolving it, when you understand that what 50% of Americans think about this crash right now is unimportant.
THe problem is thatthey do not think. They listen to rumors, goissip, reporters repeating rumors and gossip and lawyers trying to promote their practices be being talkingheads in TV. Regurgitating this hour's latest rumor is not "thinking." It is being a victim of foolishness.
People should be mature enough, and have anough experience in making rational decisions to understand that they do not have nearly enough information to expect to know what caused crash at this time, ans that is perfectly fine.
No one yet knows what caused this crash, especially the blow-dried newsie set or the internet junkie in his silo in Montana.
Let me see if I get this right....
Because I ask for an end to paranoid rumors, wild speculations and idiots posing as experts, then I'm angry that "damage control" to hide the "truth" about the AA crash, (known only to you and a few others with the secret decoder ring) isn't working???
Thank you so much for posting your comment. I only wish it had been posted higher, or even earlier so I could have used in in the body of my essay.
It proves my point beyond anything else I could ever write. Thank you so very much!
I was raised near a big city and used to think that country people were all like the stereotypes I was brought up with...bumpkins, slow, not very bright. I held fast to these stereotypes even after I moved to the country. Then it dawned on me that country people were far smarter than the city people, in ways the city people could never understand.
Be careful what you slam. If FR posters were all engineers (God forbid!) what an unappealing and boring place it would be.
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