Does Crash Of Amrican Airlines Flight Signal End Of Rational Thought Process in U.S.?

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?

Maybe you're not hitting the same threads as MB26, but I've seen what he's talking about. There are tons of people right here on FR that are not speculating, they are stating outright that if the NTSB investigation says the crash was the result of anything other than it's a lie, all part of a government coverup, TWA800 redux. Then there are the more subtle convictions sold as speculations. I'm sure you've seen posters that declared boldly that the tail segment removed from the bay was undamaged; turning a sharp eye to the pictures reveals two things: A - it's only abuot 1/3 of the tail assembly, B - the entire back half of that segment is stove in. Clearly not undamaged (damage could have been caused by the crash or by the landing hard to tell, but to sell the vert stab as "pristine" is to lie). And, like all conspiracy theories here on FR, they defend any questioning (no matter how reasonable and verifyable fact based) as foolish sheople selling their mind to the government. That's not discussion, that's prosteletizing a fervent belief that refuses to be examined.

I would agree with your statements. I have not made any conclusions about this crash. We simply don't know yet why it happened. The problem with what the article/post puts forth is that it ignores problems that "We the People" have been experiencing for quite some time with the government, for its own reasons, not telling the truth to the people. We have become very aware of how spin works and can spot it a mile away.

I don't ask or expect the government to be able to provide the reason for this disaster immediately. What I DO expect is an honest statement about the circusmstances. A statement that does not need to be parsed. A statement that is not intentionally misleading.

In this particular disaster, we have already been intentionally mislead. This is, again, not meant to imply that terrorism WAS the cause, but there were immediate efforts to downplay and avoid ANY possible terrorist cause. The statements were "there is no evidence of terrorism..." Mr. Black was on GMA yesterday morning stating that nothing on the Cockpit voice recorder indicated that there was anything wrong which we now know to be untrue.

I liken a crash investigation to a doctor's differential diagnosis. You come up with a probable cause and then rule it in or out. In the current atmosphere of terrorism, it would seem to me that the most plausible explanations would be mechanical failure and terrorism. Each of those two causes have many subplots but they tend to be mutually exclusive in terms of evidence.

So, what I would have wanted from the government would be clear statements such as "This could be mechanical failure and it could be terrorism. In terms of mechanical failure, given the evidence at this time we can rule out internal engine failure and birdstrike. In terms of terrorism, we can rule out someone having entered the cockpit or the use of a bomb. There are many other causes under either of those major headings and we will not know for sure until we have moved further in the investigation."

Instead of what I just wrote, which would be a fair and accurate statement of facts we now know, we get "Its probably mechanical failure, there is no evidence of terrorism". While this statement may be technically correct, it is misleading and, it seems evident to me, intentionally so.

I note that the picture you provided was a major stuctural failure that did not cause a plane to crash. I could put forth theories about metal fatigue etc but i obviously do not have any hard data to back those up. My comment was noting that the failure of the tail section combined with the dropping off of two engines and possibly the collapse of a wing(the later is unconfirmed) means that the entire structural integrity of this aircraft seemed to fail at the same time. Please if you are an expert elucidate about how this can occur?

There are ONLY two reasons this plane may have crashed.

1. This plane crashed due to catastrophic structural failure. If so, it would be the first aircraft to do so since the Comet in 1950. Moreover, if this IS the case, the government would have taken a pre-emptive step, based upon preliminary findings, that would have GROUNDED all Airbus 300 aircraft. They have NOT done that which leads people to speculate as to the 'real' reasons behind this crash.

Wake turbulence is a non-factor in this case. a 747 had a 2.5 mile lead on this aircraft. Moreover, an Airbus 300 will not be adversely affected by wake turbulence from a 747 enough to cause this damage. If it was a G4 or Lear, perhaps. An Airbus 300...no way.

Engine falling off? Okay, so birds cause the breakup of an engine OR engines which result in the engines throwing blades. And? There is still a lift component to this aircraft, loss of thrust, however immediate would not have caused this degree of loss of control.

So the engine falls off and takes out the rudder and one half of the horiz. stablizer. NOPE! Look at the pictures of the rudder. It is clean and without the damage that would occur had an engine and subsequent debree taken it off.

So, that leads us to the OTHER reason for this aircraft going down: Terrorism in the form of sabotage or bomb.

I will admit FR tends to be a haven for the ultimate in right wing irrational thought. However, in this case, speculation and investigation of the crash of an aircraft, two months and one day after the largest terrorist attack ever, should be encouraged. It is not irrational thought taking over, it is the curiousity.

When the government quickly moves to mechanical failure as the probable reason, when none of the physical evidence nor eye witness accounts lead to that preliminary conclusion, it will raise questions and concern. In this case, it is justified.

>>"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.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.

But they aren't saying it was an accident, they're saying they are "treating it as an accident" (which in government speak means the NTSB heads the investigation not the FBI) because no evidence otherwise has been found. This is SOP (except during TWA800, when the FBI lead the investigation, only to say it was an accident), the NTSB does the recovery and investigation up until they decide what brought the plane down, if they decide it was a bomb or other deliberate act they bring in the FBI. This is good for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that the NTSB has a better history of properly dealing with evidence than the FBI; #1 on the list being that the FBI doesn't know how planes work and how one defective washer could bring a plane down (much less how to figure out which washer went TU). Also note that the NTSB has repeatedly stated that they aren't ruling out anything they haven't proven didn't bring the plane down, again good SOP, you shouldn't run an investigation with pre-suppositions they change which evidence you pay attention to (that which support your theory instead of all, it's an unconscious human trait very difficult to control).

And, like all conspiracy theories here on FR, they defend any questioning (no matter how reasonable and verifyable fact based) as foolish sheople selling their mind to the government. That's not discussion, that's prosteletizing a fervent belief that refuses to be examined.

No doubt about it.

There are certainly a few irrational fruitcakes that state emphatically (without any evidence) that this MUST be government coverup, and that we MUST accept their version of events.

And on the flipside there are often a few irrational people arguing just as emphatically that this could NOT POSSIBLY be terrorism, and the anyone who dares to even think about that possibility is a tin-foil-hatter.

That's the nature of a wide-open website with thousands of participants. You have to learn to discriminate and ignore (or call a fruitcake a fruitcake), in order to be able to participate.

I'm afraid there isn't much that can be done for it other than that.

I very much agree with you and will further state that when the government treats us a sidiots all it does is insult us and make us hostile. I can even forgive mistatkes in stating things if they are admitted after the fact. It is reminiscent of Tommy Thompson stating that the first anthrax case was probably naturally caused. Well it very soon became clear that it was not natuarally caused. Thompson lost a whole lot of credibility for any future events. That credibility is very very important.

Stay well - stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown

Well said, well said.

One need only see more than a few posts from folks that say they will not believe anything else other than a terrorist attack. What's up with that? It's almost as if people need this to be a terrosist act to have fit nicely into their worldview.

The same goes for government conspiracy and coverup. Has there been such a coverup? I believe the Randy Weaver incident was very much a coverup concerning how the folks on the ground lost their situational awareness and then tried to hide that fact and the deadly results of that loss. But that does not mean that each and every tragedy or controversial event means a government coverup.

It amazes me that people believe our government is wasteful, bloated and inefficient in much of what the government does and then the conspiracy functions can be so efficient, precise and exacting in some of the more truly zany government conspiracy theories that have been floating around the Internet.

The problems of OKC and TWA Flt 800 have left a large resivoir of distrust of offial statements.

And the problem with OKC and TWA Flt 800 are the same as the creator of this thread says about the American Flight. At Oklahoma City people were starved for answers and the news media was all out looking for exclusives so they would interview someone who heard from someone else that they overheard someone say they found another bomb. When the truth came out that there wasnt another bomb, the same idiots that scream about left wing media bias and that you cant believe what you hear on TV are basing their belief that there is a government coverup on the fact that a TV reporter in the fog of the crisis, interviewed someone who said they found another bomb. Its the same NEED for a 30 minute resolution to everything which is causing all the problems. If we didnt force the media to feed us all these rumors we wouldnt have so much trouble accepting the truth when it was finally reported. Its American impatience which is the problem, not a credibilty problem on the part of the government.

The only problem with your point, and this is why being up front about this from the beginning is so important, is that if it is eventually determined to have been a terrorist attack, all the leads as to perpetrators will have gone cold. It would have been so much more prudent to have ASSUMED (and I use the term in a scientific hypothesis sense) it was a terrorist attack and then get your investigators to work interviewing people at the airport, getting documents and so forth. These things have a way of going missing (and this is not any kind of indictment against government, its just that as a civil litigator I have personal experience with things that go missing if not picked up immediately following and incident). If you don't get on your invetigations withing one or two days (or even hours preferably) then you might as well do it at your coinvenience because memories and evidence will degrade very quickly.

Does the anonymity of the internet encourage people to suspend the rational judgment process?

The anonymity of the Internet allows people to openly discuss ideas without fear of recrimination.

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?

No, but since X42, and our governments limp-dick approach to prosecution of treason, the idea that our government may not working in the best interest of the people has become popular.

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