The Definitive Response to Cockburn, Et al Thus Far

[Bryan Sacks]

Michael Keefer nails the reason for Cockburn's aversion to conspiracy. He's part of the:

...<i>class of academics and public intellectuals, for whom a migration of power into military, deep-political, and corporate-media hands may . . .be difficult to acknowledge. István Meszáros has proposed that we are currently facing not merely a “conjunctural crisis” of the kind that occurred at intervals over the past century, but rather an all-embracing “structural crisis”—one which “affects the totality of a social complex” because it throws into question “capital’s mode of social metabolic reproduction” up to the ultimate limits of “the established global structure.” It would be no novelty to argue that the Bush regime’s military aggressions, together with its evident contempt for the constraints of republican governance (the Bill of Rights and habeas corpus among them) and its ever-increasing reliance on deep-political manipulations, are part of the corporatist ruling elite’s response to this structural crisis. Understandably enough, public intellectuals who are habituated to conjunctural crises in which their oppositional function was understood by all concerned, and who have in addition made a lifelong habit of ignoring or belittling political analyses which incorporate deep-political factors, have resisted the gathering evidence that these very factors have been decisive in the political transformations pushed through since 9/11.</i>

http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/view/2417

I imagine the difficulty of accepting this shift, which I would argue was going on well before 9/11, is particularly tough for smart and experienced intellectuals like Cockburn who are ideologically committed to forms of analysis that simply cannot adequately account for the events they see unfolding before their own eyes. When too much ego is involved, you get the aggressive hostility.

on edit: this piece dates to November, before Cockburn's latest article was published. And some minor word changes.

[reprehensor]

1. Missed this. Thanks.

http://www.911blogger.com/node/4859

[William Seger]

2. Wonderful; another unsubstantiated "theory"

Look, guys, this is not nearly so complicated as to require all that obtuse rationalizing: The problem is simply that 9/11 conspiracists are suggesting that a ridiculously elaborate, complex, large, and risky scheme was cooked up and carried out -- when much, much simpler and less risky schemes could have easily served the same presumed purpose -- yet the "overwhelming evidence" that that's what happened turns out to be not even strong enough that the "truth movement" itself can agree on a coherent, non-debunkable narrative of what happened. Instead, all they can agree on is that, one way or another, it was an "inside job." So what did happen, and where's the freakin' SOLID, UNAMBIGUOUS evidence of it? When you can't find any, you presume that it's all been covered up or destroyed. What about all the evidence we have? When the evidence we actually have at hand refutes your speculations, you presume it's all been faked. How could the cover-up of such a large conspiracy be so complete? Somehow, every key person necessary to pull it off was already in place, and every one of them is so dedicated to the presumed objective that they aren't going to talk about being approached to participate in a plot to commit mass murder. Not only that, but every person who was in a position to discover the plot in action either completely missed it or joined the conspiracy for one reason or another.

So every single indication that your speculations are simply wrong gets woven into the same conspiracy theory.

And every single individual who just doesn't buy this unsubstantiated speculation either gets included into the same theory -- another accomplice to mass murder -- or dismissed as being uninformed, or as having some sort of mysterious mental block against conspiracies, or as just not having your superior "truth detection" abilities.

Look, if the "truth movement" actually comes up with a "smoking gun" -- evidence that a rational person would consider to be irrefutable and that can only have one interpretation -- Cockburn's (or anyone elses) "difficulty in acknowledging" any "conjunctural crisis" or "structural crisis" will be moot. And if and when that happens, please feel free to shout "We told you so!" as loud and often as you like. Until then, when you try to figure out why rational people aren't 9/11 conspiracists, you sound like a bunch of kids trying to figure out why some other kids don't believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

[TheWraith]

3. Too true.

[Bolo Boffin]

4. Thank you.

The response article tries to call Cockburn's progressive credentials into question, simply because he consigns "9/11 truth" to the Delete Folder it belongs in. It's wound-licking rationalization at its worst.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

5. Great post...

... A. Cockburn writes some great stuff but on some things he's way off the mark. For example he also seems to think global warming is a hoax and refers to Gore as one of a number of "Merchants of Fear."

The world's best known hysteric and self promoter on the topic of man's physical and moral responsibility for global warming is Al Gore, a shill for the nuclear industry and the coal barons from the first day he stepped into Congress...

Source: http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05122007.html