The other conspiracy nuts (the lefties have theirs too)

I have occasionally, and with some justification, been accused of harping on the far right conspiracy wackos that infest the Tea Party movement and have a solid following in the Republican Party while ignoring the kooks who inhabit the far left. I can only plead as a defense that I am a bit more sensitive about those on the right, having been for most of my life a Republican (never to be confused with a small 'r' republican) who just took it for granted that a goodly number of those on the extreme left were several fries short of a Happy Meal. That said, I offer the following in reparation for my hitherto one sided focus on the reality challenged in the GOP.

A small gathering of 50 or 60 people; roughly 95 percent white, 90 percent male, a few blond-haired kids, average age 45, all nodding in assent as a series of speakers explains that our government is conspiring against us and fabricating massive lies in order to hide its own crimes and frighten us into giving up our constitutional rights and liberties.

The Tea Party? Minutemen? Birthers? No, “Truthers,” left-wing conspiracy theorists who believe (among other things) that 9/11 was an inside job, that no plane hit the Pentagon, that Ted Olson did not receive a call from his wife, Barbara, shortly before she perished in the crash of Flight 77, that the anthrax scare was also a government hoax (although the anthrax was real and deadly), and that hurricane Katrina was the result of weather manipulation by racists or profiteers or both.

Like many others, I was aware of these theories and aware too that a significant percentage of Americans (about the same percentage that believes President Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya) was at least partly persuaded by them. But on Aug. 15 I got an up-close look at the phenomenon when I attended a meeting of Truthers that just happened to be held in Livingston Manor, a small Catskill town about 20 miles from my house.

Read the rest here.

Ironically many of the leading exponents of the "9-11 Truther" movement were also early and leading figures in the "Birther" movement and have filed multiple court cases in an effort to prove their many bizarre beliefs. In every instance they have been laughed out of court. In at least a few instances they were fined for abusing the legal system with their frivolous suits. None of which has deterred them.