AliceVia Roy, the very prestigious New York Post, as well as Citizen Journalists across the land, are horrified, just horrified, by the results of this poll:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans think it is possible that some federal officials had specific warnings of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, but chose to ignore those warnings, according to a Scripps Howard News Service/Ohio University poll.

The Post reports on these findings in its distinctive idiom:

'BLAME U.S. FOR 9/11' IDIOTS IN MAJORITY
'PLOTS' THICKEN IN SHOCKING POLL

Michelle Malkin is likewise (ahem) disturbed. "Guess Kos was right when he proclaimed of the nutroots: 'We are the center.' The fringe is now mainstream." Other voices on the Right are just as alarmed: "This is madness writ large." As indeed it is -- for instance, the NY Post wrote it large in all capital letters.

As Roy remarks, "'Blame U.S. For 9/11'? Seen from a less hysterical angle, the poll result seems like a merely uncharitable reading of the findings of the 9/11 Commission." Exactly. Which is why I tend to have little patience for 9/11 conspiracy theories, on the grounds that such theories distract from the appalling public record.

But then again, the public record is rather the point. I find 9/11 conspiracy theories troubling, but then, I ask myself, "Self? What do you expect? It is quite clear that the administration began a war on the flimsiest of pretexts, then botched this war in an amazingly obvious fashion, all the while running an absurd PR campaign designed to sell the American people a bunch of absolute horseshit about how swell the war was going." This is an administration that says torture is not torture, that corruption is not corruption, that lies are truth. Hell, it even stonewalled the 9/11 investigation. What were we all supposed to make of that? The known, undisputed and indisputable history of the Bush administration reads like a conspiracy theory.

So I have some sympathy with those who worry that one can never be paranoid enough when it comes to this bunch. Of course one can take that too far. But there should be no question of where the responsibility lies for the current climate of cynicism, paranoia, doubt, and distrust. Conservatives alarmed by such developments might want to run on a different campaign platform next time out, other than the one they've been using, which deliberately foments such passions in order to gain electoral advantage. Just saying.

Honestly. It's pretty rich seeing lunatics like Malkin getting into hysterics at conspiracy theories. Movement conservativism is nothing else but one big giant conspiracy theory. What else was the Clinton impeachment mess but the wreckage of conspiracy theorists run amok? What else are we to make of the article of faith that Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were in cahoots -- and of the fact that a conservative who even mildly hints otherwise is going to get smacked back into line mighty quick? What about the hysterical global warming denialism? The Lancet study madness? Or, the daddy of them all, the belief that the Main-Stream Media is deliberately conspiring to win elections for Democrats? And that the only way to prevent their dastardly scheme from succeeding is an army of online idiots who have some half-assed ability to run Google searches and can thus maybe get someone they don't like harassed or fired for some imaginary transgression?

It's obvious who's on the "fringe," and that would be the 30% crowd. And, of course, the Democratic leadership that's still for some unfathomable reason afraid of these drooling fools, not to mention their punditocracy enablers. Why should that be, I wonder...?

(Shrugs) Dunno. Might have something to do with Elvis. Or Bigfoot. Probably Bigfoot.