36% of Americans Believe THIS?

A new poll shows that 36% of Americans either believe that the US government murdered 3,000 Americans on 9/11, or it knew they were going to be murdered and allowed it to happen.

Now, it doesn't bother me that 36% of Americans don't believe in their government. That's completely reasonable. What scares me are the insane, lunatic ravings people ARE willing to believe in order to believe the government is responsible for 9/11.

The folks at Popular Mechanics have published the definitive analysis of the "conspiracy" that brought down the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. But why was that even necessary? We watched most of 9/11 happen on television. Eyewitnesses saw the planes, they held the wreckage, they touched the blood. We experienced all this in the days after 9/11. What is it about the truth of 9/11 that so many of my fellow Americans refuse to believe?

I divide the 9/11 kooks into two groups. One group was driven to the edge of lunacy by the outcome of the 2000 elections. It's hard for Republicans, I think, to grasp just how unnerving it was for Democrats to win the popular vote and lose the election. Add the fact that the state in question was brother Bush's Florida, and the level of anguish truly was unique in the recent annals of partisan politics.

Then 9/11 came, and partisans were given two choices: To do what non-partisans do in moments of great crisis and throw their weight behind the sitting president, or to see the president as the problem. It's easy to see how a hurt and angry Democrat who just went through the biggest partisan disappointment in a century could give in to his worst nature and choose the latter option.

Hurting, angry, and then frustrated by President Bush's decision to govern boldly rather than apologetically, some members of the Left have been driven into the ranks of the tin foil hat brigades.

That's one group. Then there's another group that is entirely nonpartisan, but just as loony. Their political belief system was also assaulted on 9/11--their belief that the government works, that it can take care of them, can protect them from their own stupidity and the stupidity of others.

That naive belief should have fallen long before the World Trade Center. This is, after all, the government that can't run the schools, defend our borders or (as we found out here in Boston) dig a tunnel. This government simply does not have the ability to create happiness or security, but some unhappy and insecure people insist on holding it responsible, blaming the outcome of their lives on some inaction or unfairness of a government agency.

Such an all-powerful government obviously has the power to prevent a 9/11. Since it didn't, this government must have been responsible.

What is the alternative facing these groups and their theories? The truth. And they can't handle the truth.