It also gives people a sense of deep satisfaction believing they know some dark hidden secret nobody else does… regardless of how absurd it is

Nobody’s at the rudder, but also all of us are. Everyone has more capacity than anyone is comfortable with

Government incompetence is the main reason I didn’t go down the conspiracy rabbit hole. They’re too stupid to pull most shit off without tripping over their own dicks.

I can’t vouch for the veracity of most of your content but I wanted to add that building 7 was also announced to have collapsed before it actually did.

Yep. There was also the quotes from Rudi Guilani where he said something along the lines of “Pull Building 7”, where pull is demolitions parlance to set off the charges. This was like a day of audio snippet. Its also basically impossible to find the original footage that isn’t pure conspiracy drivel, but I remember it from the time when all of this was happening. There was so much going on in the wake of 9-11, with the country pretty much instantaneously jumping into war mode, being immediately handed a narrative around al-Qaeda with no investigation into the causes or veracity of the government claims around al-Qaeda.

The push back on questioning the narrative was surreal. Like, you would be drawn and quartered publicly for doing so. The ‘feeling’ at the time was that the investigation into what actually happened and how felt like a complete sham that the government didn’t really want to do because so many people weren’t accepting the party narrative.

Also, keep in mind the context. There was a strong anti-war sentiment in 2003 going into the invasion of Iraq. The “9-11 was an inside job crowd” found themselves running with the anti-war crowd as general anti-institutionalists. This was when Alex Jones was just finding his footing and definitely wasn’t quite fully right wing. He was more accurately (at the time, in historical context) anti-establishment. The modern right-wing movement hadn’t fully formed, although it found its roots in this historical period (the Tea party would also come out of this period).

So just broadly consider the different vectors operating on public perception at the time. We were basically instantly construction a “Going to War is the Solution” narrative within hours of 9-11 happening, and the narrative around that construction was found to be fully formed as soon as it emerged, almost as if the institutions of the US government and its surrounding media had been prepared for this exact moment. Push back against this was effectively an instantaneous scarlett letter and there basically was none in US mainstream media*. There was a strong push back against any kind of independent investigation into the events leading up to the event. We got reports from the CIA and FBI, but considering the context, like, if those are the parties in question, do you believe them? Then you had the Saudi Bush family connections, the fact that we were basically going to war with Afghanistan when we knew it was the Saudis that did 9-11, which was like a pretty big red flag. Then there were the reports that globally, many governments warned about this happening to US intelligence agencies, but it seemed like they just kind of let it happen. Which is really where the conspiracy was focused. These days it gets too wrapped up in ‘inside job’ etc, but the general scheme was more about 9-11 being allowed to happen as an excuse for a Bush invasion into the middle east. This wasn’t a conspiracy that was built in hindsight, the speculation was built in real time (before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq), and then go figure, Bush invades the middle east, and specifically, goes after Iraq. This basically fully validates the theory, and to put a cherry on top, the evidence on Iraq was all just… fraudulent. So if you limit the scope of the theory to 9-11 was ‘allowed’ to occur to justify a military industrial complex incursion into the middle east, its kind-of like “well yeah duh” because thats exactly what happened.

Wild fukin time and wild bit of history. Important to keep context in mind, and to have sources of information about the past which aren’t ‘edited’ to reflect newthink.

*Democracy Now did exist by this time (finding its establishment after the Seattle WTO protests). If you want to really understand what was going on at the time, this would be the media source I would recommend.

Countless incorrect things were announced. Everyone was collectively panicking. That’s odd, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything considering the building was already visibly damaged.

Incorrect information in a chaotic situation? Would never happen!

The building had been on fire for hours at that point with no water pressure to run the sprinklers or allow firefighters to effectively combat it. It was decided to stop efforts to save the building as it was presumed the integrity of the structure was damaged beyond repair.

As for the reporters announcing it collapsing early, its doubtful that it was anything but one of many mistakes reporters made live on air hours into an exhausting day of chaos. Maybe that had been told the building was going to collapse at any minute or maybe they had been told efforts to stop collapse had ceased and an assumption was made by the crew on the ground it had already fell. As I recall it was the BBC that said it fell before it actually did, so the idea of a foreign news outlet being in on a false flag conspiracy is just too ridiculous to be believable over something such as an exhausted reporter misspeaking in the middle of an emotionally overwhelming day.

“_______ doesn’t happen without _______” all all bullshit based on nothing. NIST has published their findings. They had 200 Experts, 125 of which came from the private sector investigate how the towers came down, and there is absolutely no evidence what so ever that they were brought down in a controlled manner. I even remember watching a documentary that interviewed the owner or engineer of one of the US’s top demolition companies that easily pokes holes in the idea that a major skyscraper with people, furniture, etc could be brought down like that at all. It’s total nonsense. NIST has a FAQ page

Donald Trump’s presidency pretty much removed any doubt I had about the official 9/11 story.

He proved that our government is full of regular idiots who are just barely able to work together. Of course the 3 letter agencies have a lot of power and fancy technology, but if the CIA or NSA was seriously that in control of this country, Trump would have never happened. He is a bumbling moron who did a ton of damage to this country and nobody lifted a finger apparently? Damaging alliances, burning undercover assets, etc.

Our Congress can’t work together long enough to pass basic bills. No way the Patriot act was planned with a false flag in mind.

The 9/11 conspiracy is just way too big and would need way too many participants to keep it under wraps like that.

Plus, every big disaster has conspiracy theories. If you believe all of them, you’re pretty much saying bad things never happen without the overlords planning them. 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, JFK assassination, RFK assassination, Pearl Harbor, and every other major event have had massive conspiracy theories and claims that they were inside jobs.

Yeah, the official story has holes but reality is messy. It was a big attack involving/affecting a lot of agencies, corporations, and people. It’s pretty much guaranteed that out of the measly 365 days in a year, a lot of these groups and individuals would be doing their “once a year” inspections, misremember details in their panic, deal with other terrorist attacks, intersect with ongoing crimes that were being committed separately, etc.

Seriously, a plane crashed into one of the biggest and wealthiest business centers in the world. The conspiracy theories write themselves no matter how clear the evidence is. Of course one of those companies has ties to foreign governments, obviously one of the CEOs is commiting fraud, one of the employees is bound to have worked for the government in a sensitive role. Imagine the ties you could find on one of the planes alone. Every plane in the sky right now has a politician’s relative, a political activist, a criminal, a foreign diplomat, high-ranking military, or all of the above. All of these things would spark a great conspiracy theory. Imagine the things you could find if you wanted to blame Boeing. Start looking into details about every employee they have and connect some dots. It’s easy.

if it was an airplane, where’s the fucking wreckage? Cuz that would be the first plane crash in all of history that left zero wreckage.

There was plenty of wreckage. There were no big chunks of fuselage or wings or engines, but that isn’t uncommon with extreme accidents. A plane at high speed slamming into the ground, a cliff, or a heavily reinforced building, is going to disintegrate into pretty small pieces, making investigations difficult. And indeed there are photos of small chunks of plane wreckage found at the Pentagon on 9/11.

and the collapse of building 7 occurred exactly as you would expect from a building fire

It wasnt the first skyscraper fire, but it was the first and still only skyscraper to collapse from a fire. So no i wouldnt say its expected at all.

As I said with the very first statement, I don’t believe any of this.

why not just fund the terrorists and ignore warnings?

This is exactly what many tinfoil hatters thought and probably still think.

I’m not the person you’re responding to, but where I land on the question is basically I think there’s a very good chance that GWB knew about a credible threat of something like 9/11 happening and deliberately chose not to interfere. So more like an act by intentionally doing nothing.

Because I knew someone would take the bait. The saudis did it is another conspiracy theory from the time.

The conspiracy theories around 9/11 are almost as numerous and as fun to play with as JFK assassination.

No, people actually believed it from day 1.

Also a lot of people came forward to explain that a fire couldn’t brind such a massive structure down.

And yet One Meridian Plaza was a skyscraper built in the same era as 7 World Trade Center that had a fire so bad that caused the building to be condemned due to structural damage caused by the fire. The only reason One Meridian Plaza didn’t completely collapse during the fire was because there were fire sprinklers on some of the floors and the fire got up to a floor that had them.

So now Lower Manhattan had lost water pressure, making the fire sprinkler system worthless. You also had a lot of the people who would be responsible for fighting the fire pancaked in debris nearby. This was the first skyscraper of its size in a over a decade allowed to burn.

But a controlled demolition is a lot more comforting of a thought that the complete failure of disaster response.

How do you place explosives at exactly the height of impact?

Here is an interview with a Dutch demolitions expert, who claims that WTC 7 was clearly brought down in a controlled demolition.

Rebar and concrete

A lot of people grew up being used to a safe county. The idea that the government didn’t actually keep people safe, and that leaders could be so insanely incompetent, was so shocking it was easier to believe in crazy conspiracy theories.

It’s pretty easy to believe in an incompetent government after 9/11, but W came after Clinton and Bush Sr. The first Bush was the head of the CIA. He was evil, but highly competent. Clinton was clearly a world leader, also highly competent. Before that you had Reagan, who was Machiavellian as fuck running secret wars around the world. You had decades of these people looking like they were playing geopolitical 4d chess, then you had this clown who was playing checkers with pidgins. Then you had this incredible shock of the biggest attack on the US since Perl Harbor. It broke a lot of people’s brains.

They designed the buildings to implode because on the 60s and 70s there was a worry that buildings would topple over onto neighbouring buildings if damaged or compromised, and was a legitimate concern as architects were putting forth designs using less reinforcement because they didn’t need as much half a century earlier to build things like the empire state building thanks to better building techniques and materials.

They did exactly what they were designed to do when their integrity was compromised to the point to failure, which is impressive feet. Just ask any engineer what happens when a small but dense and fast moving object slams into the end of a second class lever.

The buildings were designed to withstand a small or medium sized aircraft at a relatively low speed with low fuel, similar to the incident with the Empire State Building. It’s not uncommon for other buildings to be built to similar standards, so I don’t see how this would be fishy. It’s a pair of skyscrapers, the threat of a plane hitting them accidentally during bad weather was a possibility. They were not designed to withstand a modern airliner travelling at an incredibly high speed with a full load of fuel. The fact they survived as long as they did is miraculous.

must be because of the big gulp slurpies

Rebuttal: There were six frames showing the impact from a security camera, which were released after a FOIA request.[51] Furthermore, photographic evidence of wreckage on the scene and eyewitness accounts of plane wreckage and damage are consistent with a plane crash.[52] Essentially, the problem for no-planers is that the plane didn’t just hit the outside of the Pentagon, but actually penetrated some distance into the structure, some of which even collapsed on top of the plane. Numerous witnesses saw it approach, the plane’s wings took out several street lights on a nearby roadway on the way in, and plane components were scattered all over the Pentagon lawn.

Also, while inconclusive (and “personal commentary”), a photo was presented on a 9/11 truther website which claimed that the “round” debris observed possibly was not the wheel of the alleged jetliner. But it clearly was, albeit stripped of its outer edge.

Why would anyone expect a high-resolution video camera to be pointed at where the plane hit? The intrinsic improbability of such a circumstance would make it direct evidence of a conspiracy, and no self-respecting conspiracy would allow evidence of its existence to remain.

The Pentagon is a reinforced concrete building with blast-resistant windows. It was struck by an aluminum-skinned commercial aircraft that had already lost a wing before hitting the building: such an aircraft is mostly empty space, with voids in the wings for fuel and the fuselage for passengers; only the floor of the passenger compartment, the undercarriage, and the engine cores are particularly solid objects. The damage is consistent with this scenario: nobody but truthers would seriously expect a cartoony plane-shaped hole.[53]

Rebuttal from https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/9/11, which also debunks most other 9/11 truther nonsense.

Some would call them “independent thinkers”

What’s more admirable, to conform and be right or to think independently and be wrong?