Blog companion to my course "Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking." Taught as part of the general writing curriculum at SUNY Geneseo.
Interlude
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No post this week. It's the end of the semester and I must focus on grading.
A common trait amongst conspiracy theorists is that they like to brag that they know everything. They've seen the "TRUTH" and this sight has given them perfect knowledge. It does not matter that the knowledge they have will also run counter to other conspiracy theorists, requires a whole new reality, or is just plain bonkers. Conspiracy theorists have this trait of speaking with authority on every subject that comes across their mind. Cooper, we may remember, was in the Navy and possibly the Air Force. He took some classes in radio but in every other respect, he's just a regular guy. Cooper gets a lot of credit from the UFOlogy circuit and the conspiracy crowd because he worked in Naval Intelligence, but to us--that means nothing. He claims an expertise in everything--but as we're about to see: he has very little understanding of the natural world especially. In a symposium held in 1957...possibly the Bilderberg meeting that he alluded to last time, the JASON so...
Kaysing begins, as all conspiracy theory books do, with how he arrived at the knowledge of the conspiracy. Kaysing worked for seven years at Rocketdyne, “ the firm that built the main propulsion units for Apollo …” Let’s be clear that Kaysing is trying to pull a fast one on the reader already. He’s not claiming that he worked on the propulsion engines, he’s just saying that he worked at the company which made them. He’s curiously leaving out what his position was at Rocketdyne. If he worked on the boosters that would be front and center. This is very similar to the infamous Area 51 “whistleblower” but actual liar, Bob Lazar. Lazar claimed that he worked at Los Alamos but then leaves it at that. In reality, he worked for a company that developed film for the government at Los Alamos. We are meant to think he did something important at Alamos because that’s where “the Bomb” was made. I’m sure that film development is an important part of whatever was going on there, but that’s not ...
The first section of this week’s appendix is titled “The Astronauts.” This section does something that we haven’t seen in a while—it raises an interesting point. It does so accidentally, but the point is still raised. Kaysing tells us that he was invited to a televised debate with Buzz Aldrin to discuss whether the Moon landing was faked. Aldrin didn’t show up, and Kaysing acts as though this was an act of cowardice, “ it was his obligation as a man and public servant to defend his case in person. ” Aldrin was not a public servant. He doesn’t owe anyone anything. The man comment is just proto-toxic masculinity, Kaysing is trying to shame him into showing up. We are told that Armstrong has disappeared because he won’t speak to either Kaysing or his co-investigators. Finally, we are told that “Astronaut Irving’s mother berated me on radio when I appeared on the Jim Eason show in San Fransisco. But when I offered to debate her son on the same program, there was dead silence.” Kaysing...
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