{"id":8457,"date":"2009-03-13T08:03:16","date_gmt":"2009-03-13T16:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=8457"},"modified":"2009-03-13T15:59:44","modified_gmt":"2009-03-13T23:59:44","slug":"a-conversation-with-a-conspiracy-theorist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=8457","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation With A Conspiracy Theorist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Zan Overall emails:<\/p>\n<p>Dear Luke and Fred, <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=8299\">I have read Fred&rsquo;s list of 46 ! things he &ldquo;would be interested in knowing<\/a>&rdquo; about me, Luke&rsquo;s &ldquo;holocaust denier friend.&rdquo; &nbsp;I would answer all of them but it would take a lot of time and (a) I have a life and (b) &nbsp;Luke&rsquo;s bloggees would find it boring.<\/p>\n<p>Fred&rsquo;s item (b) interests me, where he wonders if I am &ldquo;aware that there are very few who share (my) opinions.&quot; Ignoring the<br \/>\nfact that in some cases, such as 9\/11, there are millions who share my beliefs, let me say to Fred:<\/p>\n<p>Truth is not established by a vote. At the time of copout Galileo and courageous but foolhardy Giordano Bruno, a vote of the public and authorities would have established that the Earth does not go around the Sun. &nbsp;People believing otherwise would have been deemed &ldquo;delusional&rdquo; by people with Fred&rsquo;s mindset.<\/p>\n<p>I have a cleverly named website&#8212;-<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/areyoumythguided.bravehost.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/areyoumythguided.<wbr><\/wbr>bravehost.com<\/a><br \/>\nHaven&rsquo;t done much with it lately but Fred will find a partial list of my &ldquo;delusions&rdquo; that he was &ldquo;interested&rdquo; in. Holocaust denial, more properly called Holocaust Revisionism, is not there because I became interested in it only a few years ago.<\/p>\n<p>You will also find nothing about my newfound disdain for Lincoln or dislike for Ike. &nbsp;I read The Real Lincoln and Lincoln Unmasked and am satisfied that Lincoln was a racist, dictator, war monger, war criminal, lawyer and master of English prose. I read Other Losses by Canadian author James Bacque and consider Eisenhower a war criminal for his murderous abuse of German military prisoners after WW II. &nbsp;According to West Point records, Eisenhower was Jewish. &nbsp;You&rsquo;re welcome to him.<\/p>\n<p>My website opens with a quote from psychologist Charles Tart. He says that people like Fred who &ldquo;think&rdquo; what most people &ldquo;think&rdquo; are, in Tart&rsquo;s brilliant phrase, living in a &ldquo;consensus trance.&rdquo; &nbsp;Snap out of it, Fred! Five cents, please.<\/p>\n<p>I&rsquo;m getting as long-winded as Fred. Nice to know we have something in common!<\/p>\n<p>Let me close by suggesting that:<\/p>\n<p>#1: Fred and I get together to discuss and defend our &ldquo;delusions.&rdquo; (You have some, Fred. &nbsp;You just don&rsquo;t know it.)<br \/>\nThe discussion could be videoed by Luke and posted on the blog.<\/p>\n<p>#2: Luke, Fred and any other interested bloggees attend one of the illustrated talks I give: one on crop circles as true mysteries and the other on the Apollo missions. &nbsp;The second one is titled &ldquo;Americans Walked on the Moon&#8212;-Don&rsquo;t Bet on It!&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Don&rsquo;t have any talks booked at the moment but interest on your part could spur me to book some&#8212;&#8211;OR someone reading this could come up with a venue.<\/p>\n<p>Delusionally yours,<br \/>\nZan Overall<\/p>\n<p>FRED EMAILS:<\/p>\n<p>Luke: <\/p>\n<p>Zan&#8217;s effort to compare himself with Galileo is off base.&nbsp; Galileo  based his views on personal observation.&nbsp; I think it&#8217;s clear that Zan does not  base his views on personal observation but rather a cocktail of the web  conspiracy theory echo chamber and his own emotional needs.<\/p>\n<p>Zan argues  that there are millions who think that 9\/11 is a great big conspiracy.&nbsp;  Apparently, Zan subscribes to several delusions, some of which are the province  of a small band white supremecists (holocaust denial) and some having a wider  following.&nbsp; Zan&#8217;s subscription to delusional beliefs that have a large following  does not erase the fact that he also subscribes to delusional beliefs that have  at most a tiny and discredited following.<\/p>\n<p>As I suspected, Zan has several  delusional beliefs, and he goes to great lengths to convince others of his  beliefs (e.g. his web site, handing out flyers, etc.)&nbsp; There is a substantial  emotional investment in his prosyletizing.&nbsp; Nobody goes to these lengths unless  it satisfies an emotional need.&nbsp; It would be interesting to know more about this  emotional need(s), and its source.&nbsp; Does Zan feel that he has been denied proper  credit in some of his past dealings?&nbsp; Does he have a grudge?&nbsp; Is there a cabal  that is busy denying him his true stature?<\/p>\n<p>One final note: There are two  kinds of people who eschew common wisdom:&nbsp; those who actually have some kind of  insight that others lack, and those who are deluded.&nbsp; As I mentioned above,  Galileo falls into the first category.&nbsp; I see no evidence suggesting that Zan  falls into anything other than the second category.<\/p>\n<p>F<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zan Overall emails: Dear Luke and Fred, I have read Fred&rsquo;s list of 46 ! things he &ldquo;would be interested in knowing&rdquo; about me, Luke&rsquo;s &ldquo;holocaust denier friend.&rdquo; &nbsp;I would answer all of them but it would take a lot &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=8457\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9619],"tags":[16695,16694,16696,16381,16693,16697],"class_list":["post-8457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conspiracy","tag-conspiracy-theorist","tag-giordano-bruno","tag-holocaust-denial","tag-holocaust-denier","tag-holocaust-revisionism","tag-war-monger"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}