Mackdog
Senior Member.
I first want to start off by saying that I do believe that there are certainly some "conspiracies" out there and there always have been. There are always people conspiring to do wrong and take advantage of others, and even some of what the CT'ers believe does have a shred of truth to it. Some examples would be how George Bush may have had foreknowledge about 9/11 and either failed to act on the intel or maybe wanted it to happen so he could invade Iraq ect.. but even this is debatable. Or the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald may have been working for someone other than himself when he shot Kennedy. In other words, there are still many unanswered questions about certain historical events, and it's my hope that maybe someday they will be answered. But either way, I just want to share how I came to be a conspiracy theorist and how I eventually got out of that mindset and "saw the light" so to speak and shed the layers of bunk that were weighing me down and adversely affecting my life. I don't want this thread to turn into a debate about the above mentioned "conspiracies" or any type of argument, rather I just wanted to share this with everyone and hope that maybe someone can relate to it somehow.
here goes...
When I was growing up in Northeast Ohio in the late 1990's, I listened to my Dad preach a lot about how the Clinton administration was extremely liberal/socialist and how we are headed for another great depression and that the world will run out of oil by the year 2015 or so. You see, my Dad is a petroleum geologist and has spent his life working in the oil field and exploring for oil and natural gas. But long story short, he eventually came to firmly believe that we were going to run out of oil in my lifetime and that the world will be thrown into chaos with energy shortages and a global depression that will kill everybody. I don't know how many times I stood there listening to him preach to someone about these things, but he preached a lot, and to many people, about being prepared and about certain political topics. I believe that these years of listening to my father (God bless him) preach about these types of topics really galvanized my opinion and thought process to that of a hard line conservative and eventually to that of a conspiracy theorist.
My first real dive into politics and bunk came in 2004. It was the big election season, and incumbent George W Bush was running against John Kerry the "socialist" "communist" from Massachusetts. My Dad was really into the whole election thing and one day he told me that I should listen to Rush Limbaugh for up to date information about how the campaigns were going and about how the socialist/liberal John Kerry was trying to oust the great and flawless president George W Bush. Well I took his advice and started listening to Rush on a daily basis and then eventually started listening to Glenn Beck, Quinn and Rose and Shaun Hannidy. I listened to those guys religiously from 2004 until the fall of 2008 (somewhere in there I started listening to Michael Savage and became one of his close followers) and then one day I came across this new website called "Youtube" and started searching around in my spare time, goofing off. I came across some 9/11 videos that showed that the towers were a controlled demolition and that the planes that flew into them may have been windowless military planes that were some part of a secret operation to destroy the towers, attack the USA, bring us to war and all to the benefit of this shadow elite. I soon found Alex Jones and was immediately hooked. I was one of Jones' listeners and would swallow anything he told me, without asking any questions. I found myself practically on the edge of insanity and thought, at one point, that everyone else in the world was mentally insane and I was the only sane one who was "awake". I bought into nearly every conspiracy imaginable: Vaccines, 9/11, NWO bankers, Illuminati, global depopulation, HAARP, FEMA camps ect...But NEVER the chemtrail theory or the moon landing theory. This went on from the fall of 2008 until early to mid 2012. Sometime in there I watched Ryan Dawsons 9/11 documentary "War is Always by Deception" and then "9/11 missing links" and began to believe that the Israelis were at least partly responsible for 9/11. And that they were working to bring the USA to war ect...As you can see, I was way too far down the rabbit hole for anyone to be able to rescue. I even started to be a listener of Coast to Coast AM in late 2008 early 2009 and even bought into some of the crap from Steve Quayle, William Henry and David Icke. I even remember preaching to one of my good friends about how shape shifting reptilians are running the world and that they are using us as slaves to build their global empire.
Anyways, the one thing that kept bothering me was this darn chemtrails conspiracy theory. Even to me at the time, it seemed pretty kooky. I just couldn't bring myself to believe that passenger planes were spraying us with toxic chemicals and that no one was exposing it, and that there was some government spray program in place to poison us all. I know it sounds crazy that I believed in reptilians for a short time, and not chemtrails, but I suppose that is just how I am. Well, the chemtrail thing was the thread that eventually unraveled the entire conspiracy line of thought for me. One day I decided that I would try to debunk this "chemtrail" conspiracy theory once and for all. It never made sense to me anyways. So I went to google and typed in "chemtrails debunked", and low and behold, a site named "contrail science" popped up close to the top. So I spent some time on Micks site and really learned a lot about plane contrails and saw the evidence disproving chemtrails once and for all. Then, several weeks later, I decided I would try to debunk the 9/11 conspiracy theories. If it worked for chemtrails then why wouldn't it work for 9/11? And wouldn't you know, I found all kinds of sites with good factual information that debunked almost all of the 9/11 conspiracy theories. At this point it was like a HUGE weight was lifted off my shoulders and that I could once again breathe and feel like I was alive again. I didn't have to live in fear anymore.
I have to say, throughout all of this, I did learn an awful lot and I have grown to realize that there is more to life than following various cult of personalities that just want to herd you into their pens and fleece you, while telling you that they are on you side and that they are giving you the truth and nothing but the truth. I have learned to be more objective in everything I research and not to have religious-like beliefs in things I can not prove, just because I am too afraid to admit I was wrong. I have finally realized that the "rabbit hole" is just that...a hole..an endless hole of ones own delusions that leads them through whatever fantasy they choose to live in.
Eric
here goes...
When I was growing up in Northeast Ohio in the late 1990's, I listened to my Dad preach a lot about how the Clinton administration was extremely liberal/socialist and how we are headed for another great depression and that the world will run out of oil by the year 2015 or so. You see, my Dad is a petroleum geologist and has spent his life working in the oil field and exploring for oil and natural gas. But long story short, he eventually came to firmly believe that we were going to run out of oil in my lifetime and that the world will be thrown into chaos with energy shortages and a global depression that will kill everybody. I don't know how many times I stood there listening to him preach to someone about these things, but he preached a lot, and to many people, about being prepared and about certain political topics. I believe that these years of listening to my father (God bless him) preach about these types of topics really galvanized my opinion and thought process to that of a hard line conservative and eventually to that of a conspiracy theorist.
My first real dive into politics and bunk came in 2004. It was the big election season, and incumbent George W Bush was running against John Kerry the "socialist" "communist" from Massachusetts. My Dad was really into the whole election thing and one day he told me that I should listen to Rush Limbaugh for up to date information about how the campaigns were going and about how the socialist/liberal John Kerry was trying to oust the great and flawless president George W Bush. Well I took his advice and started listening to Rush on a daily basis and then eventually started listening to Glenn Beck, Quinn and Rose and Shaun Hannidy. I listened to those guys religiously from 2004 until the fall of 2008 (somewhere in there I started listening to Michael Savage and became one of his close followers) and then one day I came across this new website called "Youtube" and started searching around in my spare time, goofing off. I came across some 9/11 videos that showed that the towers were a controlled demolition and that the planes that flew into them may have been windowless military planes that were some part of a secret operation to destroy the towers, attack the USA, bring us to war and all to the benefit of this shadow elite. I soon found Alex Jones and was immediately hooked. I was one of Jones' listeners and would swallow anything he told me, without asking any questions. I found myself practically on the edge of insanity and thought, at one point, that everyone else in the world was mentally insane and I was the only sane one who was "awake". I bought into nearly every conspiracy imaginable: Vaccines, 9/11, NWO bankers, Illuminati, global depopulation, HAARP, FEMA camps ect...But NEVER the chemtrail theory or the moon landing theory. This went on from the fall of 2008 until early to mid 2012. Sometime in there I watched Ryan Dawsons 9/11 documentary "War is Always by Deception" and then "9/11 missing links" and began to believe that the Israelis were at least partly responsible for 9/11. And that they were working to bring the USA to war ect...As you can see, I was way too far down the rabbit hole for anyone to be able to rescue. I even started to be a listener of Coast to Coast AM in late 2008 early 2009 and even bought into some of the crap from Steve Quayle, William Henry and David Icke. I even remember preaching to one of my good friends about how shape shifting reptilians are running the world and that they are using us as slaves to build their global empire.
Anyways, the one thing that kept bothering me was this darn chemtrails conspiracy theory. Even to me at the time, it seemed pretty kooky. I just couldn't bring myself to believe that passenger planes were spraying us with toxic chemicals and that no one was exposing it, and that there was some government spray program in place to poison us all. I know it sounds crazy that I believed in reptilians for a short time, and not chemtrails, but I suppose that is just how I am. Well, the chemtrail thing was the thread that eventually unraveled the entire conspiracy line of thought for me. One day I decided that I would try to debunk this "chemtrail" conspiracy theory once and for all. It never made sense to me anyways. So I went to google and typed in "chemtrails debunked", and low and behold, a site named "contrail science" popped up close to the top. So I spent some time on Micks site and really learned a lot about plane contrails and saw the evidence disproving chemtrails once and for all. Then, several weeks later, I decided I would try to debunk the 9/11 conspiracy theories. If it worked for chemtrails then why wouldn't it work for 9/11? And wouldn't you know, I found all kinds of sites with good factual information that debunked almost all of the 9/11 conspiracy theories. At this point it was like a HUGE weight was lifted off my shoulders and that I could once again breathe and feel like I was alive again. I didn't have to live in fear anymore.
I have to say, throughout all of this, I did learn an awful lot and I have grown to realize that there is more to life than following various cult of personalities that just want to herd you into their pens and fleece you, while telling you that they are on you side and that they are giving you the truth and nothing but the truth. I have learned to be more objective in everything I research and not to have religious-like beliefs in things I can not prove, just because I am too afraid to admit I was wrong. I have finally realized that the "rabbit hole" is just that...a hole..an endless hole of ones own delusions that leads them through whatever fantasy they choose to live in.
Eric