That 9/11 conspiracy is fascinating…I think it’s the 21st century nature of this kind of conspiracy theorizing that interests me. So many people experienced this event in a very emotional, direct way, yet the whole thing for most of the country was purely based in electronic media — live TV, Internet reporting, etc. It makes me wonder if people who subscribe to this theory are responding to the unreal, detached nature of this event. Kind of like the moon landing conspiracy, where it’s almost as if seeing it happen was what made people suspicious of it. (Were there John Glenn conspiracy theories?)

Anyway…even if you aren’t doing reviews right now, I actually find these sort of cyberflaneur reports quite engaging.

It’s so unbelievable because we so seldom see such arrogance married to such idiocy. Had credible sources like Nick Mamatas not linked to the whole debacle, I would have had a hard time believing it myself.

“Something strange happened then. I recalled a moment when I was a boy. I was playing in my backyard when the dog in my neighbor’s yard escaped through an open gate. My neighbor, an elderly man who lived alone and spoke in a thick accent (I later discovered that is was German), managed to corral the dog back into his yard. I watched, fascinated as the man ripped his long black belt from the loops at his waist and brought it down with a hellish fury upon the dog’s back. The dog slunk down and rested it’s head upon its paws, resigned to its fate. Why didn’t it fight back? Why didn’t it bite the hand of the master?

With the only friend I ever truly had writhing between my legs, I became aroused.”

I mean… I sort of feel like he’s getting off easy with me only calling him an ignorant prick. I could also add untalented hack and yuckmeister to the list of descriptive but well-deserved abuse.

I remember very well the McMartin Case. It was 1983. I was newly married and quite naive at the age of 21. It was the McMartin case alone that drove my decision to never to use a daycare.

Even after the McMartin family was cleared and all charges proved false, I remained unwilling to consider a daycare facility. I practically demanded blood samples from every babysitter we ever used! This all stemmed from that case.

It was a horrifying scenario all around – I can’t wait to read your review. What book are you reading?

Could child sex slaves be ushered through the doors of the White House to service those in power? Could photos and videos exist of such a thing? Could that evidence find its way into more sinister hands that then use the evidence for political gain?

These are obviously rhetorical questions but I’m going to answer them anyway. Yes, it is possible that child sex slaves are servicing the White House, that video exists, and that video could be used for further sinister goals. But before one assigns those specific acts to specific people, one needs proof. And at no point does DeCamp have needed proof. It’s all well and good to speculate but this was not speculation. Lives were ruined on both sides because some men took an extreme story offered by mentally disturbed kids and turned those stories into absolute truths.

In the process of accusing Larry King of providing child rape victims to the Bush administration, DeCamp smeared the names of innocent people – because mark my words, Hunter S. Thompson, in the ascent of his writing career, following political campaigns and with books on the best seller list, did not have the time or the inclination to tape the necrophilic rape of a child. He hated corruption and the abuse that went with political corruption and had he any access to such information, he would have revealed it to bring down everyone involved. His outright hatred of the Nixon administration and loathing for Nixon in particular shows a man who would reveal such corruption in a heartbeat. And yet DeCamp smeared his name without hesitation based on the implausible story (anyone raped with a cattle prod would not walk away from the experience) of a disturbed young man and he did it because it added to the salaciousness of his story, not because it proved a damn thing.

The whole story has no merit. Alisha Owen’s claims that she gave birth the a sheriff’s baby after being used as his concubine at sex parties was disproved with DNA evidence. Poor Paul Bonacci was used by DeCamp and those like him. And as a result, resources were wasted, and eyes were averted from the real problems we do have in power.

Because I agree that power corrupts. But salacious stories that involve Ted Gunderson and tales of ground up bones mean that we are not focusing on the real corruption. For example, George H. W. Bush, a former head of the CIA and a man whose long political career had many scandals, was a key player in the S&L meltdown in the USA in the late 80s, manipulating the situation so one of his sons would not see prison time. That was a scandal, but who remembers it now? Bush the Elder also played a key role via his position in the CIA in the Iran-Contra scandal, and THAT should have been what this book was about because the King scandal from all appearances was a part of the scandal. Barely registers in the midst of the incredible claims of child victims.

And that is why I think we need to think hard before we assign any rhetorical value to exposes like this. We have incredible proof of wrong-doing that we need to focus on so why waste our time on vulgar exposes that prove nothing, smear the names of the innocent, harm the minds of children and throw up such a furor based on no proof that distract people from real child abuse claims? So we can take this as a musing about the potential for people in power to do dreadful things but since we have actual proof of people doing horrible things, it seems like a diversion from the things we really know happened. That’s probably a distillation of my impatience with so much of conspiracy theory – it distracts us from real harm.

So that’s my perspective, for what it’s worth.

I really appreciated this comment, and hope you come back – I’ll have some more real conspiracy theory to discuss again in the near future that ties into the McMartin abuse case in California and I think your opinion would add to the discussion.

I have struggled with cyclical depression my entire life. I know I have had mental health professionals shoe horn me into a “traditional” female mental health narrative, which means I’ve been diagnosed as bipolar and with Borderline Personality Disorder, conditions applied mostly to women and lots of them who are not suffering from the condition. It’s a passive, non-malicious misogyny, but it still is misogyny when a person who has deep depression and a flat affect is declared hysterical and in need of lots of meds to control her out of control emotions. It took many years and lots of reading for me to understand the horrible diagnoses I have received.

So if I can be put into those boxes while being no more than an anxious and occasionally deeply depressed woman, it’s easy to see how a narrative of female mental illness dogs the profession to this day.

I almost hate the idea that anyone would read this book but from the perspective you intend to interrogate it if you do, I bet you’d find a lot to work with.