Were the Oklahoma tornadoes a government conspiracy?

Rachel Maddow tore into Alex Jones and his perpetual fear mongering campaign on her show last night. The MSNBC host slaps down Jones’ assertion that the Newtown shootings and Boston Bombings were faked, that the Columbia space shuttle disaster didn’t occur and the fact that he has sold the idea that 9/11 was in inside job despite massive amounts of evidence to the contrary. Maddow then turns to Alex Jones assertion that the Oklahoma tornadoes were unleashed by a government weather control weapon, bizarrely linking Jones’ theories to Republican policies.

9/11 conspiracy theorists are having a hard time these days. Considering the fact that the filmmaker behind Loose Change has admitted it was a hoax, it’s amazing that this bad meme still has a hold of such a large portion of the voting population. A recent poll from PPP revealed that 11% of voters believe the US government allowed 9/11 to happen, 78% do not agree. 9% of voters think the government adds fluoride to our water supply for sinister reasons. 4% of voters say they believe “lizard people” control our societies by gaining political power. 51% of voters say a larger conspiracy was at work in the JFK assassination, just 25% say Oswald acted alone and 14% of voters believe in Bigfoot conspiracies.

These people’s votes count the same as yours.

The New York Times published a piece recently explaining in detail why so many otherwise intelligent people believe in conspiracy theories.

Excerpt:

“Crazy as these theories are, those propagating them are not — they’re quite normal, in fact. But recent scientific research tells us this much: if you think one of the theories above is plausible, you probably feel the same way about the others, even though they contradict one another. And it’s very likely that this isn’t the only news story that makes you feel as if shadowy forces are behind major world events…. They found, perhaps surprisingly, that believers are more likely to be cynical about the world in general and politics in particular. Conspiracy theories also seem to be more compelling to those with low self-worth, especially with regard to their sense of agency in the world at large. Conspiracy theories appear to be a way of reacting to uncertainty and powerlessness.”

That would explain quite a bit. And though Maddow is no friend to liberty, she does a public service here in debunking some of the major fallacies with conspiracy theories, especially acts of god such as tornadoes.