This is a great example of how people can be programmed through a linguistic device known as a "stop thought." In this case, the stop thought is that familiar phrase "conspiracy theory." Americans have been conditioned, since at least the Kennedy assassination, to dismiss without further question or inquiry anything which their media-babysitters label a "conspiracy theory." If something is called a conspiracy theory, then everyone knows, only kooks, paranoics, whacko's, and young white unmarried males with too much time on their hands need apply. Don't believe it? Try the following experiment. In the course of a conversation on some ordinary or even banal topic (the weather, sports, movies), just lob in the phrase "conspiracy theory" and watch the other person's expression. Watch carefully as they look away, roll their eyes, smirk, or otherwise signal that, yes, they are willing to dismiss whatever it was you just labeled with that phrase. Now go back to Maezeepa's comment above. Watch the language: the controlled demolitions argument is "an engineering and physics mystery - not a conspiracy type mystery." And what is the difference between these two categories of mystery? Well, one is respectable because its labeled with the reassurance words "engineering and physics." The other, however, is sheer nut-job stuff because it's got the well-conditioned stop-thought word, "conspiracy," hung around its neck. What is really brilliant about the conspiracy theory stop-thought is that, even though it reeks of close-mindedness and bigotry, it *sounds* perfectly respectable. It's not one of those fright words or expressions, such as an ugly racial, religious, and ethnic epithet. So good, earnest, decent folk, indeed even liberals, happily run around lobbing the stop-thought of "conspiracy theory" at those who threaten their settled world-view. And all the while, they are as completely programmed by the invisible prejudices of the corporate media as any of Pavlov's dogs or Skinner's rats. If you want to find the traitor who has betrayed you -- look at your own language.