They even released the video of him in the lobby and elevator pushing a luggage cart with like twenty giant bags on it.
And he was paying for an expensive room, they aren't going to question it.
And it's Vegas, a city with tons of industrial conventions all the time, it's entirely within reason for a guy to have tons of bags if it contains product for a trade show.
Am I saying something about him didn't stink? No, if his whole plan was a shooting, to a rational person, his setup made no sense. Too many rifles all with odd configurations (no irons or optics on many, like they come from the factory). But again we're talking "to a rational mind".
But I've always been skeptical of nearly all conspiracy theories, and it really is as simple as this: Treat every conspiracy theory with the same level of detail and skepticism as the theorists treat the official story.
Remember Harrison Deal, the guy in Georgia? If the official story was that his car was blown up by a bomb, everyone would be talking about how the damage on the car doesn't look like a bomb, there was no debris field, there was strange damage that "folded" the Jeep, and the bodywork was still attached. People would compare it to pictures of real vehicle bombings showing pieces of bodywork sprayed all over the place.
In other words "nothing about this looks like a bomb". But because the official story was a car crash, suddenly it became a bomb even though the damage makes no sense for it to be a bomb (along with other things like inventing the lie that "the engine was 300 yards away", but you can see the front end of the vehicle was basically intact).
Conspiracy: "GARY WEBB WAS KILLED BECAUSE HE BROKE IRAN-CONTRA!"
Reality: Congress is who broke Iran Contra. Webb wrote a book years later. And he died years after the book. Also you can still buy the book... Who the fuck covers up a story that's already public?
Conspiracy: "MICHAEL HASTINGS WAS KILLED BECAUSE HE WAS GOING TO TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR!"
Reality: Hastings was a shitlib who sandbagged a very popular General who was critical of Obama and the Iraq war and got him fired. Both Congress and the British Parliament broke the story of the Iraq Dossier. And just like Webb, he wrote the books after the story was already public, he died long after they were written, and you can still buy them.
Also in the cases of both, not a single person who knew them really doubted the official narrative. Webb was in a downward spiral for years and his life was falling apart. Everyone who knew Hastings suggested he had a substance abuse problem.
The dumbest is "Chris Cornell was going to write a story exposing Hollywood pedophiles". Lmao literally never, not once, did he ever even suggest that that was anything he was doing.
The one conspiracy I think I do believe is I think a lot of these types of conspiracies were seeded by the government because of who they target and how they responded to them.
If you're a government and you have a large demographic of perpetual malcontents who are heavily armed and constantly talking about revolution and civil war, but you can't just round them up and gas them, what do you do?
Drive them insane.
MKULTRA was real but every conspiracy theorist thinks they're somehow immune to it. They think all the narrative control weapons are all targeting liberals, and they're "too smart" to fall for the ones that target the right.
So these people are not just something of a powder keg liability, but they're also very gullible, very dumb, and very paranoid.
Fill their heads with insane bullshit. Make them waste years upon years of their lives obsessing over worthless events nobody cares about that will never have a payoff. Bonus points: use narratives that make them believe the government is literally an angry omnipotent God, with the power and will to do anything they want, including controlling hurricanes and earthquakes.
Literally shit that was Biblical in nature they now attribute to government. Government is God to them.
And how do you fight God?
You don't. You can't. Why even bother? Don't go outside or they'll drone strike you. Don't make friends and organize because they are all feds. Just sit at home complaining on the internet, accomplishing nothing, while your age and BMI gradually climb. Don't vote or run for office because elections are fake. Don't try to join the system to change it from the inside because all your friends will hate you and call you a fed traitor.
The most tragic is this: right wingers are mad about Ruby Ridge. Timothy McVeigh blew up a huge VBIED to protest Ruby Ridge. Right wingers immediately and forever call him a fed. Lmao.
Even if he was a fed, isn't it better to take credit for it even just as a symbolic gesture of your frustration and what you could be capable of?
They even released the video of him in the lobby and elevator pushing a luggage cart with like twenty giant bags on it.
And he was paying for an expensive room, they aren't going to question it.
And it's Vegas, a city with tons of industrial conventions all the time, it's entirely within reason for a guy to have tons of bags if it contains product for a trade show.
Am I saying something about him didn't stink? No, if his whole plan was a shooting, to a rational person, his setup made no sense. Too many rifles all with odd configurations (no irons or optics on many, like they come from the factory). But again we're talking "to a rational mind".
But I've always been skeptical of nearly all conspiracy theories, and it really is as simple as this: Treat every conspiracy theory with the same level of detail and skepticism as the theorists treat the official story.
Remember Harrison Deal, the guy in Georgia? If the official story was that his car was blown up by a bomb, everyone would be talking about how the damage on the car doesn't look like a bomb, there was no debris field, there was strange damage that "folded" the Jeep, and the bodywork was still attached. People would compare it to pictures of real vehicle bombings showing pieces of bodywork sprayed all over the place.
In other words "nothing about this looks like a bomb". But because the official story was a car crash, suddenly it became a bomb even though the damage makes no sense for it to be a bomb (along with other things like inventing the lie that "the engine was 300 yards away", but you can see the front end of the vehicle was basically intact).
Conspiracy: "GARY WEBB WAS KILLED BECAUSE HE BROKE IRAN-CONTRA!"
Reality: Congress is who broke Iran Contra. Webb wrote a book years later. And he died years after the book. Also you can still buy the book... Who the fuck covers up a story that's already public?
Conspiracy: "MICHAEL HASTINGS WAS KILLED BECAUSE HE WAS GOING TO TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR!"
Reality: Hastings was a shitlib who sandbagged a very popular General who was critical of Obama and the Iraq war and got him fired. Both Congress and the British Parliament broke the story of the Iraq Dossier. And just like Webb, he wrote the books after the story was already public, he died long after they were written, and you can still buy them.
Also in the cases of both, not a single person who knew them really doubted the official narrative. Webb was in a downward spiral for years and his life was falling apart. Everyone who knew Hastings suggested he had a substance abuse problem.
The dumbest is "Chris Cornell was going to write a story exposing Hollywood pedophiles". Lmao literally never, not once, did he ever even suggest that that was anything he was doing.
The one conspiracy I think I do believe is I think a lot of these types of conspiracies were seeded by the government because of who they target and how they responded to them.
If you're a government and you have a large demographic of perpetual malcontents who are heavily armed and constantly talking about revolution and civil war, but you can't just round them up and gas them, what do you do?
Drive them insane.
MKULTRA was real but every conspiracy theorist thinks they're somehow immune to it. They think all the narrative control weapons are all targeting liberals, and they're "too smart" to fall for the ones that target the right.
So these people are not just something of a powder keg liability, but they're also very gullible, very dumb, and very paranoid.
Fill their heads with insane bullshit. Make them waste years upon years of their lives obsessing over worthless events nobody cares about that will never have a payoff. Bonus points: use narratives that make them believe the government is literally an angry omnipotent God, with the power and will to do anything they want, including controlling hurricanes and earthquakes.
Literally shit that was Biblical in nature they now attribute to government. Government is God to them.
And how do you fight God?
You don't. You can't. Why even bother? Don't go outside or they'll drone strike you. Don't make friends and organize because they are all feds. Just sit at home complaining on the internet, accomplishing nothing, while your age and BMI gradually climb. Don't vote or run for office because elections are fake. Don't try to join the system to change it from the inside because all your friends will hate you and call you a fed traitor.
The most tragic is this: right wingers are mad about Ruby Ridge. Timothy McVeigh blew up a huge VBIED to protest Ruby Ridge. Right wingers immediately and forever call him a fed. Lmao.
Even if he was a fed, isn't it better to take credit for it even just as a symbolic gesture of your frustration and what you could be capable of?