Help Me

I would prefer not to believe in conspiracy.

I’d rather believe in Santa Claus.

I want to believe in America.

I don’t want to believe that the United States provoked the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor.

I don’t want to believe that Franklin Roosevelt or Henry Stimson knew about the impending attack and then let it happen. Nor do I want to believe that they were gratified that it happened. In fact, I will refuse to believe the entry in Stimson’s diary that he was relieved that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.

I want to believe it was an unprovoked sneak attack like Time Life says it was.

I want to believe In the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

I want to believe that it was legitimate.

It’s easier for me to sleep at night knowing that Vietnamese patrol boats attacked us.

I want to believe that we got bin Laden in a legitimate raid.

I don’t want to believe that it was faked in order to boost morale and justify a build-up of troops in Iraq.

I don’t want to hear any evidence that bin Laden had died five years prior to the raid.

It’s easier for me to sleep at night knowing that America is the good guy.

That’s what I was taught when I was young.

I was also taught that George Washington never told a lie, and that he threw a silver dollar across the Potomac river.

Those are nice things to believe in. I will suspend my knowledge that the Potomac river is 1100 feet at the narrowest and the record distance for a thrown baseball is approximately 400 feet.

I don’t want to believe that our government intentionally imploded the World Trade Center in order to justify the war in Iraq and other countries in the Middle East.

I want to believe in the pancaking theory of one floor falling upon another, and then another, and then another. This theory is comforting to me as it reminds me of the Domino Theory in Vietnam where one country falls to communism, then another, then another.

I don’t want to believe physicists who tell me that steel melts at 2300°F and that jet fuel only burns at 800°F. I don’t want to believe physicists who tell me that it’s physically impossible for the World Trade Center to collapse in free-fall unless the legs are kicked out from underneath it.

Why would I want to believe in that?

I have better things to worry about.

I have a whole life outside of conspiracy.

I don’t want to believe that COVID-19 was developed in US labs and intentionally set down in China by our CIA.

I want to believe our authorities when they tell us that the mask works, that we need to shut down society and shelter inside.

I want to flatten the curve. And I want to avoid super-spreader events. I will avoid at all cost my own experience in which I almost never got sick while being up close with sick children for thirty years sans mask. I will not connect my lack of sickness with the fact that I washed my hands assiduously. I will continue to believe in the mask. I will believe adamantly in all the phony studies that the New England Journal of Medicine promotes.

I don’t want to believe that our government owned by Corporate America used COVID-19 in order to attack small business so that corporations can grow even larger.

I want to believe that the price of gas as it stands now is occurring because of a world shortage of oil.

Even though I know that the United States is a net exporter of energy, I don’t want to believe that our government would rig the price of gas higher to hurt us.

I want to believe in the America I grew up in.

I don’t want to believe that our government would lie to us about Ukraine. I don’t want to believe the numerous authorities on YouTube who told me that the Ukrainians had no chance of winning that war, that the Ukrainians really are Nazis, and that these Nazis were supported by the United States government.

I want to believe that the moon landing was legitimate.

I don’t want to believe that our government made this up in order to sell the rest of the world on America being the best form of government.

I don’t want to believe that the existing technology in the 1960s was slightly above a transistor radio, that we had no real miniaturization of computers, and that we needed a huge amount of thrust to get off the moon.

I want to believe that a lunar excursion module could easily lift off the moon with virtually no thrusting rocket. I want to believe that the uneven surface of the moon combined with the lack of sophistication of computer technology would play no role in lifting a module off the moon.

I don’t want to ask if it was morally permissible to send a man down to the surface of the moon and up again.

I don’t want to look like a nut.

I don’t want people laughing at me.

Why would I want that?

It’s much easier for me to believe in Santa Claus.

Please help me to believe in Santa Claus again.

I’d prefer having the mind of a five-year-old.

Sincerely,

Archer Crosley

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