Paranoia

Yesterday, my landlord's teenage son began asking me about US politics, whether Americans thought Bin Laden was a bad guy (yes), and whether we believed the Israelis or US government blew up the WTC. Clearly, he thought Bin Laden was okay and he told me he thought the Israelis dunnit. I didn't argue with him too much, because I doubted anything I could say would change his mind. Perhaps it was the lazy way out, but I kept thinking of an American guy I know who spent the first two days teaching computer science here trying to convince his class that the moon landing was not faked.

They didn't buy it.

There are apparently a good number of folks in the US who believe these zany conspiracy theories as well, but I'm no longer surprised when well educated 20-somethings I meet here are willing to believe any mad theory which suits their world view. It's gotten a bit disturbing, which might explain my sudden irrational paranoia about a new hire in our office, who acts very squirrelly around me and has now managed to get my address out of a colleague. I'm annoyed about the latter (Hello? Has NO ONE read the security manual???), and the problem is I can't argue that this guy doesn't fit the crazed terrorist profile because from everything I've seen and been reading lately, most of these terrorists aren't the poor and downtrodden -- they're the middle class and educated (see: "Understanding Terror Networks," by Marc Sageman for an interesting demographic study on just who these guys are). Okay, realistically, it's probably post traumatic stress from Afghanistan, and a few months from now I'll feel deeply ashamed that I ever thought anything so outrageous.

But for now I'm sticking with mad paranoia. Why not? Everyone else here does.