Is Crazy the New Normal?

Yesterday we had a fun trip to Vegan-Land where meat is verboten, leather is for losers, and domesticated animals are anathema -- except for the pet cats.

Today, lets go to Albanian Conspiracy-Ville. (I don't have a link to share, so you're going to have to trust me on this.)

Background: My wife teaches English as a Second Language at a community college, and this week she's doing a fairly innocuous unit on cross cultural communication, cultural relativism etc.

To spice things up, she showed a video interview with Michael Scheuer, formerly the head of the CIA's Bin Laden/Al Qaeda unit, in which he talks about AQ's part in what he calls a worldwide Islamic insurgency. Powerful stuff and a pretty good illustration of clashing cultures.

Today's Abomination: During the video, one of the Albanians in the class took issue with Scheuer, calling the interview "propaganda," and denying (wait for it... wait for it...) that Osama Bin Laden had anything at all to do with the 9/11 attacks -- or any other attacks for that matter.

According to this guy, Sheikh Osama is a victim of a US conspiracy, and has remained alone and bereft on his mountaintop, uninvolved in any violent acts.

Analysis: Crazy, huh? Just shows that anything you happen to consider a capital-F, plutonium-cored, gold-plated, 24-carat, Imperial Grand Champion Fact is probably considered rank nonsense by somebody else.