Russia: Bastion of Conspiracy Thinking

I'm starting to believe that there is a correlation between conspiracy thinking and a history of totalitarianism. If it's likely the government is out to get you, and you know it, then you will believe anything after than because it all seems reasonable.
PREVIEW: The Truthers' New Friends

Since these are not quite Soviet days, there was at least a semblance of debate. Several panelists, including a building expert and (amusingly) a retired KGB analyst, rejected the conspiracy theory. Vladimir Sukhoi, a former Channel One correspondent who was in Washington, D.C., on the day of the attacks and in New York a few days later, spoke movingly of the horrors he witnessed and said that he could not "betray" those memories by lending credence to Chiesa's thesis. Sukhoi also remarked that he had personally seen debris from Flight 77 at the Pentagon, though Chiesa's coauthor, French 9/11-conspiracy theorist Thierry Meyssan, earnestly assured him that he had not. Sukhoi listened with the patient, bemused expression of someone forced to endure the ravings of a lunatic.

Troofers: bridging the gap between self-deluded and whack-a-doodle.