Blog Post 6

The arguments in Loose Change were presented effectively, as outlined in the chapter through all three ways. One could say the bulk of the argument from the film consists of sowing distrust; distrust of the government and its officials. The film does this by pointing out what seem to be flaws in the U.S. government’s official reports of each of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, therefore instilling distrust and identifying the government as a mistrusted agency. For example, while discussing the attack on the Pentagon, the narrator pointed out mechanical flaws in the way the plane would have crashed into the building, spelling out that, unlike the government initially told its citizens, a plane did not crash into the Pentagon, but something else did. The narrator blatantly told the audience, after lining up the compiled evidence, that the government lied to its citizens and cannot be trusted. Throughout the entirety of the film, the narrator was pointing out inconsistencies in what the government officially stated about the 9/11 attacks and what the “evidence” the film presented said, being interviews, video footage of bombs detonating in the World Trade Center, all spelling out the “truth”. Also, reiterating the point that the government has been hiding the truth from the American people as well as trying to cover up what really happened, and the continuous use of words such as secrecy, mystery, and impossible to describe each attack. With each inconsistency being presented, the filmmakers present an effective argument by instilling distrust little by little in the eyes of the viewers.  

Another effective argument made in the film was through the use of implausible labels, in other words, challenging the believability of the story the government. The film did this by pointing out the ‘flaws” in the explanation the media and government officials gave, and making them sound heinous and deceptive. Each attack was labeled as a mystery according to the conspiracy theorists, explaining that the government’s explanation of them could never be true, so what really happened is a mystery. The film labeled the occurrences on September 11, 2001 as a mystery, an oddity, and the government’s explanations as impossible and deceptive, being that some of the results of the attacks were due to malfunctions and accidents, while conspiracy theorists state that the government is framing the incidents as circumstantial, they must have been a deliberate attack by the government.