Despite being wordy, a bit confusing and very... Latour-ish, this article really hit home for me.  In the past couple of years, my dad, who has a lot of influence on me in terms of how I see the world, has changed a lot of his perspectives.  It's no longer MSNBC or CNN stations on the T.V. but instead he often retreats to watching the Alex Jones channel on youtube.  I will confess, I watch a lot of the conspiracy theory documentaries, such as End Game and Loose Change, and I am beginning to doubt a lot of the things that are pushed in our faces by the media everyday. While I do not think that you can take every conspiracy theory word for word, I think that a lot of them deserve more credit and attention than they get.

"Now we have the benefit of what can be called instant revisionism. The smoke of the event has not yet finished settling before dozens of conspiracy theories begin revising the official account, adding even more ruins to the ruins, adding even more smoke to the smoke. What has become of critique when my neighbor in 

the little Bourbonnais village where I live looks down on me as someone hopelessly nai¨ve because I believe that the United States had been attacked by terrorists? Remember the good old days when university professors 

could look down on unsophisticated folks because those hillbillies naı¨vely believed in church, motherhood, and apple pie? Things have changed a lot, at least in my village."

This segment from Latour essentially summarizes the paradigm shift and overall change in attitude of the public towards events in our lives and the general mechanism of how we react to major changes and traumatic events.  In some respects, I believe Latour is being very negative in this passage, somewhat concluding that the newfound instant revisionism is always jumping to conclusions and is often incorrect. I believe major traumatic events, such as 9-11, need this instant revisionism mindset to criticize the "why" they happened before worse things result from them, such as the war in the Middle East.  While I realize there are a multitude of factors that play into why we went to war in the Middle East, it is without a doubt that the 9-11 "terrorist" attacks sparked a widespread panic and  fear that mobilized citizens and gained support for one of the most pointless wars in history.  It is true that jumping to conclusions can definitely leave a lot of facts out in the dust, unanalyzed, but I believe conspiracy theories are not all hogwash and arise because there are holes in the stories that the media and government tell us.  Having people to critique the information that is spewed into our televisions and on our radio is just another system of checks and balances.  It prevents the people in power from only promoting and circulating information that they know their constituents want to hear.  I believe that there has been a huge attitude shift in the people of the United States, and we are on the brink of something quite dramatic.  A statistic I read a few days ago stated that gun sales have been at an all time high, with Americans buying over 5 million guns last month.  This to me indicates a revolution is in the works.  People are becoming more critical of this "reality" that is shown to them on the nightly news.  They are becoming more critical and are sick of being lied to. 

  The second part of this passage, where he discusses the change in attitudes of the "sophisticated/intelligent" towards the "unsophisticated/uneducated." This part kind of confuses me, because I believe the change he is discussing potentially isn't a bad thing.  Being in college, I have definitely encountered way more atheists than religious, and the religious that I have encountered are the ones that turn people on the fence off to the entire concept of religion entirely. I personally haven't put much thought into the issue, but I don't believe that "traditional values" are completely inconsistent or incompatible with being educated. 

Applying this change in mindset of instant revisionism to a common problem brings about the anti-vaccine lobby that had a lot of attention when Michele Bachmann was still a potential candidate for the GOP.  To assert that vaccines are the "cause" of autism or that they are "bad" because of the preservatives they contain or other ingredients, is very much jumping to conclusions and having the instant revisionism mindset.  Looking for answers, ignoring the facts.  After reading several journal articles by many neurologists and other researchers investigating autism, I am convinced that it is not the vaccines that are administered to young children, but rather the lack of a specific enzyme in the systems of these children, making it impossible for their bodies to filter out the heavy metals and preservatives that they encounter, some which are in vaccines.  This is where instant revisionism can be dangerous, because it causes a scare in people that forces them to make a decision or a judgment about something, ruling it to be "dangerous" and avoid it entirely.  

Criticisms are important because they keep those in power in check and they are a fundamental component of science.  Always question, always search for answers.  A later point made by Latour in this article regarding "critical barbaricary" is important to note, because it sets a standard or a paradigm for critics to operate within to have their thoughts be worthwhile or have a meaning.  It is important to maintain standards when criticizing anything, because criticism without warrants or facts hurts the entire skeptical institution.  To maintain a reality, it is important to seek facts and to construct your world viewpoint from those facts, to avoid being clouded by influential nonsense.