To hell with academia. If you want people to argue with, try talk radio.
The other day I was Dale Williams' guest on KTKK (K-Talk) out of Salt Lake City, during morning drive-time. KTKK is a big mainstream station in a conservative region. I didn't think I'd have to look too hard for an argument.
I started in about how 9/11 was a Zionist inside job...you know, the usual schtick, only a little edgier than usual.
I didn't get an argument from Dale. He agreed with me, and then some.
So we went looking for an argument. Dale opened the phone lines and challenged listeners: "If you disagree with Dr. Barrett, we'd like to hear from you." The phone boards lit up. I started rubbing my hands together.
But no luck! Caller after caller AGREED with us! Not one caller, in two hours of almost nonstop call-ins, doubted that 9/11 was a Zionist inside job designed to launch a long-term war on Islam.
The closest thing I got to an argument was a caller who wondered whether Muslims were helping set themselves up as patsies for false-flag hoaxes like 9/11 by beating their wives and stuff like that. I said that 90% of translations from Islamic-world media are provided to our media by MEMRI, a Mossad spin-off that cherry-picks news stories from the Muslim world to make Muslims look bad. Think of how the US would look in, say, Iran, if Iranian papers provided nothing but negative news about the US -- drunken wife-beatings, Christian serial killers, and so on. The caller agreed with me and hung up.
Since I couldn't find anyone to argue with me on mainstream Salt Lake City talk radio, I went out and found a guest for my own show who "doesn't believe in conspiracy theories." His name is David Macaray.