What makes you think that is the only reason someone would accept Apollo? What makes you think that accepting one single story MUST come out of unquestioning acceptance of all stories?

Do I think that abstinence-only education is the best way to prevent teen pregnancies? No? But the US Government has been pushing that false science, and even tried to force the Surgeon-General of the United States to parrot it. Do I think that Creationism, no matter what you call it, is on an even footing with Evolutionary Theory? No? But the US Government, in the form of State governments and school boards, has decided so several times. Do I think anthropogenic global warming is an illusion? No? But soon-to-be-ex-president Bush has been claiming this for years. Do I believe that Iraq had stockpiles of WMDs they were about to use on unsuspecting American civilians? No? But Rummy and his pets were all claiming that loudly, and even showing what they claimed were official CIA reports supporting that.

Perhaps I see the battle lines differently than you do. Apparently, in your mind, science is institutional, and science facts are tools of "The Government," used only to prop up it's agenda. So people fall neatly into one of two categories; those who know a little science and accept unconditionally everything "The Government" says, and those who are open-minded and free in part because they have carefully avoided learning any science in their lives.

The way I see it, the dividing line is between truth and lies. Governments lie. People lie. People also lie to themselves without intending to. One of the few certainties anyone can hold on to is facts that have been vetted by scientific method; by the combative, competative, drive to falsify theories and to drive out any idea that has not been rigorously tested.

One one side is the honest pursuit of knowledge. On the other side is every variety of snake oil salesman; all the way from the administration spokesperson who claims WMDs were in Iraq, down to the online charlatan that thinks if he can show enough video clips out of context he can make the credulous and weak-minded agree with his version of reality.

There is plenty of politics in science. There's plenty of secrets, cover-ups, dirty pool, old paradigms, sloppy work, and just plain old dishonesty. But it still, because of the built-in corrective mechanisms, remains one of the most honest things we do. And there are plenty of Big Science projects that are awash with politics and cronyism and Big Money syndrome. The Apollo Project was a rare bird in the kind and amount of openess the entire project was conducted in. But then, that was an age when people cared, and had the intellectual tools to understand what they were provided access to. These days it is rare to find people who know much about what is happening in space...and even fewer who have a glimmering what is going on in high-energy physics (to name another arena of Big Science).

At the level of basic science; at the level of ordinary physics, geometry, optics, thermodynamics, chemistry, the information that is available about the Apollo Project adds up. It all works within the framework of science that is personally verifiable -- verifiable in direct personal experiment.

And 98% of the common hoax claims also fail at this same basic level; they fail to science that can be discovered by anyone with a few basic tools and the time to do some basic experiments.

So, yes, there is an "us" versus "them" angle to this, but it is not between "free thinkers" and "sheeplike followers of the US Government." It is between people who are willing to test their ideas with rigor, and people who are willing to not just be emotionally convinced themselves, but will lie and obfusticate to convince others.