The June 6th issue of National Review On Dead Tree had an intriguing essay by Andrew Roberts on Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America’s Growing Conspiracist Underground, by Canadian journalist Jonathan Kay. I haven’t read Kay’s book yet, but it certainly sounds fascinating — and timely, if not a few years overdue. As Kay does in his book, Roberts begins his review by asking how and why so many Americans have gone off the rails, and into the tall grass of conspiracy theories of all sorts. (Subscription required to read at NRO):
How can a nation founded on a Constitution that, in its logic and rationality, is “the crown jewel of the Enlightenment” have so fallen prey to conspiracy theorists that today no fewer than 36 percent of Americans believe that it is either “somewhat likely” or “very likely” that “federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them”? How can it be that one-sixth of Americans think it “somewhat likely” that “the collapse of the twin towers in New York was aided by explosives secretly planted in the two buildings”?
If you yourself believe either of those things, stop reading now, and please don’t bother sending me your green-ink scrawlings from the Planet Zog, as I get quite enough of them already. (As I was reading this book on a flight from Milwaukee to La Guardia, the lady next to me told me that JFK had been assassinated by forces loyal to Karl Rove and the Bush family. When I pointed out that Mr. Rove could only have been about 13 at the time, she replied: “That’s old enough to fire a rifle in Texas!”)
AdvertisementIn attempting to understand why conspiracy theories are thriving in modern America, the (Canadian) National Post journalist Jonathan Kay immersed himself in the Truther movement, the people who believe 9/11 was an inside job, and also investigated various other groups, such as those who believe that vaccines cause autism, Israel controls America, George W. Bush is a follower of Nazi ideology, and FEMA is preparing to imprison political dissidents prior to imposing a totalitarian New World Order. Kay has hit these nutjobs’ websites, attended their rallies, interviewed their leaders, gone on their marches, and delved deep into their sadly twisted minds.
As well as being superbly written, utterly absorbing, and occasionally very funny, this is an important book, as it investigates why we currently have what the author calls “a countercultural rift in the fabric of consensual American reality, a gaping cognitive gap into which has leaped a wide range of political paranoiacs previously consigned to the lunatic fringe — Larouchites, UFO nuts, libertarian survivalists, Holocaust deniers, and a thousand other groups besides.” As my mother used to say: “There are more out than in.”
Kay notes how some periods in history have created more conspiracies than others, specifying France after the Revolution, America’s Great Plains after the late-19th-century depression, Germany after the Great War, and the entire Western world after JFK’s death, Vietnam, Watergate, and the rise of the 1960s counterculture. He argues that “these have been the moments when shrieking prophets and conspiracy theorists have found their moments.” The trauma of 9/11 was clearly another such moment, and, in Kay’s view, has created “a state of intellectual agitation that isn’t a temporary phenomenon” but instead “has far-reaching social, political, and psychological consequences that have yet to be fully absorbed or understood.”
Conspiracy theories provide what has always been demanded in a secular age, “a cosmic explanation for evil,” and this also has taken place in today’s postmodernist intellectual environment in which, as Kay puts it, “thanks to the rise of identity politics, it is imagined that words — and even facts — have no meaning independent of the emotional effect they produce upon their audience. Everyone feels entitled to their own private reality.”
Just ask former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, as Mark Steyn noted in the summer of 2004, shortly after the Democratic politician resigned from office:
“My truth is that I am a gay American,” announced Gov. James McGreevey to the people of New Jersey last Thursday.
That’s such an exquisitely contemporary formulation: ”my” truth. Once upon a time, there was only ”the” truth. Now everyone gets his own — or, as the governor put it, ”One has to look deeply into the mirror of one’s soul and decide one’s unique truth in the world.” For Jim McGreevey, his truth is that he’s a gay American; for others in the Garden State, the truth about McGreevey is that he’s a corrupt sexual harasser who put his lover on the state payroll in a critical homeland security post, and whose I-am-what-I-am confessional is a tactical feint that distracts the media sob sisters from the fact that, as his final service to the Democratic Party, he’s resigned in such a way as to deny the people an early vote on his successor.
We’ll see whose truth prevails in the fullness of time.
An expedient postmodern Oprahfied excuse is a useful device for a politician while falling on his sword, and in the case of Anthony Weiner’s elite media defenders, conspiracy theories became a sort of modified limited hangout to explain away his very public online mistakes, while they hoped the scandal would blow over. But for millions of everyday people, as Kathy Shaidle likes to say, paraphrasing fellow Canadian journalist Robert Fulford, conspiracy theories are “history for stupid people.”
But they also provide some nifty mental escape hatches, particularly for people who consider themselves anything but stupid. Believing that George Bush personally blew up the WTC avoids any introspection whatsoever about the state of Islamofascism, and thus avoids the doubleplusungood crimethink that could occur when questioning the religion of multiculturalism. And second, it takes into account the tremendous scope of the end result of the incident in question, and builds a sufficiently large mechanism to have caused it. Instead of a handful of attackers armed with box cutters on 9/11, presumably the average truther pictures in his mind a crack CIA squad parachuting or helicoptering before September 11th and rigging the WTC with explosives, Mission: Impossible-style.
Similarly, instead of one crazed Communist shooting JFK (and thus risking having to think that maybe there’s something to the Cold War after all), in his 1991 film, filmed at the corner of the Manchurian Candidate and the Parallax View, Oliver Stone has half the country involved in shooting Kennedy, from the mob to the CIA to the Joint Chiefs to Lyndon Johnson. (Stone’s film wasn’t exactly the first drama to make that last claim, incidentally.) Perhaps so many go down that particular rabbit hole because the size of Stone’s fevered conspiracy and the planning that would be required to pull it off equalizes much better with the end result — the killing of a beloved young president — than the randomness of one rather pathetic man. (Though as we’ve seen time and time again this past decade with those who’ve been struck by “sudden jihad syndrome,” they’re all pathetic Travis Bickle-style losers, until they get “lucky” and pull it off.)
Ah! So you’re one of them. We’ll be keeping an eye on you, this Kay fellow and your little dog too.
How does one square that circle? Easy: because they pride themselves on their intelligence and how it separates them from the vulgar masses, they can be seduced into accepting theories that promise them that THEY are the only ones who can perceive the real truth, who aren’t duped like the vulgar masses. And if they think that government has the potential to solve everything, it’s a corollary to believe that it can harm anything it wants to if in the “wrong (opposite party) hands”.
As to the Kennedy Shooting.
I do not have a theory, but as a lifelong shooter I do have an analysis. (I never gave the whole thing any thought until the day I visited the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas.)
Lee Harvy Oswald was a Marksman. That’s the Bronze medal of shooting. He missed not qualifying by 1 point. So he was Barely a Marksman. I have never failed to break Expert (the Gold Medal) when shooting a qualifying round, usually within 3 of a perfect score. If I could get a perfect score offhand, I’d have a perfect score overall.
When I visited the 6th Floor Museum I realized one thing very quickly.
I could NOT have done it. Therefore I had doubts that Oswald could either.
First off, Oswald had a plum shot for someone with his ability before the motorcade turned. When the Presidential Limmo was headed straight for him on N. Houstin street, he had trajectory, gravity, and motion working with him. It also would have accomodated his tendency to shoot low. He had establishd this tendency both in qualifying rounds and when he missed General Walker at 100 FEET, not yards FEET. Note: General Walker was a starionary Target, and he missed.
When the Motorcade was headed toward him he also had the advantage of zero interferance from the windo frame.
Yet he waited for a shot that required him to 1) Lean out of the window and angle himself to see the target, 2) Put himself in a position to have the window frame interfere with his operating the action of the rifle 3) Had the Motorcade moving away from him, forcing an upward track 4) Had the Motorcade moving downward and leftward on Elm Street making corrections for this shot 4 axises. (Downward angle, Downward Motion, Leftward Motion, Moving away.)
To date; NO ONE has been able to fire three shots from either the Modified or Unmodified version of the rifle Oswald used in the shooting within the allotted time frame. NOTE: That is from a free standing position as well, not leaning out of a window and twisting oneself to see the target.
So why did an adequate (at best) shot forgo an easy sitting-duck target for a difficult target? My personal conclusion was that he was instructed to do so. That would allow someone who can be trusted to hit a target to take a single shot from the grassy knoll and insure that the job gets done.
Who was Involved? Oswald for sure and someone else, but I have no thoughts on who that was. It was definatly a small group of 1 or 2 others, no more, or someone would have talked by now.
Call me crazy if you will, but I know what I know, and my analysis is good.
You are wrong. Jack Parr brought a Gunnery Sargent on the original Tonight Show and he demonstrated that it could be done. In the Gunny’s opinion any Marine could have done it.
My father thought any good soldier could have done it.
Only that was simply a demonstration of cycling the rifle, it did not include hitting a moving target.
I saw a episode on DISCOVERY a while back, where a shooter replicated the feat. Of course, he was a British National Rifle Champion and had a few rehearsals.
You know, when I was in the Army I also qualified as Expert at the rifle range, and I had many of the same thoughts you did when I went to Dallas. Why Oswald didn’t go for the easier shot when the motorcade was coming toward him on Houston is a complete mystery to me. Maybe he hadn’t quite gotten his nerve up yet, I don’t know. But if you read Posner’s excellent book ‘Case Closed’ I think you’ll see that the only reasonable evaluation of the evidence is that JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.
Thank you for your excellent description of the difficulty in making those shots. My favorite oddity of this whole assasination investigation was that it was a young Congressional staffer who later became the US Senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Spector who came up with the single bullet theory, and boy that always took some mighty strong praying to believe.
I think the fact that analysis of the audio tapes made that day in Dallas have established that for sure FOUR and maybe more shots were fired. So that definitely eliminates Oswald as a ‘lone Nut’ shooter. That being so then a triangulation of fire would necessitate Oswald (if it was actually him who shot from the Book Depository in my opinion he was as he said a Patsy put there to take the fall) and the others needed to wait until Kennedy got into the ‘Kill Zone’ where he could be the focus of a shooter on the Grassy Knoll, the Book Depository and the Cal Tech or the other High Rise behind him. But was it the ‘The Mob’ the ‘Secret Service’ ‘The Cubans’ or maybe even Johnson himself who wanted Kennedy dead we may never know.
Aww, jeez, you moved the rock!
People think “3 shots in ### seconds?” No, the time count starts with the first shot, so it was 2 shots in the alloted time.
I dont know about the specifics of the JFK shooting as you seem to….but I used to have a 6.5 Carcano and I could never hit a damn thing with it. As a shooter I am pretty decent.
During his Marine Corps service in December 1956, Oswald scored a rating of sharpshooter (twice achieving 48 and 49 out of 50 shots during rapid fire at a stationary target 200 yards [183 m] away using a standard issue M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle), although in May 1959, he qualified as a marksman (a lower classification than that of sharpshooter). Military experts, after examining his records, characterized his firearms proficiency as “above average” and said he was, when compared to American civilian males of his age, “an excellent shot”.
May of 59, the pink rat was trying to get out of the corps so he could defec to USSR
Head shot was at a distance of 88 yds. That’s not impressive. You’re also assuming that since he was hit in the head that’s what Oswald was aimimg at.
Travelling up Houston is not an easier shot as Oswald would have to keep readjusting in a steeper and steeper incline, instead of a left to right progression along Elm
My view on conspiracy theories is that they are widely adopted when elites and power structures (looking at you, media) tell lies all the time. Movies, TV, commercials, all depict the PC reality that the elites/media wish for, instead of actual reality.
People are lied to every day, by elites promulgating a PC reality that they don’t believe (by living their own lives in exclusively White and upper class areas), and thus have no confidence to adopt anything that the media says as truth. Once leaders are known to lie in society, the volume and nature of lies allows any fantasy to take hold.
Being niche and then connected by the internet is no real explanation. I like and use Linux, but its use by the general public, though it is free, and amply documented for some distributions (such as Ubuntu) is minuscule. Most people stick with Windows or Mac OSX out of convenience. It takes an enormous amount of lying, constantly to make the most idiotic of conspiracy theories acceptable to large amounts of the public.
I do think the desire to avoid reconciling logical failures in world-views are part of it. But a lot of it comes down to lies that everyone knows are false.
“My view on conspiracy theories is that they are widely adopted when elites and power structures (looking at you, media) tell lies all the time.”
“whisky” I think you put your finger on it. The blogs have been full of articles lately trying to paint anyone who believes in “conspiracies” as some one who should not be listened to or even allowed to speak because they are “crazy”. I find this interesting for the reason you point out.
It is a critical time for the elites to be able to continue to pull the wool over the people’s eyes and what with their normal mind control/propaganda outlets having broken down by becoming overly biased they are desperate to stifle any of those independent thoughts.
Unfortunately for them the country still has enough freedom loving thinkers who don’t like to be told to just shut up and sit down. Obesience just isn’t in the genes of a people who have faught to maintain their liberty from the days of the first Tea Party in 1773.
After all the sovereignty of the United States of America rests in we the People not you the self annointed. Funny how people get upset when you start trying to rob them not only of all their property but also their liberty. If I was an elitist I would be calling anyone that uttered any uncensored thought a “danger to society” which is the next step I assume.
Ah, Ed, that’s what they *want* you to believe!
As for JFK, I’m no wingnut (really!) but if you believe it was a lone job by Mr. Oswald, I’ve got a grassy knoll in Dallas to sell you. Refute David Lifton’s excellent and meticulously researched book (“Best Evidence”, 1980) on that little episode and I’ll be convinced. He simply works through the *public* record and can’t make it work. No conspiracy, just good evidence. I wouldn’t dismiss good skepticism just because a cadre of other crazies happen to agree with their results.
I guess conspiracy theories are like being paranoid…just because it’s a theory doesn’t mean sometimes there isn’t actually a conspiracy. Recall the conspiracy theorists like Churchill who thought Hitler was up to no good while others were proclaiming “peace in our time”.
While it’s true that most conspiracy theories are absurd …
Can’t help remembering this little …
“Just because I’m paranoid, it doesn’t mean that people aren’t out to get me.”
Two observations:
1. I am with Whiskey (at 1:55) that big conspiracy theories come with media support. In this sense, the internet is rather a force against them.
2. I once read, can’t remember where, a nice explanation of the popularity of conspiracy theories. People find it hard to believe that big events like JFK murder or 9/11 were caused by little people by little means. They look for more important perpetrators, in measure to the weight of the event. Hence the theories that take it out of the hands of the lone gunman or a handfull of terrorists to put the events in bigger hands, CIA/Mossad/government/Rove/Bush/you name it.
Anat,
I tried to mention that in that post above, perhaps too elliptically. And as William Manchester wrote in the New York Times in 1992:
But that doesn’t stop many from looking.
The point is often made, but it’s a good one. There’s a great episode of Quantum Leap about the JFK assassination. Al is a conspiracy true-believer at first, but he wises up by the end of the episode; he comments that “It’s more comforting to believe in plots, because if Kennedy could be killed that easily, by one sicko, what hope is there for the rest of us?”
I’m personally fascinated by conspiracy theories given it’s indication of how people think. Whiskey’s right, lack of transparency and outright lying give traction to theories. One thing tends to be true however, some facts given the ‘official’ explanation of things don’t square with reality or Occams Razor. That’s what fascinates me, not that the conspiracy (theory) is true, but that some things seem to be purposely muddled. For Security reasons or CYA reasons (given where the truth will lead), who knows. But trust in government is headed for an all time low, regardless of party. There’s a reason for calling the party in power the ‘ruling party’. I’d give examples but I don’t want to be labeled.
Mr. Driscoll, very interesting article.
You qualify your “greatest gang of criminals” with “ever to seize control of a modern state” which is makes yours a true statement. “[G]reatest crime, greatest criminals,” however, has to be an honor awarded to either the Soviets, Communist Chinese, Khmer Rouge, North Koreans, or Muslim conquerors of India.
Ed,
It’s not as if the Government doesn’t add to the suspicions of the people regarding thier own veracity when it comes to some events. It is quite clear that the government will provide a ‘story line’ for the poeple’s ‘own good.’
Cases in point:
Fort Hood Shooting – No Terrorism here folks, lone looney acting alone, no Islam connection.
College SUV Rampage – No Terrorism here folks, lone looney acting alone, no Islam connection.
Recruiter shooting – No Terrorism here folks, lone looney acting alone, no Islam connection.
Times Square Bombing – Must be the Tea Party Lone Looney Acting alone…
A conspiracy only need be more than ONE person. The JFK shooting need only be TWO or THREE participants at best.
And the flip-side of that is “The reason people refuse to believe in conspiracies is that they find it discomfiting to think that their own government is infiltrated with criminal schemers.” If the conspiracies are true, your vote doesn’t count.
Just more evidence that psychology isn’t as much as science as it is a conversational tool or debating artifice.
Lee Harvey Oswald may have been a KGB agent, trained by the KGB. See his record. Krushchev made remarks suggesting this.
Am I the only person alive who doesn’t give a rat’s patootie about who shot JFK and why, or about whether UFOs exist, or about survivalism?
I knew survivalists and conspiracy theorists back in the 1970s. They were boring back then too. Many of them are dead now. Of natural causes.
I am confident that we actually did send men to the Moon, and I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in wasting my time trying to prove this to anybody who thinks otherwise.
So here’s my point. These things are all DISTRACTIONS, much like the Weinergate scandal. They take attention away from far more pressing, though perhaps less sensational, matters.
You’re concerned about whether Lee Harvey Oswald was a KGB agent. But Oswald is dead and gone, so is the KGB, and so is the former Soviet Union.
I am a lot more concerned about the fact that, RIGHT NOW, we have a Muslim Brotherhood mole in the office, and probably also the bedroom, of Hillary Clinton, our current Secretary of State. (See: Anthony Weiner’s mother-in-law, Saleha Abedin, is connected with the MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD)
Instead of chasing these phantoms, we ought to be worrying about known, provable, and very real national security risks – above all, about a president who has been selling out our allies (especially Israel) and helping our enemies by supporting the Muslim agenda everywhere in the world.
I wonder whether people are peddling these stupid theories in an effort to keep our minds off the real issues.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Some us just find it so hard to believe the hole we have gotten ourselves into that we are trying to dig up the roots and see where it started to come apart. But hey, like you I am well aware of the current mess. Propaganda is part of the problem though and to win this particular battle we are currently engaged in we will need to control the message that the rest of the country hears. That isn’t going to be easy in a country where “freedom of the press” is heavily under assualt on all fronts.
Something to bear in mind: The belief in a conspiracy always begins with the perception or construction of a plausible common motive.
To hold a conspiracy theory requires that you believe that a significant number of people — usually, people in power — share a single, well-defined motivation, and moreover, share it strongly and single-mindedly enough to put themselves at great risk by acting on it. This is possible only when the power structure becomes remote — that is, when those who wield power are sufficiently detached from “ordinary folks” that we groundlings cannot see them as comparable to us in the most important ways.
In brief: the proliferation of conspiracy theories, nearly all of which are ludicrous ab initio, is a symptom of a genuine malady: the creation of a privileged class that wields all power and is ready, willing, and able to select its successors according to its own arbitrary criteria.
Food for thought.
Good point.
It’s the Internet. In the old days, you still had crazy people with all sorts of conspiracy theories. You just didn’t hear about them because they didn’t have a way to get their crazy ideas out to the general public. But then came the Internet and everything changed. Suddenly, irresponsible morons who believed that we were the ones who blew up the World Trade Center and not Islamic fanatics began pushing their views on the Internet, especially with doctored or very much “enhanced” photographs and videos. And that’s all you needed. All the crazy people around the planet suddenly found a home and were eager to snap up all of the junk their fellow crazies were dishing out. And so began the 9/11 “Truther” syndrome, something I find as hateful as Islamic Radicalism or even Communism.
So if you want to blame somebody or something for the wild spread of all these conspiracy theories, blame the Internet. The Internet has developed into a powerful tool to spread information. It has also developed into a powerful tool for crazy people, like 9/11 “Truthers” and Islamic Radicals, to communicate with each other. So I guess we have to take the good with the bad if we want to keep this new-fangled invention.
Precisely. ~30% of the public always was willing to believe anything, including the imminent rapture. They’re just more visible now. And I see no evidence that susceptibility to conspiratorial thinking is a uniquely American phenomenon; quite to the contrary, I think it’s more common in Europe, and most common in the Arab world.
Unanswered questions do not equate to a conspiracy theory. There are lots of unanswered questions about Obama’s background. As for JFK put me down solidly on the conspiracy side. Here’s the thing. If the the JFK assassination was viewed as a run-of-the-mill homicide, murder by gunshot, and if you applied all the normal forensics, investigating techniques, witness testimony and rules of evidence then Oswald is quickly eliminated as a suspect. Fact is there is not a single piece of evidence against Oswald that could survive cross examination in a legitimate homicide trial as opposed to the kangaroo court known as the Warren Commission.
Former Dallas Chief of Police Jesse Curry sums it up. He once said to a reporter “We don’t have any proof that Oswald fired the rifle and never did, nobody’s yet been able to put him in that buiding with a gun in his hand.”
Oswald said he never killed anyone.
How about the police officer.
The possibility is he was a dupe.
The probability was he was a delusional schizoid.
Had he lived he would have been another OJ on the golf course seeking out the killers of Nicole Brown – Ron Goldman.
Judge Ito is the mindless truther who doesn’t know fantasy from reality.
Don’t overlook the mainstreaming of sociopaths as legitimate voices by the MSM as a major factor for the rise of the conspiracy culture. Just think about all the loons in organizations like PETA who get treated like sages in media. It is a short step from giving face time on the nightly news to PETA to treating truthers as equal holders of the truth.
Typical hand-waving, combined with over-generalizing and pop-psychologizing, and, of course, no answers to the well-framed, evidence-based questions posed by David Ray Griffin, on the topic of 9/11.
But I’ve just wasted my time: the mere suggestion that 9/11 was an inside job is, to Mr. Driscoll, prima facie evidence that someone has “gone off the rails.” Perhaps he can be persuaded to read Griffin’s “Cognitive Infiltration” to ascertain the degree to which his punditry dovetails with the inquisitorial interests of Obama appointee Cass Sunstein.
you mean the one and only cass sunstein?
the next possible obama appointee to the supreme court?
the prim and perfect little statist who believes economic value and private property are not natural occurrences but, instead, it is better for people like him and his authoritarian cronies to redistribute wealth?
you definitely get it right about “inquisitorial interests” but not in the way you think you do—
Most of it may come down to this: People develop a worldview and then move heaven and Earth to fit things into it. If you’d already decided that a born-again Texas governor with a southern accent was a fiend incarnate, it’s not much of a jump to see him as the true reason why the towers fell. I have a friend who’s a trial lawyer (in other words, he has a lot of his own money riding on the strength of his judgment and ability to assess evidence) who was ready to bet me, in the context of the 2004 election that he was CERTAIN W would lose, that W would stage a Nazi-style putsch to stay in power. The fact that W never had a fascist bone in his body made absolutely no difference to my friend, who otherwise seems quite reasonable (other than voting for O).
If anyone is interested (stops his ears against the thunderous shouts of “No! No!”), I’ve posted additional thoughts on the subject here.
Up until recently I, like most people, accepted the standard narrative of the events surrounding 9/11, and regarded the Truthers as quintessential conspiracy theorists who were merely using the incident to drive a political agenda. All that changed after I read Judy Wood’s book entitled “Where Did the Towers Go?” In it she introduces the reader to the very peculiar, but rarely reported, physical evidence surrounding what occurred that day, but allows the reader to draw their own conclusions from it. There is so much more to this story than most people realize. No one who reads this book with an open mind, and who makes an honest attempt to explain the bizarre forensic evidence using conventional physical principles, could ever think about 9/11 and the destruction of the Twin Towers the same way again.
You’re accepting that book as truth. I’ve heard lots of “evidence” which turned out to be flat-out lies.
My attitude with any conspiracy is “show me what you got.” I’m ready for anything. But the “9/11 was an inside job” people have given me carefully edited truth and absolute lie every time.
They’ve had their say with me, and they’ve blown it every time.
Ohioland,I am structural engineer with over 20 yrs of practice in some of the best companies in the world. I’ve seen the forensic evidence. Those planes did bring the towers down. Don’t belive the pseudo-evidence presented by non-technical people. They don’t know what they are talking about.
I have no real opinion on most current “conspiracy theories” except that I find it odd that the very main stream media who lies constantly and is little more than a public propaganda mill, seems to love the term “conspiracy theory” to tar as silly or crazy any thing that doesn’t jive with whatever lie they are trying to perpetrate.
In history, if you wait long enough a little bit of the “truth” starts to come out from behind all the various interpretations of the various sides. As a person who enjoys studying history, I have found that often even after fifty to sixty years it is still difficult to tell what really happened in some pretty critical situations if the elite power structures that had a dog in the fight are still in power.
This is sheer speculation built on an interesting but as yet unproven theory.The theory: There is something called the “hygiene hypothesis” in immunology. Crudely put, part of our immune system evolved to deal with dirt and keep our parasite burden down to a dull roar. As our food has gotten more sanitary, that part of the immune system finds itself unemployed, and, like a working sheepdog with nothing constructive to do, invents its own job, which we call allergy, among other things.
The sheer speculation: I wonder how many conspiracy theorists have religions with difficult and paradoxical theologies? Maybe their wired to be true believers but don’t have a religion that keeps them busy and off the streets.
FWIW, a long time ago I heard “somewhere” that polio epidemics were related to indoor plumbing, which had removed Americans from “low levels” of exposure to the polio virus. I’ve never seen that discussed anywhere and have no idea whether this has any validity.
Not quite your point as this is more an example of the immune system not functioning well from lack of practice rather than its finding other mischief to engage in when not challenged sufficiently.
Our political class seems to have no antibodies where foreign and domestic threats are concerned but that’s a topic for another day.
The only JFK conspiracy that makes sense to me is that it was a Mafia hit.
1) Joe Kennedy had been a bootlegger, was involved with mobsters at some level.
2) John was sleeping with a mobster’s girlfriend, was there communications going on between Kennedy & the Chicago mafia? (He only won the election because the Chicago election fraud outweighed downstate Illinois fraud, which is why Nixon didn’t challenge).
3) RFK started to aggressively go after the mafia, was there an “understanding” with Joe Kennedy that John broke by putting Robert in charge of the DOJ?
4) Jack Ruby also had mob connections, was he leaned on to kill Oswald, knowing the lesser evil was that he’d spend the rest of his life in jail?
Russians were smart enough to know that if they did such a thing, they’d risk nuclear war. Castro’s smart enough to know that if he did it, we’d invade with righteous indignation and all he had worked for would be gone.
That’s not the only one that makes sense.
I can believe that a tiny cabal inside the govt. offed him because he was a horrible security risk – an irresponsible, hedonistic buffoon who was sleeping around with a suspected communist spy: Ellen Rometsch.
If I found out that my prez was sleeping with the enemy, I’d off him too. Country first. Better to kill him in public and make a martyr out of him than try to drag everything through the scandal/hearing process.
Not all conspiracies are evil.
A small bit of obscure information from my personal experience. In 1963 after John Kennedy was shot John Pastore, US Senator from Rhode Island was briefly on the cover of Life magazine I believe as a potential running mate as Vice President with Lyndon Johnson. Being from RI and at that time in a small Connecticut with the twelve year old nephew of John O Pastore, it was clear to me at twelve and to anyone else who grew up in the Raymond Patriarka mafia controlled state of RI in the period that no one would ever put a mafia controlled politican in as his Vice Presidential candidate. John Pastore was quickly passed over for other more “acceptable” candidates BUT even at twelve I thought it very odd that if Kennedy had been murdered as claimed that the mafia would all of a sudden be asking for such a major “give”. I still don’t have a clue who really killed Kennedy or why, but that sure looked like a requested payoff to me.
Excellent point all. Add to it, though, that Oswald was a defector to the USSR, had married a Russian and kept close contacts with the Soviet consulate.
We’ll never know, but I could buy that Lee was trained by the KGB and helped by the Mafia.
Historians are guilty of the same offense, though on a more sophisticated scale:
They will research endlessly and debate endlessly about why some battle turned out in such a surprising way, or why this or that political compromise did or didn’t happen. Elaborate explanations–economic, political–will be concocted to offer explanation.
When the real truth is that history is populated by stupid people making stupid decisions, and crazy people doing crazy things. It’s populated by accidents, inadvertent encounters, natural disasters too.
Barbara Tuchman, in her book “The March of Folly,” tackled this head on. Why did Britain behave so badly toward the American colonies that they revolted and sought independence? Because King George III was a moron who acted stupidly, that’s why. A much smarter king might have handled it much better, and the American colonies would have ended up like Canada.
Stuff happens, and you end up with a stupid king or a stupid military commander or a lunatic with a gun.
It’s more comforting to believe that all bad things are the work of some Devil (supernatural or human), than to be forced to shrug one’s shoulders and admit that “Stuff happens.”
And in todays Pajamas Media — a story theorizing that Cong. Weiner’s disgrace was orchestrated by — cue scary music “THE” Muslims!!!!! If it’s in PJM, does that mean it’s not a conspiracy theory?
So a conspiracy nut figures he has two options. He can accept the mainstream narrative and be one of the sheeple with wool pulled over his eyes by the evil forces. Or he can subscribe to a conspiracy theory which will make him different from, and presumably superior to, mere credulous hoi polloi.
A third option, seldom considered, is not to give a damn. You want to be outside the mainstream, then you have to be a spectator – someone who watches the official-narrative-subscribers and the conspiracy-theory-believers arguing with each other and writes amusing little articles about them.
I could never make it through any book that purports to examine the psychology of conspiracy theorists. (I couldn’t even make it through this article on the book!)
I’m really sick to death of the theorizing on why people theorize. As Joe Friday would say, “Just the facts, ma’am.” What do they believe, and where are they wrong? As I said in a post here last week: I can break down every piece of “We never went to the moon” nonsense without ever claiming to have uncovered the motives of my opponent, and without ever calling him a “Mooner” or “No-Mooner” or whatever demeaning tag you’d like to invent.
And what’s this B.S.: “…those who believe that vaccines cause autism”? Huh? That’s a conspiracy theory? Well, something sure as hell is causing autism in 1 out of every 150 kids! (While the rate is zero in the Amish community.) And whatever it is it’s something that’s 1.) been cleared and deemed “perfectly harmless; and 2.) something that the manufacturers of don’t want to get sued for.
Someone care to clear up those two points for me?
Go back about 5 years and look at some of the psychological analyses of those “nuts” who refused to believe in Global Warming. The phychologists had them all figured out, didn’t they? Then… Ooops. What’s with those “hide the decline” emails?
As someone with a personal interest in autism, Asperger’s Syndrome in particular, I’ve read what I could find on the subject, although I’m by no means a professional in the field. It seems to me though that while the jury’s still out on the influence of vaccines (with or without the mercury-based thimerosal), the Amish argument would be a non-starter. Being both genetically fairly homogenous and with lifestyles differing from the general public in many ways, they don’t really work as a control group.
I’m not sure if an equivalent study has ever been done with Jehovah’s Witnesses. While their doctrine no longer forbids vaccination, and hasn’t for decades, I’d think that there may be a sizable subset of the more orthodox who still don’t vaccinate. While still somewhat more genetically homogenous than the general public, I’d think that their non-vaccinated members would make a better control group in this case then the Amish.
To me it seems most likely that some people are genetically predisposed towards autism, which could potentially be triggered by any number of things, from vaccinations (thimerosal or not) to exposure to certain electronics or chemicals. It’s possible that this triggering may only have a chance to happen during a certain small window of development. Unfortunately we really don’t fully understand the mechanics of autism, especially in the early stages, making finger-pointing at any one cause unlikely to be fully accurate. Overvaccination can potentially lead to other problems, but there’s not a strong enough correlation between vaccination and autism to consider it the primary cause or to rule it out entirely as a possible trigger.
Good reply. Totally non-conspiratorial. Much better than “Well, SOMETHING must be causing autism! Might as well be those vaccines!”
Actually, not such a good reply.
In a tiny genetic pool like the Amish there should be more genetic defects, not fewer. But it’s the huge, diverse ouside world that’s becoming defective as a species. That doesn’t strike you as odd?
I never said, “…it might as well be vaccines.” What a complete mischaracterization of my statement. “Might as well be” makes me sound like a dumb, small town sheriff who just wants to string up anyone so I can close the case. No, I want to get the actual culprit.
I remember a very much older than me and much, much more experienced and wiser senior salesman at IBM telling me when I got my first job, that you have to be very careful with all the rumors that you hear around a big bureacracy like IBM, because they are almost always true and you want to make sure you listen carefully to get the message.
This obviously was not the message I had expected from the sage older statesman, but years later I understood what he meant. Things that are too hot to release often get leaked, so to ignore the unoffical “rumors” and suppositions means you will be condemned to never really having a clue what is actually going on.
Part of the problem with conspiracy theories is defining conspiracy theories. Are climate skeptics, for example, conspiracy theorists because they differ from the standard narrative? The answer has to do not so much with orthodoxy, but with the null hypothesis; i.e. have the people pushing the orthodoxy proven their case, and who bears the burden of proof. In the case of climate alarmism, the orthodoxy is the conspiracy theory, because they bear the burden of proof, and haven’t risen to the task. The null hypothesis is that a scientific theory is false until proven true, and no amount of huffing and puffing about orthodoxy and “consensus” changes that.
Which makes the IPCC a massive conspiracy. As is becoming more and more evident by revelation after revelation, including the latest:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/16/a-blunder-of-staggering-proportions-by-the-ipcc/
Yeah, sometimes the UN IS trying to hose us.
Yes, the problem with so many conspiracy theories is that if a genuine conspiracy be formed—such as the small cadre of pseudo-scientists who have successfully persuaded politicians that a small increase of atmospheric carbon-dioxide causes catastrophic global warming or, perhaps, if the president ordered a forged birth certificate—then those who discern proof of malfeasance are accused of being silly believers in conspiracy theories, and all their evidence can then be conveniently dismissed.
It’s not paranoia, as Domitian intimated, when they really are out to get you.
When the coicidence of Wikileaks, the Arab Spring,Obama’s odd love affair with communist muslims and the impending bankrupcy in the world’s most successful economy happening all around us and a totally in the tank liberal/Progressive/communist media telling you a story line that even my aged grandmother could see through, I think believing it ain’t the way they claim is a sign of a strong character and clear thinking.
Mr. Kay’s “cognitive gap” is a serious problem and conspiracy theorists are only a part of the problem.
Kay thinks that there was a “a state of intellectual agitation” after 9/11 that spawned conspiracy theories. “Additional” theories, I should say, as 9/11 wasn’t his starting point. Conspiracy theories are the destination of choice for people with relaxed or crippled analytical abilities who will get where they want to go with only a brief wave at reality as they proceed down the road. #14 Phantomorphan’s point. #11 exdem also makes a good point that “Unanswered questions do not equate to a conspiracy theory.”
Inadequate analysis is always a fail yet it’s worth noting that after 9/11 Pres. Bush immediately threw the weight of the U.S. government behind the idea that there was nothing in plain-vanilla Islam or with Muslims that needed to be of concern to us and, if anything, there needed to be FBI outreach to Muslims and steady-as-she-goes, if not ramped-up Muslim immigration. The campaigning Sen. McAmnesty positively did a back flip when a woman tried to bring up the issue of Muslims. “Evil witch With Perfectly Reasonable Question, begone!”
Thus, it’s hard to condemn people willing to step off the beaten path outright when they live in a country with a political leadership and cadre of Approved Journalists who revel in denial, distortion and character assassination, and adore utter fantasies like multiculturalism, Keynesian economics, AGW, “undocumented immigrants,” and “the religion of Peace.” When Harvard graduates can’t order a burger with super-size fries without a teleprompter, let’s just say that Americans are on their own if they think their leader class should set any kind of an intellectual example for them.
That “state of intellectual agitation” didn’t just come out of nowhere. Maybe people embrace cosmic explanations for evil when the leader class offers no explanation for evil at all, except that our very society and culture themselves are debased and unworthy of being defended or preserved – an explanation at war with a reality familiar to millions of people who still obey the laws of gravity.
Kay’s “lunatic fringe” population needs not a little fresh immigration to match the times.
The poll one can vote in about the Dove Visible Care ad in this article at the HuffPo indicated 41% of Americans were either unsure of thought the ad racist.
With the statistic you cited above, this reveals that an unsettling 36 to 41% of Americans are morons.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/23/dove-visiblecare-ad-racist_n_865911.html
I’d be worried if people did not have many different opinions on so many subjects. Many opinions means “accepted reality” gets re-examined again and again.
If “everyone knew” something, I’d start wondering about why.
I can explain some of the reasons people believe in stupid stuff.
Every scrap of information they are given, by the media or by the new media is only partially correct. Time and time again they are told it’s one way, then another article with a different agenda comes out and they are told the first article is bunk and this is the correct information. Like when we hear one side say we are in dire financial straits and the other say no, we’re not. Or one side say we have the highest corp tax rate in the world and the other side says No we don’t. Or any subject, really. Eggs are bad for you, No, their not. Take vitamin E, No, don’t take vitamin E. There’s hundreds of examples every year, from the trivial to the critical.
So many subjects are discussed in a sound bite fashion, that too much complex info is left out that actually explains what’s going on, so we are left with competing bumper sticker slogans. Which one to believe? How about none of them. People have been burned so many times, there is no perception there that there’s an actual authority to trust. Certainly not the government, they lie about everything, lol. So they follow whomever they perceive as being credible. And that can be anybody from complete whackos to liars. And the internet makes this really easy.
Any conspiracy that invents a complex scenario to refute a simple answer reminds to pay attention to Occam’s Razor rule: When all things are considered, the simplest answer is usually the best. This makes me question several popular theories:
The single bullet that takes a magic path
UFOs travel many light years to get here and then simply play hide-and-seek
Somehow CIA rigged Building 7 to hide some files (why not just take the files instead)
This rule can be used to refute any conspiracy with a difficult, complex, illogical scenario that tries to replace a simple and obvious situation.
One of the overlooked facts in all this is that Americans – whacky as some of us may be – are somewhat less whacky than other countries where paranoid conspiracy theories are run rampant. Ever ask a Frenchman or a Russian about some of these (trutherism isn’t even trutherism in France. It’s status quo.). And then there’s the Arab Middle East where any semblance of reality went out the window centuries ago and never came back.
Be grateful for our home grown loonies. Now about the Grassy Knoll….
Here is the only conspiracy I ever believed- The left took over our education system in the 60’s and have been running it into the ground ever since. The only way the left can control the masses is to keep them ignorant and needy. A quote from Michener’s HAWAII spoke of not educating the people beyond their means. This is Left speak all the way. There is my conspiracy , and I’m sticking with it.
“just cause im paranoid, don’t mean that they aint out to get me!”
Conspiricies are interesting things. Because at some level, they may ACTUALLY be true. The difference to me is at what point does truth get taken over by ideology and paranoia. At 1 point in history, dissidents, political and otherwise WERE rounded up. So at some level it is not hard to think it can happen again. we get older we do not get wiser and political dissidents are presently rounded up all the time, all over the world. “bush attacked or knew about the WTC before it happened,.,.” while its not unheard of for govt to do this, the question is DID THEY? And this is where ideology comes in. because the facts more than prove thats its not true. BUT Bush is so hated by the left they have to keep adding more complex acme type methods to keep it alive. And you can tell its ideology over facts, because the same people want to give the same govt they accuse of this. more power and more control. The same people who think bush was a criminal mastermind that orchastrated 9-11 are the same ones who make fun of him for the way he says nuclear and call him ‘retarded’What is a conspiracy theory? it is facts wrapped around ideology (“my truth”) versus ideology wrapped around facts (THE truth).
The problem I have with conspiracy theories is that we live in a time when everyone wants their five minutes of fame. How is it that after all these years no one has come forward and said they were involved? And as big as our Govt is, how can it keep a secret this long. I have been at the book depository also, when you could get to the window. I never questioned that Oswald could do it. Even a bad shot gets lucky. I always believed that he did it, and Ruby shot him out of the passion to avenge the killing of a president. Usually the simplest answer is the one that is true. Sometimes when the answer is simple we can’t believe it so we look for more complicated answers, and that muddies the waters to the point we can’t go back to the most logical answer.
Clearly you know NOTHING about shoting!
My view is that the reason conspiracy theories are rampant today is due to the confluence of several factors in these increasingly decadent and immoral days. Overall, the West and we, too, are infected with the deadly disease of decadence, and the infection is spreading; we are in a cultural crisis, on a downward spiral, bereft of guidance and the old certainties, a situation which encourages such conspiracy theories. Can anyone say that people today are as truthful, as honest, as diligent and hard working as they were, say, prior to the end of WWII, or that today’s culture is one of refinement and striving to attain “the Good, the True, and the Beautiful,” and to inculcate Judeo-Christian morality and exemplary behavior, or is it more like the decadent “culture” of Weimar Germany–Lady Gaga anyone?
Contributing factors to the spread and proliferation of such conspiracy theories are:
First, the apparently almost total victory of Gramsci’s “long march through the institutions,” and its “Postmodern thought,” which has succeeded in the educational field in producing several generations of supposedly “educated” people who are increasingly highly-propagandized but deliberately “uneducated” and deliberately ill-prepared to be self-reliant, independent, and to understand and to analyze the world around them, people who are cut off from, ignorant of, and hostile to our true, traditional intellectual heritage; they are rootless, disoriented, dependent, and scared.
Second, Gramsci’s victory in the field of Religion has knocked this guide and prop out from under a good portion of our population, only increasing their un-rootedness, disorientation, and fear.
Next, come Hollywood and the “entertainment industry,” which have flooded every entertainment channel—movies, TV, plays, books, the Internet—with a nightmare grab bag of every kind of conspiracy theory imaginable, almost all featuring a government and leaders who lie to us and who are—on some level–part of these various conspiracies.
Finally, there is the evidence of our own senses that our leaders and the government do, indeed, lie to us.
Thus, Rep. Barney Frank ramps up the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)programs that precipitated the subprime mortgage crisis, protects Fannie May and Freddie Mac from investigation and reform and then, when the collapse occurs, blames it on the banks he and the CRA coerced into making the risky loans in the first place and, then, in a dazzling display of hubris and chutzpah, says he needs more even legislation to give him even more power to regulate those very same banks.
The current statistics put out by the government are manipulated (i.e. some clothing and energy costs are removed from the traditional “basket” of goods and services that are measured in order to produce the index of inflation) to show essentially no inflation when our everyday experiences in buying necessities and paying bills clearly shows this to be false and, in fact, using the older method of measuring inflation used in past decades produces an inflation rate of around 10%. Similarly, the government uses one narrow measure to calculate the percentage of “unemployment” at 9+% when the more logical, broader measure pegs unemployment at 17+%.
The President tells us that neither he nor Attorney General Holder knew anything about the disastrous “Operation Fast and Furious” when Congressional testimony in the last few days shows a DOJ interested in and keeping track of every move.
Both the Department of Homeland Security and the Army’s reports (together totaling hundreds of pages) on Muslim Jihadi Maj. Nidal Hisan’s murderous terrorist attack in which he killed 13 fellow soldiers and wounded another 30 (unbelievers all)—all the while screaming the Muslim war cry of “Allahu Akbar”–mention neither Islam, Muslims, the Qur’an, terrorism, or the Jihad, and call this clear Jihadi terror attack by a Muslim whose business card stated that he was a “soldier of Allah” a mere incident of “workplace violence”—wanting us to believe that this was merely a worker “going Postal” rather than a deliberate Muslim terrorist attack, one justified and directed by the ideology of Islam, the example of Muhammad, and the Qur’a;, an Islamic ideology and justifications Hasan even explained to his fellow officers in a Power Point presentation years before the massacre he carried out.
Rep. Wiener lies to our faces on TV for a solid week, blames other people for “hacking” his Twitter account, before he admits that it was really he who, unsolicited, sent the barrage of lewd pictures and texts to a whole host of women. And on and on and on.
So, is it any wonder that we think that our leaders and our government lie to us, that the world is filled with cheats, bare-faced liars, con men, and crooks, that things are not really as they seem to be, and that there are forces at work behind the scenes that do not want us to observe them or to comprehend them, or to discover the Truth?
P.S.–Add to this, of course, a President Barack Hussain Obama whose past history and paper trail are so full of holes and inconsistencies that he couldn’t produce the paperwork necessary to apply for a job as a “rent-a-cop” at the Mall, much less ever, ever qualifying for even the lowest of security clearances.
We are not Europe, we are not Russia or China, we do not have a thousand years of history behind us, full of violence, treachery, and dictatorship to warn us and to make us wary so unfortunately, and so very, very naively, and very fatally, our Presidents are never subject to any of the demeaning procedures of a security clearance, and are just handed the “football,” and are assumed to be loyal and patriots, interested only in the well being and defense of the United States, our Constitution, our values, and our way of life. Foolish us!
Conspiracy theories are for people who don’t understand ideas.
P.S.S.—Add in the economic dimension–a reported 44,000,000 people now on food stamps, 70% of taxes paid by our top 10% of earners, and only 50% of our citizenry now paying any federal or state taxes at all thanks to “tax credits,” more than 14,000,000 people out of work, the older of whom may never be able to get a job again, home prices down 30% or sometimes even 40% from their 2006 highs, millions of homes already foreclosed on with millions of new foreclosures on the horizon and millions more mortgages under water, a reported 40% decrease in American’s total net worth over the last few years, 40 cents of every federal dollar now spent is borrowed money, and over 60% of our entire federal budget is now spent for mandatory entitlements, with that percentage to automatically and inevitably increase each year until mandatory interest payments on the federal debt plus mandatory spending on entitlement programs grow to consume our entire federal budget, Social Security already in the red and Medicare soon to follow, $14+ trillion dollars in debt, and credit rating agencies threatening to lower U.S. treasuries rating below the AAA rating they have always enjoyed—all this and we are very lucky, indeed, that we do not already have Greece type riots in the streets, civil unrest, and doom shouters on every street corner. But wait, they will be along shortly.
Again, is it any wonder that conspiracy theories abound?
Agree with the observation that some folks get to conspiracy theories because that way they get to know more than the common herd without doing any real intellectual work, and frequently without the tools to do so.
JFK and MLK and other important assassination victims, and the Towers, et al, are subject to conspiracy theories because it is not right that giants be brought low by pissants. Not balanced, as one poster noted.
And sometimes there really are conspiracies.
One further reason is the presumption that when someone benefits from an action, the great likelihood, if not certainty, is that that person was in on it. Can’t be an accident, lucky or otherwise.
The whole issue reason that conspiracy theories flourish is because the Government doesn’t tell the whole truth. Perfect example is the Kennedy Assassination.
I don’t purport to know if there was a second gunman, but I do know this. The Government lied when it said that Oswald was not in Naval Intelligence. He learned Russian while at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA. I also attended DLI. It’s a damn expensive school…one of the hardest to get into in the US Armed Forces because of the time and cost. The ONLY Marines that attend there are those that are detailed as embassy guards and Intel. Oswald was never an embassy guard. Which leads to the logical explanation that Oswald was in Naval Intel.
That simple, denied fact on the part of the government throws all their other assertions (for me at least) into dubious veracity. I only know it’s BS because I happened to have been sent to the same school when I was in the service. (I have issues with the ability to hit Kennedy with that bolt action but that’s another issue. This one is clear to me… Oswald was some sort of Intelligence Officer.
That alone doesn’t mean there was a second gunman… but it does through doubt on the entire issue for me.
As for the Moon, yes we went there, 9-11, yes it was fuel laden aircraft that brought them down, etc.
Uh…you forgot to mention the THIRD building that collapsed (at free-fall speed, by the way) on 9/11. Building SEVEN was not hit by a plane, but it collapsed anyway. Maybe a little bit more research, Sir?