I seem to see public figures lining up like fighters on an aircraft carrier lately to disavow their belief in any sort of conspiracy theory—always in preface to their describing a possible conspiracy. “I’m certainly not a conspiracy theorist, but…” It must be time, then, for me to return to a well-worn hobby-horse.
To allow certain shills for sweeping public policy initiatives to convince you that only gullible fools ever entertain the suspicion of a conspiracy is to renounce your commitment to serious thinking.
No large corporation has ever lowered prices to knock smaller competitors out of business, right? That would be a conspiracy—and only an idiot believes in conspiracies.
No two or three owners of sports franchises have ever colluded to withhold whopping millions from a free agent so as to discourage others like him. No MLB or NFL schedule has ever been arranged so that popular, high-profile teams would play the most games during television primetime. No cereal company has ever placed cartoon figures in its flakes at just the time when its corporate affiliate was releasing a movie about said cartoon figures.
No mechanic has ever put deficient parts in a car so that the owner would soon need to bring it back into the shop. No product has ever been designed to wear out sooner than its predecessors so that consumers would have to purchase more of the same product earlier. No auto manufacturing company has ever resisted engineering a more fuel-efficient engine because its corporate first cousin just happens to sell oil.
When local politicians who own land just outside the city limits become active in raising city taxes, it’s just an accident if the value of their property shoots up as the wealthy flee to the suburbs. When state legislators introduce a bill designating tax dollars to send the physically challenged to a special summer camp, it’s pure coincidence if Senator X’s son-in-law owns said camp.
No young woman ever married a wealthy older man with the intent of divorcing him months later and legally walking off with half his fortune: that’s just bad luck. No struggling young attorney ever married a wealthy older woman prior to embarking upon a political career: that’s just good luck.
In short, life is embedded in conspiracies. To say that the CIA launched 9/11 is infantile. To say that there’s more to the JFK assassination than the Warren Commission declared is less so. To say that FDR prodded the Japanese into hostilities because the country didn’t want to enter a war with Germany—or that Churchill (then with the admiralty) knew that U-boats were in the vicinity of the Lusitania and did nothing to protect her, hoping that a catastrophe would bring the States into WW I… I don’t know. Neither do you. It’s not beyond belief, because life in general—and politics in particular—works this way. The people who encourage us to let conspiracies grow unremarked by jeering every time someone raises a suspicion (“You think Obama WANTS the economy to collapse? You must believe that the army captured aliens at Roswell, too!”) are themselves part of a conspiracy… or perhaps they are just the morons (to use the phrase of one such railing hack) that they charge us with being. Indeed, the President himself has implied over the last month that doctors, insurance agents, police officers, and talk-show hosts all participate routinely in vast conspiracies. It seems that the skullduggery is only the work of aliens when it’s not viewed from your side of the aisle.
The other night I heard a certain Mr. Cohen (I cannot confirm that it was Richard Cohen of Florida—the name turns out to be common in government) glibly dismissing every objection about the “health care reform” bill raised by Greta van Susteren with a “not true”. A word or two to reassure voters that this big-city phone book of legalese does not contain the abominations about which they have been warned… that’s should do it, right? To Greta’s objection that the bill’s language was too convoluted for one to know WHAT was encoded therein, he answered that the courts would tear to ribbons anything clearly, plainly phrased. To her question about his recent townhall meeting, he remarked that it was not representative—that two-thirds of his constituency was African American, while only about 5% of the faces at his meeting were black. He concluded by stressing the need for citizens to trust their representatives.
This all deserves to be mounted and framed in a Rogues’ Gallery. Within about three minutes, one of our Congressmen 1) sweepingly denied the presence of several items in the bill while admitting that its obscurantism was almost impenetrable, 2) further admitted that our courts are likely to shoot down anything not worded with enough lubricity to mean everything and nothing, 3) further admitted that fair representation to his mind equates to tabulating various skin colors in attendance (as opposed, say, to prioritizing public spirit and civic concern), and 4) advised his electors that they should resume their blinders while he and his mates go about their very complicated and arcane business.
This doesn’t sound like the kind of atmosphere in which conspiracy would thrive, does it? “Trust me…” now, where else did we hear those two words during the past few years?
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