The Bush administrators, and their sycophantic press, think it very clever to conduct their policy deliberations and public reassurances with replete secrecy (an unprecedented level of secrecy), while batting away excessively probing citizens’ queries as “conspiracy theories”. They figure a generally good-spirited, optimistic and oblivious public will take the benefit of the doubt every time, regardless of the curious lack of transparency and goodwill involving how they deal with their competition.

However, no one in their right, cognitive, critical mind is fooled, not even the ever-lucid and refreshingly un-anchored (pun intended) Walter Cronkite (see below).

What became of the Iran-Contra scandal started out as an annoying, crackpotted conspiracy theory, until someone “viable” leaked some info to a then-receptive, dignified national press. The theory that “the CIA may very well have replaced a democratically elected Prime Minister in Iran with the tepid Shah” was considered revisionism at best, and looney conspiracy theory at worst, for over 40 years. However, those that coordinated a Revolution in 1979 in Iran apparently believed it as gospel, as did Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when she admitted as much on 3-19-2000.

Pretty soon, at the pace that this administration and its pedestrian machinations are unravelling, just about every solid investigative reporter, author or social scientist will be deemed a “conspiracy theorist” by those who’ve publicly replaced Madison with Machiavelli.

Spare us, please. The modern American Right does not have a monopoly on the Truth. In fact, the disturbingly regular and defensive calls of “conspiracy theory!” coming from the Right … are, on the whole, starting to resemble one big conspiracy theory from the Right.

———————————

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Plots Thicken

“The most trusted man in America” becomes a conspiracy theorist.

When Walter Cronkite talked on CNN last month about Osama bin Laden’s scary pre-election video, yet another cat leapt out of the conspiracy-theory bag. “I’m a little inclined to think,” Mr. Cronkite told host Larry King, “that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.”
It’s not clear whether this was a tasteless joke or a stray filament of wishful thinking; Mr. King probed no further. Yet the comment was a reminder that conspiracy theorizing–formerly confined to the realms of alien abduction kooks and grassy-knoll debaters–is edging ever closer to the mainstream. Like it or not.
While the most notable examples now appear to be election-inspired and coming from the left, the direction may not be that significant. Experts who study conspiracy phenomena tend to agree on one thing: that at any given time people whose party is out of power are the most receptive to theories–about computer hackers in Florida, mind-controlling pro-Bush psychics, Osama “October Surprises”–that address their frustrations. In fact, the majority of all conspiracy theories seem to grow out of a sense of helplessness. The particular impulse that gave birth to a Web article like “Royal Conspiracy: Princess Diana Names Her Killer” by Uri Dowbenko may be wacko. Yet who can fault ordinary people who would prefer an explanation featuring palace assassins over a verdict that underlined the randomness of cruel fate?
Yasser Arafat probably wasn’t poisoned, but it’s no surprise if perpetually discombobulated Palestinians want to think he was. The otherwise lucid actor Will Smith has espoused the belief that AIDS is part of a plot to strike down black people. That’s a classic example, says Tim Melley, the Miami University (Ohio) professor who wrote “Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America.” Many conspiracists function like sociologists at first, he notes, “identifying patterns of inequity . . . that have effects on society”–and then they jump to blame everything on a deliberate plan. “It’s comforting. It provides an explanation that explains why your group is down and out.”

Mr. Melley suspects that whatever form conspiracy theories take, they’ll be intruding more into our consciousness in the future. For better or worse, he says, the major media are losing their authority as arbiters of the truth. The proliferation of alternative news sources on the Web and talk radio, for instance, reflects and feeds the notion that what the media powers-that-be are telling us is not the real story. Add to that the bombardments of ubiquitous advertising, and you get what Mr. Melley calls “agency panic,” where “people are worried about their own ability to control themselves, worried that someone has gotten into their head and manipulated their desire.”
So far, most Americans still have an internal meter that instantly registers the difference between questions worth exploring and questions, like Mr. Cronkite’s, that are coming from places they definitely don’t need to visit. University of Florida law professor Mark Fenster, the author of “Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture,” has detected almost no belief in various 9/11 conspiracy scenarios. And many of the election-period charges, he says, can be attributed to normal “partisan political rhetoric.”
If that’s true, a lot of the disorienting plot chaff should begin to disappear soon from plain view. Screeching about the liberal media conspiracy or the Perpetual Hidden Government now headed by Mr. Bush and his international co-conspirators should recede back into the Web. There, at least, the exposure to “agency panic” is voluntary.

Copyright © 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it.

- Patrick Henry

———————————
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com