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A Defense of Massive Conspiracy Theories
...from one of the few who doubts them all. (February 7th, 2009)
(Revised, January 16th, 2010)
"Beware: your brain may no longer be the boss! If you are beginning to doubt what I am saying, you are probably hallucinating..."
General Curtis Goatheart (Firesign Theatre)
You've probably seen it a bunch of times: a panel of talking heads discussing, say, the Oliver Stone movie "JFK," which portrays a large "Black Ops" conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. The talking heads are dismissive. Alpha Head chortles: "...as if any secret known to three or more people in Washington could stay secret for more than a few hours!" The panel chortles along. I join in: silly conspiracy nuts!
Of course, I eventually realize this snide assertion is ridiculous. The world is full of secrets known by hundreds of conspirators, secrets kept for years, sometimes forever. Here's one example: whatever you may think of typical 9/11 conspiracy theories (and I'm skeptical, especially of the elaborate ones), their proponents correctly point out that the US government propounds its own massive conspiracy theory. To wit: scores of Al Qaeda operatives plotted for many months, then carried out a sophisticated attack unlike anything they've pulled off before or since. Who among us really questions the "theory" that conspiracies are afoot all the time? Companies plot hostile takeovers of other companies. The US government plots drone attacks to assassinate Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.
Why do we accept some large conspiracy theories as a matter of course, and dismiss others just as casually? I think we find conspiracies credible when we believe there is a consensus reality among the conspirators, not just a common interest, but a common culture that makes it unthinkable for any member to betray the group. It's easy to imagine that hundreds of CIA operatives who believe they are serving their county could keep agency activities secret, or that hundreds of Al Qaeda members who believe they are fighting a ruthless, satanic enemy could do likewise. What our chortlers couldn't imagine was that US intelligence operatives could count on that kind of consensus when plans turn from, say, assassinating Castro to liquidating their own elected president. But is that so far fetched? The consensus reality of the insular U.S. intelligence community might surprise us.
We all believe the US government engages in elaborate conspiracies. It's just that most of us believe that these conspiracies are hatched on our behalf. Our leaders also tell us that enemies are hatching evil conspiracies, and most of us believe that, too. These are the official conspiracy theories, and people who fervently condemn "wing nut" conspiracy buffs may be counted on to defend official conspiracy theories with equal fervor. Some of these theorized conspiracies actually exist, but which ones? Often, unofficial conspiracy theories are indeed whacky, but official conspiracy theories often seem just as unlikely to me, though the marketing is better.
Some might object that we have a vigorous free press on watch, preventing the government from engaging in the wrong kind of conspiracy. The revelations contained in the "Pentagon Papers" and what we now know about the second Iraq war (launched on wholly mendacious grounds) should be enough to refute that reassuring proposition. Sure: in those cases, the truth came out eventually. But a bunch of nefarious government conspiracies that eventually come to light suggests the existence of other nefarious government conspiracies that never do.
Go on: make your best guess, and believe with gusto! Without belief in our favorite conspiracies, we'd have to admit we don't know much of anything. And who wants to cop to that?
Klatch of other Strange Thoughts:
2009-08-25 -- The Numinous Shore of Partial Understanding: A Scenic Ride with the Base of Natural Logarithms
2009-03-17 -- Background Food: A Modest Business Proposal
2008-07-17 -- Immortality, Part Two: Prisms, Zombies, and Occam's Razor
2008-06-07 -- Immortality, Part One: Identity, Continuity, and the Star Trek Transporter
2008-05-14 -- Tripping out of Trees
2008-05-08 -- Color Octaves: Sight, Sound, and Elegant Recurrence