19 | April | 2013 | Existential Ennui

Tags

conspiracies, editorial, government, terrorism

I’ll leave it to you to wrap your head around the events in Boston. I woke as usual, turned on the TV, and was bowled over with lockdowns of neighborhoods and then the entire city of Boston, the death of a young man who only yesterday was only a face, and the race to locate the brother who was trying to escape.

I shake my head in disbelief, for after all my 63 years of experience, I have yet to understand what motivates people to do these things.

I’m not interesting in speculation at this point. Rather I speak to the first issues that now come to those of us who are “normal.”

The Contrarian breathed a sigh of relief. “At least they entered the country well before Obama took office. That will stop the usual blame-it-on-the-Black-Man.” I too joined in with the hope that the remaining suspect would be brought in alive. This for the obvious reason that I hate our murderous tendencies in the first place, but admittedly because I hope the young man might inform us as to his motives. That might stop some of the conspiracy theories about them and their intentions. Of course it will never stop all of them. We are the best conspiracy theorists in the world I think.

Conspiracy is a simply defined crime: the agreement between two or more people to commit an unlawful act. In a few places one overt act toward the commission of the crime must be taken, in most not. It is known as a crime with an active actus reus, meaning that people can join the conspiracy at any time and be fully culpable of the entire enterprise, whether or not all parties are known, or even when some are acquitted.

As any lawyer will tell you, it’s a crime that almost never goes undetected for long. If “loose lips sink ships” well, people who are criminally liable for serious offenses are all too willing to spill their guts to save their own skins. Somebody gets an attack of conscience. Somebody thinks “things went too far”. There are as many reasons as there are words to explain why conspiracies don’t work.

Yet, to the American public there is a conspiracy under every rock. And more to the point, they are almost always massive, involving tens of thousands of co-conspirators and lasting over decades and sometimes longer. We have always loved conspiracies, for some reason they make us giddy. It’s as if we and we alone have uncovered this intricate, vast, complicated plot. We feel deliciously smart. Yet we are actually silly, and not a little unhinged.

We are prone to believe that inexplicable events can be explained by reference to covert groups of various sorts and sizes. They effect our political, social and economic well-being. In the end, it’s just easier to posit a conspiracy than to dig deeply and see all the various factors that contribute to any particular situation. It’s also a good way to attack something when you have no other good reason for doing so.

Ulterior motives figure prominently in the creation of conspiracy theories, and that may be the key to understanding why they are so popular. You tell me that President Obama is not a legitimate president because he was not born in the USA. The evidence for that may be weak to non-existent, but of course since I hate him for my own reasons, I’m more than willing to believe this conspiracy exists. For indeed, if it’s obvious that he is not a citizen, there must be those who are “covering up” that fact for “nefarious” reasons. The conspiracy widens and deepens as you adopt it.

Usually conspiracy theories relate to the government. But there are two big ones that don’t. One is the conspiracy to teach evolution when as everyone really knows, God created the earth as enunciated in Genesis. This theory is held by fundamentalist Christians and includes by requirement that the not only biology scientists are involved in this massive conspiracy, but also astronomers, physicists, geologists, archeologists, paleontologists, and a host of others are also in on the deception.

The other one, that tangentially involves the government is that of climate change. This is a direct attempt by Democrats to favor green technologies and give them tax breaks in lieu of oil and gas interests. It’s all about getting grant money for scientists in universities.

These conspiracies cross all countries and are international in scope. They involve scientists who are all “part of the lie” and who are by choice wasting their professional careers to help sustain them. They have gone on for a couple of hundred years in the case of evolution, and a good hundred years when it comes to climate change.

Here are a list of general categories of conspiracies prominent today or recently:

The central banking institutions are the means by which large organizations seek to impose a “one-world government”. Just assume that everything is being orchestrated by shadow people–including wars, and depressions.
False-flag operations are devices used by the OWO groups to deflect attention from themselves. If the terrorists in Boston are all killed, inevitably, whatever answers law enforcement gives as to their motives, some will assume it is to deflect attention from the real reasons, and the real perpetrators. There are some who believe there is such a false-flag conspiracy regarding 9/11. The same is true of the Kennedy assassination.
Wars are sometimes thought to be begun by the “military-industrial complex” for their own purposes. Iraq is often believed to have been started not for noble goals of eradicating WMD but for oil. There are some who believe that our own Civil War was started for other purposes than those who learn as children.
Most assassinations are subject to conspiracy theories. JFK of course, but also RFK, and King and Malcolm X are commonly thought of as conspiracy cases. Diana, Princess of Wales is another death thought by some to be the result of a conspiracy.
There is the whole “Clinton body count” which claims that Clinton regularly assassinated his enemies and there has been a conspiracy to cover it up.
The unbelievable list of Obama conspiracies–his birth, his college record, his law license, his religion. They have may twists and offshoots.
Various conspiracies involving religions–Jews drink the blood of Christians, Catholics sacrifice babies, Jesus was married.
Various claims that we have technology that is being deliberately supressed, such as electric cars, super cheap energy, cures for diseases.
Conspiracies to hide the fact that the government is developing cloaking technology, invisibility, mind-control, time travel, weather control, man-made earthquakes.
Conspiracies that involve military technology gone awry–which accounts for various “accidents”-death rays, electromagnetic weapons, and various other top-secret weaponry that sometimes causes things like the Haitian earthquake.
Media technology is being used by some to institute Big Brother or mind control. The use of movies and television shows to “desensitize” us to some events so that the government can conduct such things in the future.
Medicine routinely suppresses “cures” to keep their businesses going, as well as creating diseases to destroy races or groups of people.
Alien conspiracies which posit that alien races have visited the earth regularly and are involved in shaping the earth to their purposes, evil or otherwise.

There are more. The groups involved that you hear about regularly include the Bilderberg group, Freemasons, Scull and Bones, the Illuminati, Jews, Opus Dei, the Trilateral Commission, the Mafia. There are more of these too.

Of course, after Boston, there will be more. What makes us so prone to this stuff? Are we just looking for the “quick” answer? Are we unwilling to delve into the myriad threads that actually cause events to occur? Are some conspiracies more plausible than others? If so, is it because we like the claims of some and not others?

Jump in and share your thoughts.

List of conspiracy theories–Wikipedia (source)