David Weigel notes the latest term for the newest madness -- Proofers -- and adds that the "discussion is a real signal of how much conspiracy thinking has permeated the culture."
Anecdotal evidence of the madness: Weigel writes that while "Walking around Greenville [SC] this morning, I did not find anyone who wanted the photo released because they doubted OBL's death." One gentleman told him, "That's the last thing I want. I mean, think about those pictures you've seen of soldiers' bodies dragged behind a helicopter. When I see that, I want to get out there and fight somebody, and I'm not even a fighter. It's not like they're ever going to approve of us, but to show those pictures, that'd be the worst thing you can do." Yet the same gentleman had spent the previous evening surfing the Internet for 9/11 videos. "I saw ones with firefighters saying there was a bomb in the second [World Trade Center] tower," he told Weigel. "You can hear the explosions going off."
Weigel concludes, "He didn't buy into this, but there was video of it; it was compelling. And photos of bin Laden, surely, could become the grist for brand new conspiracy theories. There's really no way out of this."
By "this," I assume Weigel means both the Proofer silliness specifically and the cultural madness in general. And it's the latter whose cumulative effect has, for so many, grown so bloody wearisome.
To a sizable minority of madmen, nothing and nobody are what they seem: the president isn't really the president, a birth certificate isn't really a birth certificate, a terrorist attack wasn't really a foreign terrorist attack, the irrefutable killing of the #1 terrorist is actually a political swindle, the absence of an Easter commemoration is a sign of Muslims having taken the White House, rather modest healthcare reform is a sign of a socialist takeover ... you can fill in the rest, or not, since it's ad infinitum.
There is, to be sure, nothing new about political paranoia and downright goofy suspicions of encroaching, conspiratorial monsters. From fears of the Illuminati and popism to fears of Masons and domestic communists, we've never lacked for utterly unfounded worries. Still, we've also never had them force-fed to us, 24/7. It gets old.
When, for instance, was the last time you read a straight, mainstream news piece about the deficit; one that analyzed only the merits of cutting the deficit now or leaving it till later -- one, that is, that didn't soon trail off into the screwball, tea-partying politics of macroeconomic ignorance and its paranoid fears of Obama's stealth-socialist designs?
Most likely you haven't read such a piece, not lately anyway, thus the screwball has become mainstream. And it gets old.
I think the propaganda machine of the Righta and increasingly of the Left is one major cause of this. The purpose of propaganda is to create a paradigm. Shifting a paradigm is the most emotionally difficult eevents of the human experience. Even the death of a loved one is essentially a paradigm shift.
All to say that at some point propaganda can make us bulletproof to any any facts that do not fit our paradigm, our reality. Anyone or anything that threatens the paradigm is the enemy. So, the stronger the facts and arguments, the harder they must be fought.
This is why I think the assertion that much of the resistance to Obama is garden variety racism is a false assertion. I do not think these people hate Obama for being black. Rather, a successful black president blows apart their paradigm of how they supposed a black presidency would play out.
Maybe this is a distinction without a difference, but I think not. Thee point is that they are not angry about a black president as much as they are by a successful black president.
So, recent events are pretty threatening to this paradigm.
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | May 05, 2011 at 02:27 PM
Mr. Lipscomb's comment is indeed intriguing. Personally, I think it is a distinction without a difference.
The two are intertwined, PBO is black which mean he is incapable of doing a good job. For me, it seems as if it is still about his race.
Posted by: Dorothy Rissman | May 05, 2011 at 05:08 PM
I think it's a mistake to think that conspiratorial thinking is some kind of new phenomena. I imagine it has been around since the invention of language.
What's different today is that the cranks are getting a disproportionate share of the coverage (because they make for "good" TV.)
Posted by: Chris Andersen | May 05, 2011 at 05:44 PM
@DR: Fair enough. Proposition A is that blacks are inferior. Proposition B is PBO proves Proposition A is wrong.
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | May 05, 2011 at 07:57 PM
If there were really any conspiracies in today's world, everyone would know about them.
Posted by: priscianusjr | May 05, 2011 at 11:14 PM