conspiracy theories – Page 5

They’re Out to Get Us..

According to a recent story in something called the Civic Tribune,

The internet is abuzz with reports of forced micro-chipping taking place in Clint, Texas. Dozens of families were said to be rounded up by American troops, and given the option of an RFID implant, or imprisonment for an indefinite amount of time.

Well, as you know, Obama is using Jade Helm to take over Texas. He also plans to confiscate everyone’s guns. The moon landing was faked. The government is hiding the remains of aliens and their flying saucer in a secret compound at Roswell. Agenda 21 is a U.N. plan to destroy American sovereignty…

According to Time Magazine, there are more people who subscribe to these and other loony-tune theories than most of us would guess. (And I thought Donald Trump was the most depressing aspect of contemporary American life…)

According to a pair of new studies published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, conspiracy theorists—and there are a lot more of them than you may think—tend to have one thing in common: they feel a lack of control over their lives.

Jan-Willem van Prooijen, associate professor in social and organizational psychology at VU University Amsterdam, has been studying conspiracy theories and those who believe them for six years. “When I started this research, one of the things that I really found astonishing was how many people believe in certain conspiracy theories,” he says.

Conspiracy theories often crop up during times of uncertainty and fear: after terrorist strikes, financial crises, high-profile deaths and natural disasters.

We certainly live in a “time of uncertainty.” The Great Recession, the yawning gap between the rich and the rest of us, the incessant news reports highlighting terrorism both foreign and domestic, and–perhaps most of all– the constantly accelerating pace of social and technological change have combined to create a free-floating anxiety to which few of us are immune.

Still, it’s hard to believe that social uncertainty really explains the Birthers….and the Black Helicopters…and the New World Order….and the “proven” fact that Obama plans to cancel elections and make himself President for Life…

The distance between feeling a loss of control and embracing bat-shit-crazy is evidently a lot shorter than we knew.

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On the Other Hand….

Yesterday’s blog bemoaned the skepticism–and the sound reasons for that skepticism– with which so many of us have come to view media reports. A couple of commenters noted what we might call “the flip side” of that phenomenon–people distrustful of both government and the media who are anything but skeptical when it comes to wild and crazy conspiracy theories.

One of my regular reads is Juanita Jean’s: The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc., written by a Molly Ivins-like Texan. A recent post began

If you haven’t heard, there’s going to be a large military exercise around the country from July 15th to September 15th. It’s called Jade Helm 15 because all military trainings have names and that one wasn’t taken, I suppose. Texas has five counties involved and the rightwing is damn sure that it means Obama is taking over and gonna put all them in a concentration camp Just! Like! Hitler!

The post included a local newspaper’s report of a public meeting in Bastrop County, where the exercise was to take place.

Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria answered questions for two hours from a crowd of more than 150 people at a special meeting of the Bastrop County Commissioners, hoping to allay locals’ concerns that the training operation is a way for the federal government to take over Texas and much of the Southwest. Instead, Lastoria was told that he couldn’t be trusted and was asked whether Jade Helm 15 will involve bringing foreign fighters from the Islamic State to Texas, whether U.S. troops will confiscate Texans’ guns and whether the Army intends to implement martial law through the exercise. (The answer for all three was no.)

As Juanita Jean noted,

Cowboy! Think about it. If the military wanted to take over, they would not ask your permission first. They would just do it because I do not care a hill of beans how many guns you have, they have tanks. And bombers. And stuff you have never even heard of.

How lost and terrified must people be in order to believe things like this? How paranoid?

And how much do they have to hate having an African-American President?

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Picking and Choosing– Benghazi Edition

Every so often, I’m reminded of an experience I had right after publication of my first book, What’s a Nice Republican Girl Like Me Doing at the ACLU? (Republicans were very different back then.) I was on a radio call-in show in South Carolina, and a caller challenged my defense of the Establishment Clause by “quoting” James Madison to the effect that “God gave the Bill of Rights to people who live in accordance with the Ten Commandments.”

When I (very politely) informed him that this quote had been debunked many times, that it was not only bogus but inconsistent with everything Madison did say, he yelled “Well, I think it’s true!” and hung up.

Increasingly, it seems, we live in that man’s world.

A few weeks ago, I was at a dinner party; one of the guests was a local judge whom I have always admired. The wine flowed, and as it did, she shared her contempt for the President and the “liberal media” which– unlike “real news” sources like the Drudge Report (!)– had failed to tell citizens the truth about…wait for it…Benghazi!

Last Friday, what I believe to be the eighth Congressional investigation of the Benghazi tragedy–an investigation controlled and conducted by Republicans–once again found no cover-up, no administrative bad faith or lying. As CBS reported

WASHINGTON — The CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, a Republican-controlled House committee has found. Its report asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration officials.

Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the two-year investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

It is highly unlikely that this will change the minds of those–like my dinner companion–who prefer to believe in conspiracies. Slate recently reported recent research on the psychology of conspiracy theorists; as the story noted, millions of Americans believed that George W. Bush had engineered 9/11, despite the fact that:

To believe that the U.S. government planned or deliberately allowed the 9/11 attacks, you’d have to posit that President Bush intentionally sacrificed 3,000 Americans. To believe that explosives, not planes, brought down the buildings, you’d have to imagine an operation large enough to plant the devices without anyone getting caught. To insist that the truth remains hidden, you’d have to assume that everyone who has reviewed the attacks and the events leading up to them—the CIA, the Justice Department, the Federal Aviation Administration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, scientific organizations, peer-reviewed journals, news organizations, the airlines, and local law enforcement agencies in three states—was incompetent, deceived, or part of the cover-up.

If believing in a conspiracy requires one to accept a long list of highly improbable/practically impossible things, why do so many Americans believe them?

Clearly, susceptibility to conspiracy theories isn’t a matter of objectively evaluating evidence. It’s more about alienation. People who fall for such theories don’t trust the government or the media. They aim their scrutiny at the official narrative, not at the alternative explanations. In this respect, they’re not so different from the rest of us. Psychologists and political scientists have repeatedly demonstrated that “when processing pro and con information on an issue, people actively denigrate the information with which they disagree while accepting compatible information almost at face value.” Scholars call this pervasive tendency “motivated skepticism.”

Conspiracy believers are the ultimate motivated skeptics. Their curse is that they apply this selective scrutiny not to the left or right, but to the mainstream. They tell themselves that they’re the ones who see the lies, and the rest of us are sheep. But believing that everybody’s lying is just another kind of gullibility.

I guess that explains my James Madison caller. But it doesn’t make me feel much better about either my dinner companion or the U.S. Representatives (like Indiana’s Susan Brooks) who clearly know better but are willing to play to the paranoia.

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Over the Edge

Look, I know it sucks to lose. But in the wake of November 6th, the sound of the loon is increasingly loud in the land. As Mother Jones reports:

On October 11, at a closed-door meeting of the Republican caucus convened by the body’s majority leader, Chip Rogers, a tea party activist told Republican lawmakers that Obama was mounting this most diabolical conspiracy. The event—captured on tape by a member of the Athens-based watchdog Better Georgia (who was removed from the room after 52 minutes)—had been billed as an information session on Agenda 21, a nonbinding UN agreement that commits member nations to promote sustainable development. In the eyes of conservative activists, Agenda 21 is a nefarious plot that includes forcibly relocating non-urban-dwellers and prescribing mandatory contraception as a means of curbing population growth. The invitation to the Georgia state Senate event noted the presentation would explain: “How pleasant sounding names are fostering a Socialist plan to change the way we live, eat, learn, and communicate to ‘save the earth.’”…

About 23 minutes into the briefing, Searcy explained how President Obama, aided by liberal organizations like the Center for American Progress and business groups like local chambers of commerce, are secretly using mind-control techniques to push their plan for forcible relocation on the gullible public…”

Ya gotta watch out for those commies from the Chamber of Commerce.

As a friend of mine remarked after hearing this lampooned by David Letterman, there have always been folks whose connection to reality is intermittent at best–the guy who used to hang around the barber shop spinning conspiracy theories, or your great-aunt Bertha who complained about the men peeking in her window. Today, the internet allows those people to do two things Aunt Bertha couldn’t: find each other, and amplify the crazy.

I have some sympathy for people who just can’t cope with the world as it is, the people who need a “real” explanation for events they find incomprehensible (like re-electing that black guy…or voting to approve same-sex marriage). I have considerably less patience for the people who enable them.

Convening a hearing to listen to paranoid fantasies is a bridge too far, even for Republicans in the Georgia Legislature.

This country desperately needs two responsible political parties. The last thing the Republicans should be doing in the wake of the November 6th reproof delivered by voters is encourage the residents of Neverland.

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