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Conspiracy Theories Flourish When Conditions are Ripe
Dr. Lorin Swinehart
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As my good friend and fellow El Ojo del Lago contributor Fred Mittag has frequently observed, “People will believe anything.”
Conspiracy theories generally proliferate during any period of societal uproar, in the aftermath of, for instance, a war, an assassination, an economic collapse or a pandemic. Perhaps even more troubling than the theories themselves are the motivations of those who so willingly adopt and even promote them.
Some conspiracy theories verge upon the humorous, for instance that Elvis Presley still lives, that the world is flat, that the infamous Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico conceals the truth about visiting extraterrestrials or that Neil Armstrong really never walked upon the moon. During the period of the Black Death in Medieval Europe, conspiracy theories ran rampant among the uneducated and superstitious masses. One theory was that the cause of the calamity was men having sex with older women. Other theories had more tragic consequences, that the plague was caused by Jews poisoning the wells, for instance, a delusion leading to yet another cruel and bloodthirsty pogrom.
Susceptibility to mass delusions and hysteria has defined many eras of human history. In the aftermath of World War I, for instance, the public acquiesced in the injustices and persecutions of the Big Red Scare, convinced that the dread Bolsheviks who had just overturned the Czarist regime in Russia were armed and eager to initiate a reign of terror in the streets of America. With President Woodrow Wilson effectively incapacitated by a stroke, his attorneygeneral A. Mitchel Palmer, aided and abetted by J. Edgar Hoover, initiated a series of so-called Palmer raids targeting any and all dissidents, guilty or innocent, sending 249 people off on the “Soviet Ark” to the newly established USSR. Labor leaders and so-called “radicals” were most at risk. Anyone who rocked the boat too hard did so under the threat of deportation.
The 1920’s were a time of widespread hysteria, during which the public was convinced that a Bolshevik lay in wait ready to pounce behind every bush and fence row. There are always those eager to grab the ball—any ball—and run with it.
The decade also saw the rise of a resurgent Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization from its very inception until the present. As Frederick Lewis Allen details in his Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s, many small towns, not only in the South erected signs at their corporation limits announcing, “The Ku Klux Klan Welcomes You,” alongside others offering new arrivals membership in Rotary International, the Kiwanis Club or the Lions Club. The Klan at the time directed its venom as much toward immigrants, Jews and Roman Catholics as at black citizens. A number of small businessmen my old hometown of Ashland, Ohio abandoned the Klan for fear that their Roman Catholic customers would boycott them if knowledge of their affiliation became known.
Not to be outdone, the aftermath of World War II saw a new emergence of mass paranoia, the fires stoked by the usually inebriated Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. With Joseph Stalin’s minions on the march and Mainland China newly in the grip of Mao Tse-Tung (totalitarianism by any name will smell as rank), the more gullible among us provided fertile ground for the senator’s assurances that the US government in general and the State Department in particular was riddled with Communist sympathizers. Somehow, he assured his followers, dark forces within the government had connived to cause the US to “lose China”, as though we had ever possessed China in the first place. Our stubborn support for the corrupt Chaing Ki-shek had probably done more to erode support for the Nationalist cause and toss the nation into the abyss of Maoism than any domestic conspiracy ever could have.
When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted and executed for passing nuclear secrets to the USSR and the petty spy Alger Hiss was found guilty of espionage, the masses were affirmed in their belief that agents of the “worldwide Communist conspiracy” lurked everywhere. To even question the status quo with regard to any of society’s cruelties or injustices was to risk being labeled a Communist sympathizer, pinko (as opposed to red) or fellow traveler. When Rev. Martin Luther King met with the black citizens of the Goolah Geechee islanders off the South Carolina coast, the local press sniffed that the gathering was a meeting of Communist Party members. None other than President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson labeled the entire civil rights movement a Communist plot.
It was suggested by some observers that the membership of the actual Communist Party of the USA was so minuscule that it should be divided among municipalities nationwide so that each community could have a convenient target for its paranoia.
It is unlikely that speculation will ever cease surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. That a festering nonentity like Lee Harvey Oswald would pull off such an outrageous crime on his own remains too much for many to accept. Other conspiracy theories are more sinister and mask deep seated biases, such as the big lie that the Nazi conducted Holocaust of World War II is a hoax.
Many conspiracy theories originate with outright lies perpetrated by political leaders, whether out of malice or befuddlement. It was not learned until after a vast expenditure in blood and treasure that the Gulf of Tonkin incident used as a pretext for our deeper involvement in the Vietnam War did not happen as reported. In a similar fashion, it was discovered that Saddam Hussein, as evil a man as he was, did not possess weapons of mass destruction, the rationale provided for our lengthy involvement in the Second Gulf War and the geopolitical quagmire that persists in the Middle East to this day.
During a period of societal upheaval and insecurity, many persons, particularly the uneducated and uninformed, can be more prone to accept the most outlandish theories. When Orson Welles broadcast his War of The Worlds program in 1938, large numbers who tuned in late to his Mercury Theater were readily convinced that ravening Martian hordes were leveling major cities and vaporizing the residents. In the throes of the Great Depression and with World War II looming, many were taken in by the broadcast who may not
have been during more settled times. Even then, the responses of many who were taken in reveal their level of ignorance of science, with one person actually trumpeting that a “planet” had landed in New Jersey, clueless as to how absurd such a statement was.
It would seem that it generally takes three elements to foster a wave of hysteria and criminality: Social and economic unrest; a fanatical cult feeding upon and encouraging the worst instincts of the populace; a mass of the willfully ignorant and ill-informed. Most recently, it only took a president whose failed term in office was thankfully ending and whose ego was too fragile to admit that he acquired that most despised of titles, that of loser, to unleash a slavering, malodorous horde of thugs and malcontents upon the US Capitol.
In his study The People of the Lie: The Psychology of Evil, the psychiatrist Dr. M. Scott Peck posits that ignorance is an evil choice freely made. While education—true education that emphasizes critical thinking skills—remains the best way to arrive at truth and avoid falsehood, there are those who resist self-improvement through education, preferring unsubstantiated rumors and speculation to evidence as provided by, for instance, modern science. In a recent article published on Aeon, Quassim Cassam of the University of Warwick labels such types Bad Thinkers. It would seem that what one learns or refuses to learn is indicative of one’s values, that for many it is easier to water and nourish their delusions than to engage in the hard business of serious thought.
The consequences of bad thinking can be tragic, as, for instance, in the case of recent acts of violence directed at Asian Americans by those who suspect Mainland China of deliberately fostering the COVID pandemic. While serious scientists, including those at the World Wildlife Fund, suspect that the COVID virus is zoonotic, perhaps originating with bats, the list of misdeeds perpetrated by the Chinese government is long and deplorable, to which people of Tibet as well as members of the Uyghur minority of Xinjiang can well attest. And yet that anyone could somehow associate the misdeeds of the Chinese government with an innocent civilian of Chinese, Japanese, Thai or Vietnamese descent going peacefully about their business simply because they “look Asian” stands as a powerful indictment of the character and intelligence of conspiracy theorists.
The solution to bad thinking is, of course, to educate the all too often resistant public, to, as Dr. Cassam says, encourage intellectual virtues as opposed to such intellectual vices as closed mindedness and prejudice. The task is necessary but time consuming and seemingly Sisyphian. By the time the bad thinkers have been so educated, the ramparts may have been breeched, the sanctuary befouled and the artifacts looted and shattered yet again.
Cassam reminds us that the best route toward arriving at truth and avoiding falsehood is provided by eduction. Of course, we have been told many times that in order to address the world’s many ills, such as global warming, rising sea levels, plastic pollution, or the pervasive effects of pesticides, we must educate the public. Given that large segments of the public are resistant to being educated and would prefer to avoid uncomfortable realities and the discoveries of science, the bad thinkers—barbarians—may well have breached the ramparts, befouled the sanctuary and shattered the artifacts within before the tasks before us are meaningfully addressed.
Lorin Swinehart
By Neil McKinnon
This is the story of how the wife and I decided to rekindle our relationship, which had become painful and unexciting as a result of raising a family and
working long hours—I, in a repetitive job in Calgary and she, as a teacher of small children in an elementary school.
Our marriage had not always been unexciting. It was once like a shirt drying on a line. It would blow into many different shapes, but when the breeze stopped it always fell back to what it was — and at one time, it was soft and wonderful. In those days she called me Twinkle Butt. But I never thought of that as gone. Late at night when my only companion was a flickering television, our love seemed as a blaze that had fizzled, leaving the ashes cold. Though she no longer called me Twinkle Butt, I was sure that if we sifted the ashes we could find a spark. I imagined what it would be like to fan the spark...not into a wildfire—the days of wildfires were gone for us. Just a small flame lit my fantasy.
So, when the occasion arose that I might accompany her, without our children, to a weekend gathering of teachers in Edmonton, I saw an opportunity for us to find the spark and rekindle our love. The convention had promise. It was in a first-class hotel. There was a welcoming cocktail party and a banquet with entertainment. She had an expense allowance; her time commitment was not great, and Edmonton has many attractions.
At first, she was hesitant to take me. She was looking forward to a weekend of fun with her fellow teachers. When I explained that to celebrate the trip, I planned on buying each of us a new wardrobe she immediately saw logic in the quest. I convinced her to cancel plans to drive to Edmonton with her best friend so that we might ride the Dayliner, a train that ran between the two cities. The journey was less than four hours and I thought it would be healing for the bruises on our relationship. Relaxing in the club car, watching the scenery, toasting each other with fancy drinks and feasting in elegance in the dining car would be important first steps toward locating the missing spark. In a flash of romantic inspiration, I booked an expensive suite, which, according to the hotel brochure, was sure to inspire notions of romance.
As we drove to the station, the wife was singing—something I hadn’t heard since the previous summer when I yanked a spacer from the deck I was constructing and stuck one end into my forehead. Our train was late. Her shoulders became stiff and she studied a crossword puzzle for the next two hours. The train, when it arrived, consisted of only one car which was reasonable because we were the only passengers. I stowed my suitcase on the luggage rack but left hers at the end of the car because it was too large to lift. She is a good planner and thinks of every contingency, even packing sheets, blankets and pillows in case the hotel was too poor to afford its own.
When we sat, clouds of dust sprang up from the seats and remained suspended around us, each speck visible in the afternoon sun shining through the dirty windows. The wife held a handkerchief to her face but it didn’t prevent a fit of choking. She was still coughing when a man in oily coveralls walked through the car. “Where can we get a drink and when do we eat?” I asked.
He looked at me as though I were unable to tie my own shoelaces. Then he laughed. “This is a short trip,” he said. “There is no dining car, no food and no drinks.” He walked away chuckling.
The wife’s shoulders stiffened again and she made her mouth into a hyphen. Staring at me, she tore the crossword puzzle into tiny pieces. In this fashion we passed the time of the trip, which was longer than four hours because we stopped to enjoy the unparalleled views of Main Street in every town between Calgary and Edmonton. I rubbed a small hole in the dirt on the window to watch the passing scenery. It took my mind off the crossword puzzle. When the sun went down I saw the city lights. We came to a stop and the man in coveralls reappeared. “End of the line, folks. You get off here,” he said.
“But we’re not downtown,” I answered.
“We don’t go downtown. We’re in the rail yard at the edge of the city,” he explained.
I carried the bags. Everything was locked and dark. There was no taxi. The phone booth hosted an out of order sign. We trudged along a dirt road while the wife spoke encouragement by spelling out my fate should I damage her suitcase. When we came to a residential neighborhood, I knocked at a house and asked to use the phone, but the lady slammed the door in my face.
After an hour, we found a corner store and called a cab, which worked its way through Friday evening traffic and deposited us at the hotel. I dragged the suitcases to the front desk. The clerk smiled at me. “You’re hours late,” he said. “Your room wasn’t confirmed. We gave it away a long time ago.”
“Then give me another room.”
“We’re filled with teachers. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing available.” He smiled again which caused him to appear not as sorry as he claimed.
The wife’s heels clicked as she marched back and forth in the center of the lobby. I handed the clerk a twenty. “You have to find a room,” I said. “It’s worth my life.”
He pocketed the twenty. “There is a conference room,” he said. “We can roll cots in. It has a basin and toilet but no bath. You’ll have to be out before eight. There’s a meeting in the morning.”
I glanced at the wife pacing like a bear in a cage. It was probably the light, but it looked like steam was rising from the back of her neck. “We’ll take it,” I said.
We rode the elevator. The bellhop opened the door, dropped our suitcases and held out his hand. “What the hell?” The wife exploded. Normally she doesn’t use foul language but she will make an exception. The bellhop looked at her face and ran.
“They gave away our room,” I explained. “This is all that’s left.”
“The cold weather has frozen your brain. I’m not sleeping here.” She marched into the toilet.
There was a phone on a table in the corner. On my sixth call I was successful—a Holiday Inn on the other side of the city. I shouted the news. After a wait, during which I thought I heard glass breaking, she emerged and paraded out the door. I grabbed the suitcases and followed. We hailed a cab, and an hour later we were in our new room. The temperature of our relationship rose a few degrees. I relaxed. The cocktail party beckoned. Drinks and snacks were exactly what we needed before a late romantic dinner. We returned to our original hotel.
The ballroom was quiet. A man swept the floor. Two ladies gathered glasses and stacked chairs, “Excuse me. Isn’t this where the teacher’s party is supposed to be?” I asked.
“Yes,” the man answered. “But it’s over. Everyone’s gone.”
There was nothing for it but to return to the Holiday Inn, where the wife again went into the bathroom. I called room service and ordered a bottle of champagne and a late dinner. She came out and I went in to wash. When I returned, she was in bed with her back to me.
I started to take off my clothes. I had no idea it would be this easy to recover the spark. “Dinner is on its way,” I said. “Let’s share an appetizer before it gets here.”
She didn’t answer.
“They’re bringing champagne.” I lifted the blanket and prepared to slide into bed.
She spoke to the wall. “Take your champagne and sleep in the bathtub.”
There was a knock on the door. I kept the champagne and sent the dinners back. Then I found a blanket and tried to get comfortable in the tub. I sipped the bubbly liquor and shifted from one side to the other. The tub
made my back and neck sore. Sleep was impossible. I started to feel that perhaps the spark was dead. The more I drank, the more I despaired. Finally, with my back so sore I could hardly get out of the tub, I decided to go for a walk.
The bar beside the lobby was open. Why not? If I could dull the pain, I might be able to sleep. I went in and ordered a double whiskey.
The drink burned all the way down. I ordered another and looked around. There were two men at the bar. One was tall with a black moustache. “Drowning your sorrows?” he asked.
“Yes, I am,” I replied. “The wife told me I had to sleep in a bathtub.”
The man laughed. “Sounds serious,” he said. “My wife hasn’t slept with me for five years. I understand how you feel. Let me buy you a drink.”
“Me too,” his friend said. “My wife doesn’t talk to me.”
Two more doubles arrived. They tasted wonderful. Everything was wonderful and the world was marvelous. I forgot about the bathtub and bought more whiskey, then a round of vodka to return the men’s generosity. Later, we drank brandy and smoked cigars while I related the tale of our train ride.
“You should have hitch-hiked,” Black Moustache said.
I found the idea incredibly funny and laughed until tears ran on my cheeks. My companions floated in and out of my vision, astounding me with their fabulous conversation. I was on the edge of great things, but felt completely tranquil. The wife might be angry, but these men understood. I drank some more.
Then something happened. My euphoria collapsed. I remembered my wife, alone upstairs, and my happiness turned to guilt. My new friends sympathized. Yes, the world was unjust. Yes, marriage was fraught with danger. Yes, we were unlucky in love. After that, the evening became murky. I remember feeling ill and going to the bathroom. I also recall riding in a car. I came to myself in a booth in a café. Someone was shaking me. There were plates and cups on the table.
“Wake up,” a woman’s voice said. “Your friends have gone. They said you’d pay.”
Warm sun shone through the window. My hair hurt and my teeth itched. A hundred tiny devils pushed my brain against the backs of my eyes. “Where am I?” I asked.
“Right where your friends left you,” she answered.
“I have to get back to the Holiday Inn. How far is it?” She laughed. “You’re nowhere near.”
Somewhere, in the depth of my hangover, a light bulb went on. I felt my pocket. Thank God, my wallet was still there. So was my room key.
“They said you’d pay,” the waitress repeated.
The bill took every cent I had. I went outside and began walking. I dreaded going back. I’d never been in so much trouble. I loved her and didn’t relish the idea of spending the rest of my life alone. There was no doubt she would order me to leave. She’d probably already returned home to throw out my belongings and tell her friends about my treachery.
It was mid-morning and my feet were sore by the time I entered the hotel. Perhaps she hadn’t left. Maybe she was in the room waiting to kill me. I had no excuse and no speech ready. I turned the key and opened the door.
The curtains were closed and the only light came from a desk lamp. My wife was sitting in the shadows on the side of the bed. She looked up and I saw she was crying. “Twinkle Butt,” she whispered. Then she stood, ran across the room and threw her arms around me.
My mouth fell open. I had expected a flying water tumbler. The words poured from her. “You scared me half to death. I thought you’d gone. Please don’t frighten me like that. I’ll never be mean to you again.” She shivered and sobbed, making my shirt wet.
I couldn’t believe it. She thought I’d walked out because I was angry— left everything: her, my children, my home, my job. A lump formed in my throat. I opened my mouth to tell her the truth—that I’d got drunk and spent all my money.
“Don’t cry,” I said. “It’s not like that. I didn’t leave you. I … I …”
I opened my mouth but something made me stop: those years together, our children, her belief that I could actually take off like the good guy at the end of a cowboy movie. A tear rolled on my cheek. She’d called me Twinkle Butt after all these years. Maybe it was better if she thought I was angry instead of stupid.
I pulled her close. “I won’t leave again,” I said.
She stretched up and kissed me. “I love you, Twinkle Butt,” she said.
We held hands as we walked down for breakfast. I was tired and I had a hangover, but life was good. Oh yes... that spark...it became a wildfire!
The End
Neil McKinnon
