Chaotic Fringe

Conspiracy theories are rather interesting things to me, not so much in the mechanics of the theory, which can be fascinating, but in the fervent defense of the theory by people who devoutly believe in them. In it’s simplest form, a conspiracy theory is a plan by one group of individuals trying to gain control over a large portion of the population secretly. The plans never are simple and are put together by a series of threads that are interconnected intricately. In the grand scheme of conspiracies, very few are able to see the big picture and those people that figure out the plan have a difficult time convincing the larger portion of the population to believe them.

A big component of conspiracy theories to me is the vast scope of the plan. When you sit down and look at a conspiracy, at least when people who aren’t true believers look at it, there are gaps in the logical framework that makes it difficult to believe the plan exists. We are led to believe the designers of the conspiracy have hidden their real agenda in what could be coincidences. They play on the apathy of the general public to execute their plans. A better way of explaining it is using this example. A fictional show that uses real life events as the basis of the show can have their characters incredibly knowledgeable or incredibly accurate about the event in question, specifically because the show is written after the event and the creator can give the characters the knowledge needed to be at the right place at the right time or know the exact information for the time. The writer makes sure the characters are in the right spots because the writer knows what will happen in the event. Other characters won't see the event unfolding because the writer hasn't made them privy to his knowledge.

Conspiracies, as far as the explanation of them, work in a similar fashion. Conspiracies take such a hold with a lot of people because they seem believable. They can see the patterns of events that link up to the theory, but they are looking at the conspiracy from the end point and working back. An event happens now and by backtracking you can manipulate past events to fit into the theory. In hindsight you can make the craziest thing fit into a theory profile. Most of the time my mother can get a great parking space when she goes to a shopping center. She says a little player before entering the shopping mall. She feels the prayer allows her to get a good spot, not the fact that we circle around the mall for five minutes looking for the perfect spot. People who believe in a particular conspiracy theory knows the outcome they are looking for so they place past events in a pattern to fit the outcome they want. In a lot of cases, conspiracy theories have problems because if you use the reverse method, the theory doesn’t hold up as well.

Without going too far into the weeds, the birther conspiracy theory is a perfect example of this. We are supposed to believe the President of the United States is illegitimate for the Presidency because he wasn’t born in the United States. We are supposed to believe the birth certificate in Hawaii has been falsified and we are supposed to believe Obama is either an ambitious foreigner or a covert plant, something like a Manchurian candidate. It was an easy task to look from the vantage point of 2008, when Obama was running for President, and plug in all sorts of ways this could have come about. With every explanation someone comes up with, someone believing in the conspiracy can give an answer as to how a cover up could have been made. So first the President didn't have a birth certificate, then when one was produced they said it wasn't the long form. When the long form was produced that was said to be a fake because it wasn't an original long form they could touch with their hands. In every instance an explanation is given for the evidence asked for, thus the conspiracy person tried to discredit the evidence. Instead of looking from the present and going back to the past to fit the pieces in, you have to look at this from the time of the conspiracy being planned and see if the logic still holds.

I’ve mentioned this to a few people who I know believe the President wasn’t born in the United States; why would either he fake his citizenship or why would a Manchurian theory work with him? Simply put, I say go back to the time the President was born and think about the plan from that angle, which would be where the plan would originate. When Obama was born, Kennedy was contemplating running for President and an issue with him was his Catholic faith. Some argued at the time a Catholic would be more loyal to the Pope than the United States Constitution. While the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, it wasn’t law of the land. Some states were starting to dismantle anti mixed raced marriage laws. The country was still a segregated nation, though it could be said events were slowly changing.

It has been affirmed by birthers that there were birth announcements for Obama in two local newspapers at the time. They may dispute the birth certificate but they mostly agree the announcements were placed on or near the time of the birth of Obama. So if I were planning to get Obama in as President of the United States and I planned this in the late 50s and early 60s, for the plan to work I had to figure that a mixed race baby born in Hawaii would be able to become President in his lifetime even though at the time blacks barely had the right to vote and the country was concerned a Catholic might not be loyal to the U.S. As far as I know, we don't have mentats or Bene Gesserits among us. (for those not familiar with the book Dune, these were the people who worked on a thousand year plan to create a savior. Paul Atradies was not suppose to be the savior, but was suppose to have been born a female and mate with someone else to produce the savior. Things didn't go as planned.) At the time it would have made more sense to get, at the very least, a white Hawaiian and even better find a child in the heartland of the United States and groom them for the Presidency. To plan on a mixed race individual becoming President in less than 50 years would have been the predictive equivalent of landing a manned space probe on a comet. There were many social and personal factors that would have to be figured in to make the plan work. Even when Obama was running in 2008, he was going up against the political machine of the Clintons, which any analyst at the time would have said was unstoppable in popularity and power within the Democratic Party. Something birthers discount about the political career of Obama is he didn't fit the pattern of a black politician at the time. There were a number of articles written about how he was mistrusted in the African American political structure because he didn't come up through the ranks of civil rights and/or the church. Almost all black politicians who made a name for themselves in politics in the 70s through 2000s came up through the ranks of one of those organizations.

So where I have a big problem in assuming Obama is some sort of plant or ambitious foreigner is figuring there are so many social variables that had to work independently to make his Presidency possible doesn't fit logic. We are asked to believe very few people know about this and manipulate birth certificates, school records and I would assume photographs and other recording devices to allow for Obama to fool government agencies to be President. The complexity of the plan is mind-blowing and the endgame is unclear. If you look at things in hindsight you can, with a lot of imagination, jump through hoops and try and link things to fit the conspiracy, but the theory falls apart when you look at it from the time of the initial planning.

One specific thing I love about people who harbor conspiracy theories; they are so focused on the outlandish Monday morning quarterback theories they miss the boring, run of the mill assaults on their liberties and freedoms. Essentially, they would rather believe in Mulder/Scully UFO connections, bio-chip implantations and secret Kenyan birther Presidents than to examine concrete examples of stolen liberties.

Since Sunday there has been a flood of news about Todd Akin, the US House Representative from Missouri, and his comment about legitimate rape. His comment illustrates a larger issue about GOP efforts to bring legislation in to restrict abortions and on a broader scale legislation that has been done with voter ID laws to secure the election for the GOP. This is as much of a conspiracy as the birther, FEMA or crop circle theory and it has the distinction of having easy examples to point out. It could be argued that since 2010 there has been a strong push by the GOP to get laws passed to undermine abortion laws. From laws written to say life begins at conception to the infamous Virginia trans-vaginal probe to Todd Akin, the past two years have had anti-abortion laws being passed in many states. A simple Google search would bring up this information. Video is out there of GOP politicians redefining rape. The Vice Presidential candidate for President, Paul Ryan, co-sponsored a bill with Todd Akin that passed the US House, bill HR-3, which would further limit access to women for abortions, even in the case of rape, incest or the life of the mother is at stake. At the same time you have had evidence of restrictive voter ID laws being passed especially in states such as Pennsylvania where the last Presidential election was won by a under 100,000 votes. The estimate of the people effected by the new law upheld by the courts has close to a million people who could possibly be ineligible to vote because they don’t have current ID. Simple digging shows many of the bills are being constructed by an organization called ALEC, and ALEC is funded in part by the Koch Brothers.

In the larger political arena, with the Supreme Court saying corporations have the ability to have free speech, millions of dollars are being poured into superPACS. Those superPACS are funded, for the most part, by wealthy individuals such as the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson, a wealthy Las Vegas casino owner. The information I just gave isn't hard to confirm. I got the information from Google and news reports. I didn't have to infer about back room dealings or cultist in robes speaking incantations. The pressure by superPACS, wealthy individuals and a desperate GOP has caused laws to have been created that directly effect control of our bodies and our right to vote. There is concrete evidence of our rights being taken away and you will barely see any drumbeat from the conspiracy people. You still have people out there convinced the President is not an American while Americans are seriously working to restrict our freedoms. If left unchecked, it won't matter if Obama is a citizen or not because as law abiding citizens we won't be able to vote.