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October 02, 2008
How enlightening!
"An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic."I'm sorry, but at the risk of sounding cynical, I'm glad the Green Party exists, and that Cynthia McKinney is running as its candidate for president. Because, while I find it disturbing that people who believe in conspiracy theories like the one advanced here by Cynthia McKinney are allowed to vote, I'm glad they at least have a candidate as loony as they are, for otherwise they might vote for Barack Obama. With apparent seriousness, McKinney advances the claim that the government (via the U.S. military, of course) actually carried out 5,000 secret executions of prisoners during the Hurricane Katrina crisis, then dumped them in the swamp! Via Ed Morrissey, who notes that Alex Jones believes it. Presumably, so do his listeners. I don't know how many people that is, but they're an argument against unlimited suffrage. There is a fine line between what we call "opinion" and that sort of irrationality bordering on outright mental illness, and IMO, these people cross it. While this nonsense doesn't require too much debunking, Ed Morrissey was generous enough to debunk it anyway: The conspiracy theorists on the Left and the Right tend to embrace each other at a certain point, just south of rationality. For these people, little points like evidence and common sense provide no obstacles at all to paranoia and fantasy.I'm sure the conspiracy theorists can come up with the usual convoluted "rebuttals" to each of those points (probably that they were fed to alligators which were in turn eaten by military pythons, and the government is killing all witnesses and all families who ask questions), but it's too tiring. I'm just glad they have a candidate. And it's important to note that she's a Pisces with Moon in Sagittarius! So why isn't the McKinney candidacy better known? posted by Eric on 10.02.08 at 01:22 PM
Comments
I think an important part of the conspiracy theory is the need to believe that the world is understandable and controllable. The problem is simply that the wrong people are in charge and all we need to do to create a utopia of ease and happiness is replace them with the right people. The possibility that the world is not knowable and controllable, that nobody is in charge, is just too scary. Plus it's nice to feel like an insider, someone in possession of special, secret informaiton that other, lesser people just don't get. tim maguire · October 2, 2008 03:41 PM When McKinney first lost her seat in the House of Representatives (in the Primary, no less), her campaign manager was asked the reason her her loss. He said "The Jews. J - E - W - S." Oh, and her campaign manager was her dad. Guess that's where she gets it from. Sean P · October 2, 2008 04:08 PM Post a comment
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Conspiracy theorists prefer to believe in secret information - unknown to those poor, ignorant common people - rather than obvious information. Feeling that your life is not under your control, and your inability to understand your lack of status, is very sweet when married to the belief that you are one of the special ones who hold secret knowledge.
It's not that different than class warfare beliefs, actually. Other people get rich and you don't and you can't figure out why, so there must be something tricky going on. The belief that someone is out there pulling the strings precedes people's identifying who that is.
As this is common in schizophrenia and the brain damage caused by specific street drugs, it is possible that there is actually a damaged brain mechanism that drives this. A permanent sense of being puzzled by life, combined with a specific memory impairment - likely the anterior cingulate gyrus - prevents people from replacing installed theories with new ones, regardless of the data. Even "normal" conspiracy theorists may have mild impairment in this area.