04-14-2019, 06:59 AM
My take: a conspiracy must fit Karl Popper's concept of falsifiability to be viable, and truthful to be valid. "A lot of people are saying" reflects an echo chamber, and the distinction between people who rely upon NPR or FoX Newspeak Channel is clear. Obviously NPR's devotees are likely to start the argument with "some professor at Harvard/Yale/Princeton/MIT/Stanford/some high-profile state university says convincingly or provocatively", and some FoX News analyst has been asserting some meme among viewers that seems very real to them after copious repetition.
The conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya could never be disproved. Conspiracy theorists held that a birth certificate from Hawaii with the right time, place, and place of birth was a forgery. Some people are convinced that the Holocaust is a monumental hoax, a conspiracy of Jews to exploit gentile guilt (I am nearly half German and Swiss, and I feel no personal guilt about the Holocaust. I simply hate Nazis for exterminating people whom I consider my moral and cultural brethren, and I would have hated Stalinists had they done such instead). The passionate believer in a conspiracy theory keeps raising the bar.
There were plenty of conspiracy theories about the assassination of JFK. One crazed gunman could not have thought to go to the sixth story of the Texas Schoolbook Depository and make a perfect shot at JFK, right? Well, yes. The gunshot that killed the 35th President has been shown to have not been fired from the Grassy Knoll, most likely by Charles Harrelison, infamous for assassinating a federal judge who passed down maximal sentences to drug traffickers a few years later. The oddity was that Lee Harvey Oswald could kill with the shot, and it turns out that JFK would have ducked successfully upon hearing the shot had he not been wearing a back brace. One explanation fits reality, and others have serious faults.
Conspiracy theories are common in free societies, but conspiracies usually involve people on the fringe between respectability and evil. To be sure, criminals are always plotting heists, smuggling of contraband, and on occasion gangland hits or insurance fraud. In a country with a shaky leader and a putrid economy, there is often some plot being hatched in the main military academy of the failed state to overthrow the current dictator. But in general, Big Business does not operate in such conspiracies. Conspiracies are inefficient ways to market a product or take down a political opponent. It is easier to fund an opposition campaign against someone pro-labor, pro-safety, or anti-pollution pol that might put someone who recognizes the necessity of putting profit first and people in a subordinate place -- someone who will do exactly as corporate lobbyists will tell him to do. It is easier to get a competitor to merge than to send some gunmen to a corporate board. Besides, conspiracies usually unravel under the attention of the FBI which makes use of the Anglo-American concept of conspiracy as a serious crime even if no crime is committed other than the conspiracy.
I have yet to be convinced that the 2016 general election was clean. There is just too much circumstantial evidence that offers amazing coincidences that could be connected in theory... but might be nothing more than coincidences. Conduct of people involved, including vehement denials with no further backing than general trust for the President and people behind him, suggest the exact opposite to me. I am old enough to remember that when Richard M. Nixon said "Your President is not a crook", I suddenly lost all faith in him. Honest people do not have to drop the moral bar for their legitimacy.
I look at the President's denial of collusion -- and the defense that collusion is not a violation of statutory law as is conspiracy. Collusion in a criminal matter is conspiracy. This is like saying that "pilferage" is not a crime in the sense that "larceny" is. The distinction is not worth making.
The conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya could never be disproved. Conspiracy theorists held that a birth certificate from Hawaii with the right time, place, and place of birth was a forgery. Some people are convinced that the Holocaust is a monumental hoax, a conspiracy of Jews to exploit gentile guilt (I am nearly half German and Swiss, and I feel no personal guilt about the Holocaust. I simply hate Nazis for exterminating people whom I consider my moral and cultural brethren, and I would have hated Stalinists had they done such instead). The passionate believer in a conspiracy theory keeps raising the bar.
There were plenty of conspiracy theories about the assassination of JFK. One crazed gunman could not have thought to go to the sixth story of the Texas Schoolbook Depository and make a perfect shot at JFK, right? Well, yes. The gunshot that killed the 35th President has been shown to have not been fired from the Grassy Knoll, most likely by Charles Harrelison, infamous for assassinating a federal judge who passed down maximal sentences to drug traffickers a few years later. The oddity was that Lee Harvey Oswald could kill with the shot, and it turns out that JFK would have ducked successfully upon hearing the shot had he not been wearing a back brace. One explanation fits reality, and others have serious faults.
Conspiracy theories are common in free societies, but conspiracies usually involve people on the fringe between respectability and evil. To be sure, criminals are always plotting heists, smuggling of contraband, and on occasion gangland hits or insurance fraud. In a country with a shaky leader and a putrid economy, there is often some plot being hatched in the main military academy of the failed state to overthrow the current dictator. But in general, Big Business does not operate in such conspiracies. Conspiracies are inefficient ways to market a product or take down a political opponent. It is easier to fund an opposition campaign against someone pro-labor, pro-safety, or anti-pollution pol that might put someone who recognizes the necessity of putting profit first and people in a subordinate place -- someone who will do exactly as corporate lobbyists will tell him to do. It is easier to get a competitor to merge than to send some gunmen to a corporate board. Besides, conspiracies usually unravel under the attention of the FBI which makes use of the Anglo-American concept of conspiracy as a serious crime even if no crime is committed other than the conspiracy.
I have yet to be convinced that the 2016 general election was clean. There is just too much circumstantial evidence that offers amazing coincidences that could be connected in theory... but might be nothing more than coincidences. Conduct of people involved, including vehement denials with no further backing than general trust for the President and people behind him, suggest the exact opposite to me. I am old enough to remember that when Richard M. Nixon said "Your President is not a crook", I suddenly lost all faith in him. Honest people do not have to drop the moral bar for their legitimacy.
I look at the President's denial of collusion -- and the defense that collusion is not a violation of statutory law as is conspiracy. Collusion in a criminal matter is conspiracy. This is like saying that "pilferage" is not a crime in the sense that "larceny" is. The distinction is not worth making.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.