Actually, I like them all, but the GOP conspiracy the most. It explains why Monica Lewinski corrupted an honorable president, how George W. Bush was awarded Florida’s electoral college votes and why the polar ice caps are melting but rising sea levels threaten only red states.
Your property tax bill is a conspiracy by local politicians out to enrich themselves, and the cheap illegal labor that supports America is (a) a conspiracy of Democrats to enlarge their base or (b) a plot by Republicans to enrich corporations by providing cheap labor. Your ticket for doing 95 in a 70-mph zone is a result of a police conspiracy involving ticket quotas.
A conspiracy can be a handy means of explaining the unknown or a clever way to avoid responsibility. That’s why when a man’s wife divorces him after catching him in the act with the 17-year old baby sitter, he complains, “Women,” as if they’re all out to get him (as well they should be).
Elton Collins has been “arrested” at least three times since James Pittman Jr. was (actually) arrested on drug charges in Texas. So avid are conspiracy theorists locally that a sighting of Collins talking with Greg Perry is contorted into Collins being arrested by federal agents. No offense to Perry or the conspiracy theorists, but he doesn’t look like a Fed — except to someone jealous enough of Collins’ stature to try to undermine it.
Conspiracies allow under-achievers to justify their own lack of success by painting successful people as complicit in illegal or at least unethical activities. They can explain one’s failures or a rival’s successes.
Nothing does more to promote conspiracy theory than the Internet, where a post of a police confiscation of suspected drug money on I-85 might draw the following: “I heard there was a lot more money but it never got to the police station” — by someone unwilling to use a real name or a real e-mail address, and who has no sources other than his drinking buddies.
Imagining a conspiracy is easier than sorting through the shades of gray in a world where people increasingly want things in black and white.
When the truth doesn’t suit, a conspiracy theory allows you to see yourself as a victim of circumstances.
Mark Beardsley is the editor of The Commerce News. He lives in Commerce
