How often do
we hear that some crisis or problem is the result of a conspiracy? Conspiracy theories pop up to rationalize
just about every calamity or bad outcome that doesn’t have an easily understood
or obvious explanation. And, there seem
to be an unlimited number of such theories, some of which keep resurfacing,
such as the following examples:
• Hospitals and other health care
providers routinely conspire to cheat the Medicare and Medicaid programs for
the sake of profits.
• Pharmaceutical companies conspire to
fix prices.
• The government has been conspiring to
prevent elderly people from getting too old in order to control the health care
budget.
• Oil companies conspire to fix the
price of gasoline.
• Jewish bankers conspire to control
the economy.
• The Jews have been conspiring for
generations to rule the world.
• The Tri-Lateral Commission is a
conspiracy to establish a world government.
• The assassination of John F. Kennedy
was a conspiracy.
• The death and destruction caused by
Katrina in New Orleans was the result of a conspiracy by people in government,
who are prejudiced against people of color and the poor.
• The Pentagon was not hit by an airplane
on 9/11, but by a missile.
• There is a conspiracy to cover-up
White House involvement in the attack of 9/11.
Conspiracy
theories are defined as “attempts to explain the ultimate cause of an event
(usually a political, social, or historical event) as a secret, and often
deceptive, plot by a covert alliance of powerful people or organizations (ital
mine) rather than as an overt activity or as natural occurrence.” (Wikipedia).
Unfounded Theories
Whipped along
by an obliging media, unfounded conspiracy theories circulate continuously,
feeding on the paranoia that lurks in the minds of many people. Anything they
don’t like or don’t understand is invariably thought to be the result of a plot
by some group that secretly schemed to cause it.
If you think
about it, major conspiracies really could not be carried out by just a few
people. They would have to involve many participants, in some cases literally
thousands. The idea that some small group that has remained hidden from public
view for many years, even generations, could have been behind many of the
cataclysmic events that have occurred throughout recorded history is pretty
hard to swallow.
A conspiracy
may involve just two people scheming together, for example, to commit a
robbery, kill someone (perhaps even JFK), steal from an employer, plant a story
for political purposes, etc.
“Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy”
When Hillary
Clinton was defending her husband during the Monica Lewinsky affair that led to
his impeachment, she claimed that the president’s transgression was actually
caused by “a vast right-wing conspiracy,” that he was set-up. How vast we were
never told, but the implication was that the entire Republican Party, or at
least its leadership, somehow induced him to act inappropriately with a young
intern.
All of which
illustrates how silly things can get when people claim that some significant
event or situation is, or has been, the result of a conspiracy.
Are Conspiracy Theories Really
Believable?
Furthermore,
the greater the conspiracy, the more difficult it would be for it to have any
credence. For example, the theory that the government has been conspiring to
prevent elderly people from getting too old in order to control health care
expenditures. As the former CEO of a hospital, I have heard this claim
surprisingly often, even from some people who work in the health care industry,
such as doctors, including a surgeon who once held a high-level position in the
military health care hierarchy.
The means of
accomplishing this is usually said to be through the administration of the
Medicare program, and the people whom I have heard make this assertion were
always deadly serious. However, no one
has ever been able to explain how it could be pulled off, given the many
thousands of health care workers who would have to be involved, from
politicians and government bureaucrats to doctors, nurses, hospital
administrators and directors, etc. The numbers might be far smaller if it were
only necessary to have the legislators structure the laws to accomplish their
purpose. This assumes, of course, that it would be possible to limit the number
of conspirators to just those who pass the legislation and administer health
care laws and regulations, but even that would require the knowing cooperation
of thousands of people.
Furthermore,
keeping a secret that big would be impossible, what with the continual turnover
of people in office and the great number of bureaucrats who would have to be
involved to implement the various programs in order to accomplish such a purpose
– that is, to prevent the elderly from living too long in order to save money –
without anyone finding out. In short, in
spite of the obvious error of such thinking, the theory persists and is
periodically re-circulated by people who simply prefer to believe the worst. No
one I know of has ever been able to cite any real evidence to support the
existence of such a scheme.
How about the
theory that there is an ongoing conspiracy to cover-up White House involvement
in the attack of 9/11, or that Israel was behind it? Salted with stories that
the Israeli government warned Jews to stay away from the World Trade Center on
that fateful day, or that it was not an airplane that hit the Pentagon but a
missile, or that it would not have been structurally possible to destroy the
WTC buildings by flying airplanes into them, so they had to be brought down
with strategically placed explosives? How many people would have to be involved
to plan and execute such plots, then keep it secret after the fact? Just how plausible
is that?
Why Conspiracy Theories
Persist
My own
conclusion is that conspiracy theories thrive on paranoia and persist only
because people continue to circulate them as a result of their own biases,
prejudices, ignorance, or lack of ability to reason. Nothing more.
The next time
you hear a conspiracy rumor, stop and consider for a moment the number of
people who would have to be involved and the extent of the participation that
would be necessary to pull it off, all the way to the top of the organizational
pyramid, that is, the president, vice president, cabinet members, senators and
representatives of both parties, generals and admirals, the people who actually
carry them out, etc. And, just how would it be possible to keep everyone
involved from ever revealing the truth? No records, none. No secret
disclosures, à la “Deep Throat.” No deathbed confessions. Nothing. Ever.
In the
absence of any credible evidence, it seems to me that conspiracy theories will
continue to remain just that – theories.
They may be fun to talk about, nothing more. But, that’s just my opinion.
© 2007 Harris R.
Sherline, All Rights Reserved