originally published July 13, 2013
I’ve never been one to buy in completely to a juicy conspiracy theory. I’ve listened to Jesse Ventura rant passionately and succinctly on Howard Stern’s satellite radio show about how the World Trade Center towers’ collapse on 9/11 was clearly the result of a vast government plot. I have watched videos detailing the obvious signs of a Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld set-up, and other videos debunking everything from the first videos.
Now when someone brings it up, I just nod my head and act as though my curiosity has been piqued. It hasn’t. The truth is, I don’t care.
That isn’t exactly true – I sincerely hope the truth is someday edged to the front of the stage, but until then I’ll simply plead ignorance and move on. I’m not going to be the guy who finds that magical thread to pull that somehow definitively exonerates or incriminates Bush, Cheney, the Galactic Empire, Scientology, or the agents of K.A.O.S. in that terrible tragedy, so I won’t lose sleep over it. Nor will I fret and fear any of these wacky conspiracy theories.
According to a number of people you really wouldn’t want to get stuck talking to at a party, every president in the history of the United States has been related to royal European blood, and it’s the candidate with the most royal ties who wins every election. A financier and genealogy-lover named Harold Brooks-Baker – who had once been investigated by the FBI for an ‘are-you-secretly-related-to-a-billionaire’ scam – was a strong proponent of this theory, which naturally ends up with the entire government being run by the Illuminati.
Brooks-Baker claimed that at least 33 presidents could be traced back to Charlemagne and Alfred The Great. One lengthy online rant claims this whole thing is tied to the Holy Roman Empire.
Hell, a twelve-year-old girl once proved that all presidents except for Martin Van Buren were descended from King John of England. Of course, many of us can find a royal in our roots if we dig deep enough – more than 150 million Americans have at least a drop of blue in their blood. Hell, some geneticists believe we’re all no more than 50th cousins from one another. We’d need a fuck-ton of potato salad for that family reunion.
And speaking of a big ol’ happy family, let’s not forget the Dominionism conspiracy. You know how a small group of influential Americans are fighting to take over the United States and replace the Constitution with the Bible? Yes, this is all about the efforts undertaken to turn America’s fundamental principles into those of extreme conservative Christiandom.
This one has a smidgen of merit, as there are no doubt a vast number of Americans who see an all-out pro-Jesus theocracy as a big step forward. Sure, it means an inherent intolerance for other religious beliefs and a strict What-Would-Jesus-Do approach to every aspect of the law, but so what? There are Muslim nations who already adhere to a policy of religious intolerance, so why not America? Why should America be any better?
That is some twisted-ass thinking, and while I have no doubt it exists in the core of some folks’ warped beliefs, I don’t think we have to worry about the official melding of church and state anytime soon.
In a similar vein, we have everyone’s favorite flag-bearers of Jesus-laden doom, the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. In 1998, Hilary Clinton let the term slip as her best guess as to who might be targeting her husband with that whole Lewinsky mess. Bill Clinton echoed the accusation a few years later in regards to the vicious conservative attacks on Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race.
At this point, the term is a source of mockery by those on the right. They believe it’s funny that paranoid liberals would point to some massive underground mechanism driving conservative politics, trying to induce fear in the public that those snaky bastards are all up to something, planning collectively, seeking to destroy us. Conservatives would never come up with something so laughably ridiculous.
Well, apart from the Homosexual Agenda. But that’s all real, right?
Back in 1992, a collective of intellectually-challenged zygotes calling themselves the Family Research Council released a video called The Gay Agenda, detailing how 75% of gay men regularly ingest feces and 70-78% have a sexually-transmitted disease. No, I’m not joking.
The ‘agenda’ comes oozing from the mouths of far-right pundits whenever a gay marriage bill hits the table, or whenever they feel homosexuals might tragically acquire the same rights as human beings, which it seems they believe to be a different species entirely. Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, who is such a massive ass-vacuum he actually draws light from nearby bulbs and dims them by the sheer blackness of his soul, asserted in 2004 that the gay agenda is a more pressing danger than any terrorist activity affecting Americans.
This is the world we live in. People actually vote for a guy like this. Maybe there is some great conspiracy out there after all.
And of course it all begins and ends in Washington D.C., where yet another conspiracy may encircle the entire city. Washington is run by a ‘home rule’ principle, meaning the US Congress has jurisdiction over the area, and can overrule the local government whenever they want. Around 1970, when the city began electing African-Americans to local office in Washington, there has allegedly been a plan – known as The Plan – by white folks to take back the city.
This thought process began back in 1979 when columnist Lillian Wiggins claimed that Marion Berry may be the last black mayor of Washington, as The Plan was sure to be implemented throughout the 1980s. Well, Lillian may have been wrong (the current mayor, Vincent Gray, is an African-American), but there was a nugget of truth in there. The Federal City Council, a group of mostly-white civic and corporate leaders, does meet up and make plans to influence the city’s future. Also, a shift in demographics has vanillafied the town once hailed as “Chocolate City”.
Who knows? Maybe it is all a big conspiracy. Maybe there really is a single group of snarly white males in wizard hats and robes made from the flesh of liberal commie gay-loving pro-abortion sinners, all plotting the next hundred years of our future to the last detail.
I’ll stick with apathy on this one. It helps me digest my food a lot easier.
1000 Albums, 1000 Dates 