Conspiracy theories

Did Jesus and Ronald McDonald blow up the levees?

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
9/10/05
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp

If you spend any time at all on the web, you’ll encounter a conspiracy theory for just about anything. Along with the usual ones about the Illuminati and the Elders of Zion, you’ll find conspiracy theories about such things as the twin towers being rigged with implosives several days before 9/11, or of human sacrifice by the nation’s ruling elite in a redwood grove in central California, or that the ruling class of humanity are secretly extraterrestrial lizards. After that, it can get sorta strange.

Today, for example, several people breathlessly told me that someone had deliberately blown up the levees around New Orleans, and that it was these sinister types with explosives, and not hurricane Katrina, that caused the city to flood.

This particular conspiracy theory is unconvincing. The variations are an unnamed member of the Army Corps of Engineers finds a piece of debris from the busted levee. It has scorch marks, and recognizing instantly that it could only come from an explosion, he sends it to a trusted lab for analysis. The lab reports that there is residue of two esoteric types of underwater explosives found (fast work for a military lab) and we’re off to the races. Someone obviously blew up the levee.

OK, I’m going to hazard a guess that it was the Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce. Baton Rouge (and note the close similarity in name to the murderous regime known as Khmer Rouge! Coincidence? I think NOT!) were out of their collective minds with despair and a deep sense of injustice because for years, school children around America would identify the state capital of Louisiana as being New Orleans. Sometimes teachers wouldn’t even correct them! Anyone from Sacramento or whatever the hell the name of the state capital in New York is can tell you how bad that feels. Especially when schoolkids identify New Orleans as the capital of New York. So when Katrina approached, Baton Rouge saw their opportunity and murdered New Orleans! Mardi Gras, my ass!

There’s two things to remember about conspiracy theories. They aren’t always goofy, and more important, they aren’t always wrong. Nor are the two different elements necessarily aligned; some of the goofiest theories I’ve heard were the ones that turned out to be true. The US really did use NY subway riders as guinea pigs in an experiment to test how gases spread through the tunnels. We really did perform medical experiments on Cubans, retarded kids, and soldiers exposed to radiation from the test atomic blasts.

And a third element is that there is enough real bullshit going on that often conspiracy theories are just gilding the lily. Even if the theory that someone blew up the levees turns out to be a load of crap (which is what I expect), there remains the fact that there was something very strange and very different about the national disaster response in this case.

In previous essays, we’ve talked about the general ineptitude of Putsch as a leader (The “My Pet Goat” syndrome, in which he freezes – “goes tharn” – in a crisis) and the ideological failure wrought by the “get government off my back” crowd that seems to think that everyone could be self-reliant and capable without any assistance in an event such as a major hurricane strike.

Now let’s talk about the entities that stood to GAIN from the poor response to Katrina. And that’s why I mentioned conspiracy theories in the beginning of this essay, since the immediate response of any rational person is that nobody could possibly expect to gain from a catastrophe like Katrina, and blow off anything else said as just conspiracy mongering.

There are two groups, both inimical to the government, who would like to a) make the public feel vulnerable and b) have demonstrated the utter inability of the government to assuage those concerns.

The first are the corporations. For years, they’ve been using the GOP to weaken government. This is called “creating a favorable business climate” and what it really intends to do is create a power vacuum where corporations can take over, more and more, the lives of their consumers and employees.
Their role in the events leading up to the failure of FEMA last week seems clear enough. Tax cuts, which heavily favored corporations and their managers, forced the GOP regime to make deep cuts in government services to the poorest and neediest of Americans. They are the main instigators behind the “you don’t need the nanny government to run your life. You are free and independent and can deal with us mano a mano” libertarian movement. And of COURSE you can depend on the corporations having your very best interests at heart once that darn government isn’t around to protect you from them.

A good example of how far they would go came this week, when the Congress approved a $50 billion emergency omnibus bill for New Orleans and other areas wrecked by Katrina. One amendment that the GOP shot down without discussion was a rider that exempted victims of Katrina – people who had lost their homes, their jobs, everything – from the draconian bankruptcy bill going into effect next month. Just because a little storm comes along doesn’t prevent you from paying what you owe MasterCard, you know. Oh, yes, and Putsch unilaterally declared that government agencies in the region could just ignore the “prevailing wage” rule and pay as little as they thought they could get away with to people desperate for jobs.

WalMart has been a model of corporate good citizenship during the recovery efforts in the Gulf, and indeed, they have a good track record of supplying goods and services when disasters strike. But I’m sure that they weren’t entirely upset when FEMA inexplicably stopped a large convoy of WalMart trucks bringing food, fresh water and shelter to people in the afflicted areas and turned them back. Not only did it bring media focus to WalMart’s efforts to help, but it made them look like the good guys fighting against an evil and inefficient government, and I doubt they minded that very much.

The other faction interested in destroying the secular government of America and replacing it with something else is the religious faction – the Dominionists. Nominally Christian, this lot resembles the folks at your local church about as much as the Gestapo resembles the Salvation Army. They’re called Dominionists because they believe Jesus should have dominion over the United States, and they want nothing less than to make the United States a theocracy, one where people can go to jail or be severely punished for heresy, blasphemy, or simple non-belief. Nor is this just some loony-fringe movement for disaffected bible-bangers. Some of the names of the Dominionists are familiar – Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed. Some are surprising: Sun Myung Moon, the deranged messianic figure of the Unification Church of Korea, owner of the Washington Times, UPI, and Insight magazine, is a heavy hitter in the group. Mel Gibson is in it.

Some of the names are chilling: Clarence Thomas. Antonin Scalia. About three dozen members of Congress, ten Senators.

And, in all likelihood, the President of the United States.

This is not just fundamentalist nuttery. This is full-scale anti-American political ideology using Faith as its shield and its justification for setting up a religious tyranny. These people aren’t just looking to “bring Jesus into public life.” These people want the western equivalent of Iran, the Europe of the 11th century. Sovereignty will pass from the people (they regard that as secular humanism, as bad in their eyes as atheism or communism) to God.

They want a weak and ineffective government, and more to the point, they want people to think that the government that represents their interests LOOKS weak and ineffective, so Jesus can look big and strong.

In a government hag-ridden with fascists and falangists, both working together to destroy government so they can fill the resulting power vacuum, don’t expect government to work very well. It isn’t supposed to when they are in power.

Now. Wanna talk about conspiracy theories? Or is real life good enough for now?