The Plague
Keynes wrote: "Even the most practical man of affairs is usually in the thrall of the ideas of some long-dead economist." An amendment: the crackpots on today's streets are in the thrall of the ideas of dead loons.
Alexander Zaitchik has an edifying piece up on Salon about Glenn Beck's intellectual debt, if we can call it that, to W. Cleon Skousen, a berserker from way back, Salt Lake City police chief ("He operated the police department like a Gestapo," said the conservative mayor) who specialized in grandiose, fantastical, conspiracy-thick tracts like The Naked Communist. This is the master thinker who has today's Republican Party in thrall.
Puts me in mind of the last lines of Camus's The Plague:
"Rieux...knew...that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for many years in the furniture and the linens; that it waits patiently in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the misery and the enlightenment of men, the plague would again arouse its rats and send them forth to die in a happy city."
Very good. But readers shouldn't miss Jonathan Chait's piece in the current New Republic about Ayn Rand, another dead loon who remains staggeringly influential.
September 16, 2009 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
What is it about truly awful prose, morally repellent characters, and utterly implausible plots that makes the right-wing nutcases swoon so predictably?
September 16, 2009 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lack of oxygen ?
C
September 16, 2009 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires in people's minds." -- Samuel Adams
September 16, 2009 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lalo posted;
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires in people's minds." -- Samuel Adams
I say; "It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather 'a syndicate of right wing talk radio demogogues and their cohort on FOX
to set brushfires in gullible, undereducated and politically unsophisticated minds.'
September 16, 2009 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
That Camus guys seems pretty dang insightful.
September 16, 2009 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree although the part in The Sranger where Meursault tells the priest to bugger off isn't bad.
September 16, 2009 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
And from your avatar, he seems to have aged rather well.
September 17, 2009 8:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's my favorite Camus novel. I thought it much better than The Stranger.
Conspiracy theorists serve a valuable role in society, by calling into question that which is accepted wisdom, and by challenging the perception of reality into which we become all to accustomed.
But conspiracy theorists should always be marginalized. Conspiracy theory works best when it is banging its head against the walls. Remove the walls, remove the retraints and it quickly goes Chernobyl.
September 16, 2009 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that conspiracy theorists should be kept walled in - or at least out of hearing range, especially the fanatical, the type "who can't change his mind and won't change the subject" W. Churchill.
And then there's the theorist in general who, in his devotion to (his) pet theory, cannot accept or believe that in theory, theory and practice are the same thing but in practice they're not.
(Were the conspiracy theorist to put his theory into practice, he would find that its practice negated his theory.)
September 16, 2009 2:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
As long as you remember that much of what was once conspiracy theory about the Bush administration is now conventional wisdom. And some of what the Bush administration did had not even been imagined by the conspiracy theorists.
The 2000s will prove as valuable a conspiracy theory gold mine as the 1960s.
September 16, 2009 3:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps a comparison of the conspiracy theories of the Bush administration with those of the 1920's would prove fruitful. I'm not sure the 1960's can match those two periods.
September 18, 2009 7:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree - just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
Skepticism is a virtue - both in confronting the conventional wisdom, but also in confronting those who are attempting to undermine the conventional wisdom. The easy path is to just believe one side or the other, to give up one's responsibility as citizen to be as informed as possible and to speak truth to lies, corruption, and conspiracies. Including the conspiracies that are working to make you believe in other conspiracies.
September 16, 2009 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's about 3 degrees farther than most people want to dial their mental meter. Believing is seeing and most folks only see that which confirms or conforms to what they already believe.
And as far as the paranoia, remember, whatever you think they're doing, they're doing that much and more. They're doing things you never thought of. You just can't be too paranoid. In fact, I'm a little worried about you.
September 17, 2009 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well said.
It's only paranoid if you're wrong.
September 17, 2009 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's pretty much a given that many of the most successful conspiracy theorists are actually government-paid propagandists. There is value in fouling the water with nutty shit, as it makes the crazy truth so much harder to see, much less believe even when you see it.
September 17, 2009 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
A conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories. Delightful!
This seems to me to be a meta-conspiracy theory. Does anyone have a recursive conspiracy theory to share?
Yes. I have a weird sense of humor. Humor me.
September 18, 2009 7:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, for a start, you could google Project Serpo, AFOSI Agent Sergeant Richard Doty, William Moore, Linda Moulton Howe, and the July 1989 MUFON event. That provides for some fun reading.
September 18, 2009 10:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Unfortunately both the reality of enemies and the fantasy of them lead to much the same set of dysfunctional mental attitudes and behaviors.
Since the treatment for paranoid attitudes and behavior normally involves demonstrating to the patient that the threatening dangers are fantasies, the treatment for individuals who actually do have real enemies (imagine a Tiajuana drug dealer, for example) is much more difficult. Or so I have been told.
September 18, 2009 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink