The Two-Faces of Conspiracy

Despite some protests from my Illuminati Local #757, I’ve decided to share a few thoughts with you paranoid freakheads in regard to whether or not there is a world conspiracy to keep you down. The short answer is: no. We don’t even know who you are or care where you live. The longer answer is: yes. We only serve those who we know and who we care about and so when things get done they probably get done to you because we’re not looking where we’re going.

What fascinates me is the inordinate amount of time people spend thinking about who is out to get them. Must make bottom feeders like yourselves feel more important. Either that or Robert Anton Wilson was right when he argued that the conspiratorial mind is simply one in which creativity has taken a bad detour.

A great example is the film The DaVinci Code. What a fuss over this by people who say the whole thing is a fiction. We love that. It’s even better when some of it is true and some of it ain’t. More importantly, it’s about time you guys did something about those Opus Dei prigs. They’re really hard to take at parties. They’re just like insurance salesmen – always recruiting when all the rest of us just want to relax and have a nice evening plotting the overthrow of a few strategically selected governments. Go get ‘em, is what I say. It might make up for how you all made the Masons look like great American heroes in National Treasure. Puh-leez. I’m willing to bet there was some Skull and Bones money in that screenplay.

The thing I love most about conspiracy films is those fine lines between truth and fiction. Sure you get movies like The Matrix, Minority Report, Fahrenheit 411, The Truman Show – hell, any dystopic science fiction film is about a conspiracy. But then there are the other ones like Capricorn One about a faked Mars landing (a movie that gave birth to those charming black helicopters), JFK and all those films about the Holocaust (6 million deaths no one wanted to know about). These films tease us with what we think we already suspect about the powers that be. And then there are films like All the President’s Men about a real life conspiracy that led to the end of a presidency, and Good Night and Good Luck about a newsman who takes on a government conspiracy to undermine American freedom while under the guise of fighting a communist conspiracy. (The conspiracy based on combating a conspiracy is my favorite ploy, personally. It’s the Hail Mary of the Conspiracy Superbowl.)

And of course there are the more domestic conspiracies, usually of silence, whereby family members are victimized for years, either physically or psychologically. These have to often compete with the larger conspiracies but are often more real and more immediately damaging. But films and countless TV movies have brought these stories into the unforgiving light.

What I’m saying is that the beauty of conspiracy theories is that, despite the academics who poo poo them and then turn around and claim the media are out to brainwash all of us, there are times when people work together for a common goal that they would prefer no one discovered. Maybe Marilyn Monroe wasn’t killed by the Kennedys or the mob, but there definitely was collusion in baseball. The people who keep digging for the scoop are both lunatics and serious journalists. Personally, I’m rooting for the lunatics. The stuff they turn up is so much fun.

For instance, the whole George Bush knowing about 9/11 and even planning it. I love that one. It helps hide in plain sight the much more obvious deliberate lies about Saddam Hussein and WMD’s. I have to hand it to the Bush team. The old “hide the real conspiracy behind one that people will find flaws in and won’t believe.” Bravo.

Sadly, I have far too much experience with this and know the history of conspiracies all too well. No group can keep a secret forever and no group is smart enough to pull off the complete invisibility a good conspiracy requires. Not long after The DaVinci Code hits theatres, people will be looking for a new target for their anxieties and fears. I assume Dan Brown is already hard at work on that. And Mr. Brown, no more Illuminati books. Once was funny, and twice made us sit up and notice, but a third time and we might think you’re out to get us.