Dissident Voice

May 29, 2003

"It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world; it's the American way of looking at things."

--Henry Miller

The term "conspiracy theorist" evokes images of people like Bill Kaysing, the author of We Never Went to the Moon. Kaysing is the sort of fellow who writes stuff like this: "Ask yourself these questions: why doesn't Neil Armstrong talk about the Apollo adventure any longer and why is Buzz Aldrin an alcoholic? Why is there no mention or photographs of stars and planets taken from the moon? Did the astronauts really sleep in the lunar lander without air conditioning when the sun blazed down mercilessly without an ameliorating atmosphere? Calculations by scientists reveal that the internal temperature would have been in excess of 250°-hot enough to bake cookies."

So, Kaysing (and many others) believe, since JFK promised us the moon, we got it (or think we did). Wait, did someone say JFK?

To a conspiracy theorist, nothing happens by accident and there simply are no coincidences. For them, seemingly random events can be intricately linked into massive schemes with tentacles reaching across the globe and maybe even into outer space. In other words, the term "conspiracy theorist" doesn't exactly provoke respect in mainstream circles. "The seeming paranoia of conspiracy theorists is not necessarily the result of some underlying mental dysfunction or of stupidity," declares Jonathan Vankin, author of Conspiracies, Cover-Ups, and Crimes. "The dysfunction is with American society, maybe even civilization as a whole. The structure of civilization itself requires mass adherence to faith in the institutions that built civilization and make it run. Conspiracies theorists question those authorities and, because they do, they skirt the fringes of society."

All this may be changing. Today, nobody laughs if you posit that Cheney used Operation Iraqi Freedom (sic) to position Halliburton for mucho profits. You'll find plenty of agreement for Tom Daschle's suggestion that Dubya is sabotaging any investigation of 9/11. The CIA is hiding Osama and Saddam. The looting of Iraqi art was planned well before the U.S. invasion. And lately, everyone who is anyone is wondering when the U.S. will get around to planting some damn WMD in Iraq and end the whole farce. If Tricky Dick were

still around, he might even suggest “we're all conspiracy theorists now.”

In light of this newfound respect for backroom plots and covert schemes, I'd like to thank two dinosaurs -- Gore Vidal and Kurt Vonnegut -- for helping me formulate my own conspiracy theory. It doesn't require mental gymnastics to connect the dots on this one...it simply makes sense.

"In the eighteenth century," says Vidal, "opinion was dispensed from the pulpit and schoolroom. Now, the media are in place to give us opinion that has been manufactured in the boardrooms of those corporations-once national, now international-that control our lives."

From there, Vidal focuses on the "unmentionable" -- America's ruling class, and how they all attend the same schools where they'll be taught useful hobbies, like people collecting. "This sort of education," he explains, "insures that everyone so educated will think alike. The few who break ranks are...outrageous. In any case, the indoctrination of the prep schools alone is usually quite enough to create a uniformity of ruling-class opinion when it comes to the right of property."

Taking this concept to its logical conclusion, Vonnegut recently declared: "What has allowed so many psychopathic personalities to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can't."

As far as I can see, the only problem with my theory is that it never mentions the Marilyn Monroe/BCCI connection to the Vatican-funded former-POWs-turned-freedom-fighters who were trained by Al Qaeda to fake moon landings using Saddam's secret rocket program in Dallas.

I suppose that's just a coincidence...

Mickey Z. is the author of The Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet (http://www.murderingofmyyears.com) and an editor at Wide Angle (http://www.wideangleny.com). He can be reached at: mzx2@earthlink.net.