Some notes on conspiracy theories

I've been meaning to post on conspiracy theories, and then Orcinus brought them up in a recent post in the context of debunking the "Dean said the President was tipped off by the Saudis before 9/11" story. (I know many people will expect me to hew to an anti-Dean party line here, but in this case, Orcinus is right. Anyway, Dean, though not my pick for president, is not the anti-christ.)

Orcinus basically says, look, Dean is saying that when people don't trust the government, conspiracy theories abound, that such conspiracy theories are detrimental to democracy, and that the administration has a responsibility to model transparency so as to short-circuit the proliferation of conspiracy theories.

The current Administration may have nothing to hide, but it does not behave that way. Such behavior makes even the most non-conspiracy-minded observer anxious. Here I will admit to my two most completely unfounded conspiracy fears: Paul Wellstone's plane crash not an accident; Adminstration saving up Osama Bin Laden to capture during week before general election to assure Bush landslide.

Let me point out, though no doubt the point will be lost, that I do not believe these things to be true. They are irrational fears. But they feed on the uncertainty and mistrust that arise when the government appears not to trust citizens with the truth, and not to take finding out the truth seriously itself. (Yes yes, Bill Clinton lied. But my concern is with the current Administration, and two wrongs do not make a right.)

That the Bush Administration is secretive is no secret. U.S. News and World Report recently reported on the problem. Observers from across the political spectrum (see Public Citizen, Phyllis Schafly, Heritage Foundation, Steven Chapman, OMB Watch, Newspaper Association of America) have lamented the Bush administration's secrecy.

Why should we care? Here's another quote from Orcinus's exegesis on fascism:

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

-- from They Thought They Were Free

Again I'd like to emphasize that I am not claiming the Bushies are Nazis.

I do think their secrecy is a big problem. I don't like it, and I don't think we should get used to it. I worry that lots of people in our society are not worried about it because they identify with Bush, they trust him, and his administration cultivates the image of him as a straight-talking, highly moral man, whose authority and leadership derive not from the people but from God. Hence, the administration feels it does not need to answer to the people, but only to God.

Bush is not some King David, to govern by divine right. It is not appropriate for the leader of a democratic republic to behave as though he does not have to answer to citizens of that republic.

I'm not really quite done with this post, as I need to justify my point that Bush governs as though by divine right. But that'll have to wait until tomorrow.