by Neville Raymond
Every time the anniversary of a landmark American tragedy
rolls around, they come crawling out of the woodwork - or is it the
networks. The 50th
anniversary of the JFK assassination brought them out in droves. It was quite the seasonal spectacle to
behold. The minions of the mainstream
media, swimming upstream against the currents of common sense and logic. The usual assortment of shills tying
themselves into pretzel-like knots over the official explanation of the JFK
assassination. They may as well just
grab the country from behind and perform a giant Heimlich maneuver, because
this is one pretzel that the American people find it increasingly difficult to
swallow without choking.
Let’s
face it. The plutocrats know the
public is on to them. They know
that fewer and fewer people believe their outrageous conspiracy theories. Lee Harvey Oswald, a known CIA asset,
methodically set up to take the fall for a presidential assassination, is
trumpeted as the lone shooter.
Steel buildings burn up from a depleted supply of kerosene fuel and
pancake down at free-fall speed.
It can only happen in a twilight zone where the laws of physics and
logic and common sense are violated on a surreal scale. And so armies of spinmeisters have to
be marched out to shore up the house of cards.
One
of the treasured explanations in their little boxed set of fairy tales is the
psychological one. This one takes
the cake. Here are shills who
normally wouldn’t give a psychotherapist the time of day, all of a sudden trying
to explain America’s mass acceptance of ‘conspiracy theories’ in psychological
terms. Google any article that
seeks to explain the mounting level of disbelief in official stories. Pull down the “Edit” menu and under
“Find” insert such words as “scared” and “powerless” – and oh, the all-time
biggie, “comfort”. They are
guaranteed to make an appearance in every such mainstream article.
The
prevailing theory is that these shocking events cause
Americans to feel frightened. A lone
nut can bring down a president. A
few crazed hijackers can bring down U.S. landmarks. This is too scary to contemplate. And so people grasp at the straws of conspiracy theories in
their hunger for meaning and structure.
The idea that these events are staged by invisible powers allays their
sense of powerlessness. It helps
them to make sense of the world.
It serves as a much-needed source of comfort.
Talk about bending and twisting the
psychological truth back on its head.
It is an upside-down position that does a yoga master proud! Maybe these shills are naïve but anyone
with a scintilla of understanding of psychology knows better. People naturally crave
reassurance and comfort during times when assassins and hijackers seem to run
the show. But nothing provides
greater reassurance than a narrative that allows the authority figures to
assert themselves as the good guys, and convince the rest of us to put ourselves
in their capable and protective hands.
Nothing brings greater comfort to a traumatized nation than the notion
that the evil that is loose in society is the work of isolated crackpots beyond the pale,
against which the forces of law and order are committed to defend us.
But
what happens when the good guys we turn to in times of crisis turn out to be
the bad guys who are secretly terrorizing us? Then it is not just a President who gets shot. The credibility of an entire system
of government is shot to pieces.
What happens when the orders had to have come from high up to rig the World Trade Center with explosives or shut down an air defense system to give planes a chance to fly off course and crash into U.S. landmarks? Then it is not just a couple of skyscrapers that blow up. The prestige and authority of an entire power structure blows up in our faces as spectacularly as the Capitol dome in the trailer for Independence Day!
What happens when the orders had to have come from high up to rig the World Trade Center with explosives or shut down an air defense system to give planes a chance to fly off course and crash into U.S. landmarks? Then it is not just a couple of skyscrapers that blow up. The prestige and authority of an entire power structure blows up in our faces as spectacularly as the Capitol dome in the trailer for Independence Day!
So-called journalists can allege all day long
that conspiracy theories combat a sense of impotence and confusion.[1] Nothing is calculated to induce a more
debilitating anxiety, a more demoralizing sense of despair, betrayal and
confusion, than the charge that our public servants are foot soldiers, enforcers
and hit men for a criminal conspiracy that is hatched in the highest corridors
of power
That’s why they fight tooth and nail
against any suggestion that those who are entrusted with keeping us safe could
in any way, shape or form be responsible for terrorizing us. Our very survival as a civilized
society depends upon it! And
that’s why we are determined to idealize our leaders in times of danger and
dutifully give them every benefit of doubt, no matter how much evidence piles
up to prove their complicity and guilt!
In
times of crisis, people instinctually home in on a comfort zone that is
fortified all around by towering walls of denial. They desperately want to blame some alien or isolated scapegoat or other
for the shocking tragedy. The
last thing they want
to believe is that their own leaders could be up to their necks in plots to
assassinate their commander-in-chief or massacre three thousand of their own citizens. Please, please, let it be a ragtag bunch of lone
nuts and rogue psychos at work! We
don’t have to know that they flunked their flying lessons or used a rifle that
couldn’t shoot straight.
Just so long as we can mop our brows and declare it’s a huge load off
our minds. Just so long as
we can all heave a collective sigh of relief, and after an initial period of
grief and mourning, go back to business as usual!
Conspiracies
theories in this respect don’t go down easily at all with most people. In fact, they go against the very grain
of our collective need for stability, sanity and social orderliness. Why on earth should we open ourselves
up to the possibility that these shocking tragedies are planned, organized and
executed by the national security state?
Do we really want to be confronted by a monstrous evil whose scope
knocks the wind out of our sails and demolishes every anchor of our existence! Are we really such gluttons for
punishment that we would want our whole world to come crashing about our
ears?
Talk
about the horror of the abyss staring us in the face! That is what it is like to believe in a JFK “conspiracy
theory”! That is what it is like
to believe that 9-11 was an inside job!
Far from being a source of comfort, we find ourselves at the mercy of a
nightmarish evil that rips every shred of comfort from us! Far from helping us to make sense of
the world, it turns our whole world upside down and makes a sweeping mockery of
the most cherished principles on which this country was founded! Far from allowing us to regain a
semblance of power, it leaves us squirming in the grip of an Orwellian power
that is so fantastic and far-reaching that we have difficulty going to sleep at
night!
Who
in his right mind would want that?
Who would deliberately choose to believe a “conspiracy theory” that cuts
the ground from under all the hallowed pillars that the American people hold
dear? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier
to continue swallowing the anodynes of the official story and go back to enjoy
the sleep of the blissfully ignorant and the politically unconscious? That there is such a swelling
groundswell of refusal to go along with that is proof that the American people
are made of sterner stuff than we give them credit for! That as much as two-thirds or even
three-fourths of Americans reject the official story speaks volumes on our
heroic willingness to confront the unthinkable.
Either that or the cover story put out by the corporate
media has worn so threadbare over time that its preposterous premises show
through at every turn – and you would have to be a mentally challenged pollyanna not to
face up to the grim, chilling ugly reality that a government that is sworn to be the protector of the people is really a violent predator of the craziest sort.
[1] Patrik Jonsson, “50 years after JFK, conspiracy
theories of all sorts thrive in America”, Christian Science Monitor, November 18, 2013
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