What is a conspiracy theory?

...but what is a conspiracy theory? (We couldn't leave it alone.) For several years now the White House has been angrily warning us to ignore "conspiracy theories" about why we went to war in Iraq. In practice, then, their definition of the term "conspiracy theory" would include any theory that differs from the reasons they gave themselves: WMDs, 9/11, bringing democracy to the oppressed. Critics of the war have offered many probable reasons, ranging from the Freudian (Bush wanted to one-up Daddy) to the coldly practical (it's the oil, stupid -- which may not count as a conspiracy theory any more, since Bush himself has begun openly admitting it, in the already-discussed Rush Limbaugh interview and elsewhere).

Clearly our definition must be broader than that of the White House. Yet anyone who believes that the administration in any way presented deceptive information to the American people about the war, WMDs, the relation of Iraq to 9/11, etcetera, already believes in a "conspiracy" -- a group of people operating with secret motives, with the intent of committing a deception and/or a crime.

So what definition is accurate? Some conspiracies do exist, after all. We would not call someone who studies the crimes of Watergate, the 1919 World Series fix, or the Tuskegee Syphilis study a conspiracy theorist, only a historian -- but in those cases, of course, what was once theory has since been ratified into fact.

No, what we mean by a conspiracy theory is an implausible conspiracy theory, one we have no rational reason to believe, and which smacks of paranoia. (Granted, this too is subjective. Suppose you knew Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, and he told you, "I think the President of the United States ordered my psychiatrist's office to be burglarized." Talk about paranoia!) Consider the following quotation:

"...so much is known to the world, but what I am telling you is what I have myself discovered. [...] For years past I have been aware of some power behind the malefactor, some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law, and throws it shield over the wrong-doer. Again and again in cases of the most varying sorts -- forgery cases, robberies, murders -- I have felt the presence of this force, and I have deduced its action in many [...] undiscovered crimes [...]. For years I have endeavored to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it...."

Taken out of context, and assuming we do not know at once the source of the words above (some of course will), we see paranoia of the most crippling sort, an almost Poe-like obsession with some intangible evil. Until, naturally, we read the end of that last sentence:

"...until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor Moriarty, of mathematical fame."

And suddenly our perspective changes. We trust Sherlock Holmes, the complete rationalist. If he says some unknown evil is standing in the way of the law and protecting forgers and murderers and robbers, well then, would any care to disagree? If Sherlock Holmes said that alien spacecraft not only landed at Roswell but stole away Lindbergh's baby, we'd think twice before calling foul.

Every conspiracy theorist sees himself as Sherlock Holmes: a man who can look at a series of random, bewildering, seemingly unconnected facts and draw between them a pattern -- not just a Jungian soul-map but an existing, material object, a plot. But few are seen that way by others. We, on the left, respect those theorists who tell us, "Of course Bush lied about Iraq, of course Cheney did, they all did." We do not respect those theorists who say, "The media is controlled by leftists and does not tell us the whole truth." We respect those who ask, "Did the Bush Administration exploit, and benefit from, the events of 9/11?" (An obvious truth -- even some conservatives would agree with that.) We do not respect, and in fact scorn, those who ask, "Did the Bush Administration cause the events of 9/11?" -- perhaps less from disdain for their beliefs than fear of being identified with them. Yet if any one question begged the other it would seem to be these two... if only to be sure of that answer "no."

So we try to inhabit that gray area -- ever watchful for true abuses of power, and ever watchful that we avoid the label of "crackpot." But where is that division between the intelligent cynic and the flake? And where the division between the debunker and the bully-boy enforcer of the "official story"?

Brand-new Democratic Congress or no, we are living in a country in which a sizable proportion of the population and its leadership is willing to accept torture, curtailments of human rights (check any political discussion forum and you'll find at least one fool saying, "Maybe we have too much freedom."), unchecked federal wiretapping ("If you're not a terrorist, why worry?") and the merger of government and religion (watch Jesus Camp). America has a sickness, the sort of sickness that very easily worsens into fascism. And if we live in such a state, we must be prepared to ask extreme questions. And expect extreme, and alarming, answers.

(This is a long post, and there's more to say. So in addition to expecting extreme questions and answers, expect sequels.)