Last August I was invited to appear on a local AM radio talk show to speak about my book. I had presented the host beforehand with a copy of it so he could be prepared about the subject matter. He hadn’t read it but his wife had, and she loved it. At any rate, he let me speak at length about the book and the various genres covered in it. I began with conspiracy theory.
Many people will either roll their eyes or look askance when you mention the word “conspiracy”, but those same people will suddenly re-focus their attention when you explain the word’s origin and provide modern examples. The Latin origin is the word “conspire” which means to “breathe together “or “breathe with”. Now, when given an example, like when people meet secretly as Vice President Cheney did with energy executives in the White House to discuss energy policy for the U.S. and didn’t bother to discuss the details of it to the public afterward, then they begin to see it in action. These people were “breathing together” in secret and planning our energy future. Or Rahm Emmanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, when he met privately at the White House (maybe they breathed in the same room Cheney used) with health care executives to discuss the President’s forthcoming health care proposals, we weren’t told of the details of that discussion either. Conspiracies abound all about us.
Here’s my favorite one. The Federal Reserve was conceived in secrecy and to this day most of its most important decision-making processes are kept from the public eye, including the federal government. You do know it’s a private bank. If you do, then count yourself in the less than 10% of the public that do know that fact. Most people assume it is part of the federal government because it has the word “federal” in its name. It’s a private bank created like the one the British have used for centuries, the Bank of England. Probably owned by the same families for all we know. Whenever any pundit or writer talks about the Fed and its history, they automatically put you in the John Birch Society camp, and label you a nut job for even bringing it up.
Having said that, take a moment and reflect on the current level of trust that exists between the public and our government. You soon discover that as a result of the unexplained events (JFK, Gulf of Tonkin, 2000 Election), and even the ones unearthed in their aftermath (Watergate, Iran-Contra, Iraqi invasion), distrust has accumulated over the decades precisely because of conspiracy. Of course corruption has to account for much of it, but that is a discussion for another day. But conspiracies happen all the time, from your parent’s bedroom trysts to corporations’ boardrooms. Some of these affected us personally like what we received for Christmas, if someone we knew got killed in some far-off war or even if we were wiped out financially in the last recession.
So the next time you find yourself talking with someone or reading an article and they discuss a secret meeting that took place that determined the lives of people you may not even know or care about, don’t roll your eyes or shut off your brain; take a moment and lend them your ears, open your mind, and breathe.