National Post (National Edition)
Not conspiracy, just stupidity
Paranoia: it could be sneaking up on you. Including in public policy, where an astounding number of normal-looking people who recoil from QAnon and scoff at alien abduction embrace garden-variety conspiracy theories about those they disagree with.
For instance, my Post colleague Chris Selley just wrote, “If `Trudeau supports the Great Reset' is a conspiracy theory because he's never said he supports it specifically, then what is it when Liberals say `Andrew Scheer will recriminalize abortion' or `Doug Ford will destroy public health care,' when they have both sworn blind they won't?” Or that Paul Martin ad about Stephen Harper deploying troops in the streets of our cities?
Then there's climate change. We loathsome “deniers” are constantly accused of combining monumental stupidity with massive cunning, spinning absurd plausible fables for oil money. (Before that my free-market advocacy was attributed to a capitalist conspiracy to oppress the poor or anyone else handy, and “peace through strength” to the thought of nuclear war secretly giving me a warm glow, about as ludicrous a plot as one could imagine.)
On the other side, in my insult-everyone plan, I'm amazed how many people who don't consider man-made climate change a crisis believe instead it's a hoax by rich influential people plotting to get money and power. People, life is not a Dan Brown novel. And thank goodness, though if mine were it might be a best-seller instead of looking suspiciously remainder-bin. But I digress.
The point is, again, never ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity. The fool shortage is over.
Still, it's hard work taking people seriously who don't take us seriously. Thus shortly after 9/11, Ezra Levant said, “The Taliban is a medieval serfdom that uses Islam as an excuse.” An excuse? For what? The whole problem with those guys was their sincerity. Just as climate alarmists are alarmed about climate, and skeptics are not.
The difficulty arises partly from that deadliest of sins, pride. We are offended that someone refuses to accept our opinion even after we tell it to them, while being targeted by a vast plot strokes our ego. But it's also due to the legitimate puzzle that it's so clear inside our own heads that it feels like we just checkmated someone only to have them say, “Rooks don't move in straight lines,” and we want to scream, “You're cheating.”
Please resist the urge. That way lies madness. Which brings me to the Kennedy assassination or, rather, Fred Litwin's new book, On the Trail of Delusion, about the horrifying cluster of conspiracy theories on the grassy knoll, down the sewer, up a tree and especially down the rabbit hole.
Too much time in this warren could make your nose start twitching. But a field trip down the hole and into the tunnels with notepad and tinfoil-lined miner's helmet can be instructive, including about the seductive lure of low-rent conspiracy theories.
Considered in the abstract, conspiracy theories are at once repellent, amusing and fascinating. Hence the tweet, “Two conspiracy theorists die and go to heaven. One of them asks God, `Who really shot JFK?' God says, `Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.' One guy turns to the other and says `holy s--t, how far up does this thing go?'”
It's funny. Unless it's you or someone you care about. But it's far from innocent; as Litwin (I think) once remarked, instead of facing the painful fact that two of their heroes were gunned down by a Castro-loving Cuban and an Israel-hating Palestinian, many on the left including Oliver Stone, who made homophobic nutbar Jim Garrison his movie's hero, went deep underground to evade reality.
Later they emerged to accuse Republicans of paranoia. Not necessarily without cause. But without self-awareness. And it's not just them, or the big fish.
Back in the garden, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau isn't plotting to remake our economy, society and the human condition for some hidden sinister purpose. He's openly trying to do it because he's a well-meaning doofus who considers John Lennon's Imagine deep. And the Tories would be sprinting directly away from their hidden agenda if only they could remember where they hid it. They lack the wit, or courage, to plot a corner-store heist.
What you see is what you get. Ugh. And not to seem rude, but you'd think you could critique either party's actual ideas, or lack of same, without having to invent malevolent concealed schemes. Instead, if you listen to almost any Canadian politician, or fellow citizen sounding off about politics, it won't take five minutes before they allege sinister insincerity. Often combined with sinister sincerity, which makes no sense.
So I recommend Litwin's book as part of a program of mental hygiene in which you observe Jim Garrison carefully and list the symptoms.
Then avoid them at all costs.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES ARE AT ONCE REPELLENT, AMUSING AND FASCINATING.