Quoth one modern representative: "How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, which it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men. . . . What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence. . . . The laws of probability would dictate that part of . . . [the] decisions would serve the country’s interest."
Which could be ripped from the op-ed pages or radio screeds or blog postings of a thousand different modern commentators … but in reality came from Sen. Joseph McCarthy in June 1951 ("modern" being a relative term).
I ran across it in an article by historian Richard Hofstadter from 50 years ago, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/?single=1), and it's a fascinating read that resonates with a lot of American politics today (mostly, though not solely, and not always, from the Right). It's worth a read. As Hofstadter describes the political paranoid:
'As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.'
Yeah, that sounds pretty familiar. Though these days it seems like the paranoids are running the asylum. But maybe that's just me being paranoid.
Is it any surprise, though, that "Tail-Gunner Joe" is undergoing such a rehabilitative resurgence in popularity in some corners?
When the Talking Heads' David Byrne released his movie True Stories, he also released an accompanying book. In one portion of the book (probably the portion that dealt with the song "Puzzlin Evidence") Byrne addressed conspiracy theories. The only part that I remember is Byrne's observation that many of the people on the top rungs of society attended the same schools. (While Byrne himself was not Ivy League, he did attend a school in the Northeastern US.)
If you think about recent U.S. Presidents alone (of both parties), it's harder to find a President who DIDN'T attend an Ivy League school than to find one who did. Obama went to Columbia and Harvard. Bush 43 went to Yale and Harvard. Clinton went to Yale, as did Bush 41. Ford went to Yale. Kennedy went to Princeton and Harvard. Both Roosevelts went to Harvard and Columbia (although they didn't get their Columbia degrees until 2008).
And even when you look at the Presidents that didn't go to Ivy League schools, some of them still went to some pretty elite places. Annapolis (Carter) and West Point (many) aren't exactly run-of-the-mill places, and Duke (Nixon) and Stanford (Hoover) are certainly among the top schools.
By contrast, Joseph McCarthy graduated from Marquette University. Alex Jones attended Austin Community College.
I'm not saying that the lack of an Ivy League or other elite degree predisposes someone to be a conspiracy theorist. I don't consider Reagan a conspiracy theorist, nor do I put Truman in that category. While Tip O'Neill certainly had his views on the Boston elites, he didn't consider all of them to be part of the Illuminati. (Good thing, since he had a special relationship with John Kennedy.)
I'm just saying that David Byrne's observation may explain the motivations behind some conspiracy theorists – if you're on the outside looking in, you can start imagining what's going on inside that bubble.
+John E. Bredehoft That harkens back to the Illuminati / Mason example in the article — all of those folk who are a group together are obviously up to something to the detriment of those of us who aren't, especially since they try to keep stuff secret. And if there's no evidence of that, well, that's just part of the secrecy of their conspiracy.
I dunno. It's hard to necessarily identify the paranoid from the fellow travelers who exploit and/or are cowed by them. There's a lot of folk in the GOP nattering nutty nonsense who come from those same rarified academic climes (Ted Cruz comes to mind, as does Bobby Jindal); are they paranoid, or are they simply catering to the paranoid?
The Ivy League is behind all this. I knew it!
My college roommate (a solid democrat and political science major) always argued that time ultimately proved McCarthy to be right.
Even to the extent that there were, in fact, Soviet agents and sympathizers in various branches of the government, McCarthy's ham-handed tactics, accusing from the cuff, and scapegoating of anyone he didn't like or who didn't like him as being a communist agent arguably did more harm for the ideological struggle against Communism than those agents themselves.
+Dave Hill I didn't put it quite so eloquently, but that is what I essentially would argue with him.