Conspiracies

I have been struck over the past few months at how eager Portenos are to believe conspiracy theories. At different points, people have asked me about the Kennedy assassination and about the 9/11 (especially whether the Bush administration themselves brought down the World Trade Center). Although these conversations begin as questions, seeking my opinion, it is clear that they know the truth -- that the conspiracies are indeed fact. I usually say that I have never met a conspiracy I didn't like, but that in the case of 9/11 especially I don't believe there was a conspiracy. I say that it almost doesn't matter: within hours, the Bush administration was already figuring out how to use the tragedy to go to war in Iraq. They look at me with a form of pity and good natured humor -- how sad that he is so blind about his own country.

I wonder if the roots of believing in conspiracies here stems from a long tradition of not trusting government, for many good reasons. And younger people especially have a right to believe in dark conspiracies, because so many of them have been real, from Menem's arms smuggling to the calendestine detention centers of the last dictatorship.

Of course, the United States has had a long history of conspiracy theory, what Richard Hofstadter called the "paranoid style" in American politics. And some of the craziest is in full bore right now -- such as the "birthers" (who will believe that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen even if the Almighty himself came down and handed them the birth certificate), and others who we treat as sane citizens -- i.e. Republican legislators -- who perpetrate outright lies about ACORN and about the health insurance bill (it turns out that providing health care to the millions who don't have it is fascism, socialism, tyranny rolled into one).