A heyday for hucksters

There was a time when conspiracy theories took years to emerge. There was a time, also, when they rarely emerged into the world the rest of us inhabit.

The various assertions about the assassination of John F. Kennedy changed that. But they weren't very far removed from the dark and paranoiac fantasies engendered by Sen. Joseph McCarthy the decade before.

At first those episodes seemed like separate par-oxysms in modern American public life, aberrations eventually turned aside by evidence and rationality and mature heads. Now, of course, both seem almost quaint.

Long before Kennedy's death, the fringes of American political life were kept alive in conspiracy theories, usually that some group or the other was plotting against us. It was witches, or Jews, or Catholics, or communists, or Masons, or aliens, or the trails left behind by jet airplanes. They targeted our children, our government, our health, our water.

This crazy stew has burbled for centuries, but it has never been as dominant in American culture as it is right now. It would be comforting to blame it on the volume of crackpot emails knocking the world's orbit askew, but it's more than that.

Crazy has all kinds of amplifiers now - in Internet culture, on cable "news" and even among the lamestream media. Sadly, even by writing about this subject, I've become part of this new conspiracy cabal. But I'm hardly necessary to its volume.

When the truthers first emerged - the people who believe that George W. Bush caused 9/11 - they were widely derided as cranks even as they attracted followers to their ridiculous theories. Still, nobody beyond the farthest fringes took them seriously.

A few years later, some of those truthers became birthers - the people who believe that Barack Obama wasn't actually born in Hawaii. Born among Obama's opponents for the Democratic nomination, this conspiracy eventually animated a presidential campaign, various talk radio hosts and even state legislatures.

It entered the mainstream, or at least a mainstream (there are several, defined by variables: age, media preference, politics, gullibility).

Now that Obama has produced yet another birth document, the birther theory has returned to the kind of websites that demand I buy gold and dehydrated food to store in my bunker for the coming zombie apocalypse. But the lessons about making wild stuff up in the face of ignorance have already been unlearned.

This week, the birther delusion was replaced in the national psyche by yet another obsession, one that arose within minutes of Osama bin Laden's death in Pakistan. Call them "deathers."

There is already a menu of derangement from which to choose: Bin Laden (a) wasn't really killed or (b) was killed years ago. If a body was buried at sea, it was to (a) knuckle under to political correctness or (b) because it wasn't really him. You can also apply a similar binary choice to explain why a photo wasn't released. The military was variously in on it, duped or not actually involved.

Especially today, any major episode will breed assumptions, which give rise to conspiracy theories, amplified by self-interested mongers and consumed by people willing to believe anything about their political enemies.

There is literally no way to prevent the rush to insanity: Providing information about a chaotic event leads to changing stories, which leads to conspiracy theories. Refusing to provide information leads to people making stuff up, which leads to conspiracy theories.

And that doesn't even consider the fact that conspiracies can be immensely profitable. More than a few moneymaking operations (websites, publishing houses, TV shows, radio hatefests) are built around pretending to believe such things, actually doing so, or providing a place for people to share their delusions.

To some degree, that's nothing new. Father Charles Coughlin had a radio show years before Michael Savage was born. But Coughlin made a career of only one specific if elaborate conspiracy born of one specific bigotry. Today's versions have a panoply of imaginary plots and switch between them with impunity.

Whether the currency is political power or gold from the gullible, there have always been hucksters willing to cash in on the American willingness to buy any theory, no matter how loony. If there are more today - and there are - it's only because more of us are willing to buy what they're selling.

Donald Luzzatto is The Virginian-Pilot's editorial page editor. Email: donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.