The Talking Points Memo is reporting that Loughner Was Influenced By Conspiracy Theory Movie. This is an unfortunate editorial bias that reinforces the nostrums dispensed by the corporate media and precludes rigorous thinking about a complex and treacherous world.
A conspiracy is simply more than one person jointly working towards a goal and hiding their involvement. Human beings are frequently greedy, stupid and cruel. They have very good reason to hide malfeasance or incompetence. One can recognize the necessity and mechanics of conspiracies without imputing the existence of the Illuminati, the Smoking Man or Transdimensional lizards only visible with special sunglasses. Every Christmas, parents conspire to shower their children with gifts unknown before December 25th. One can readily appreciate the why & how without imputing the existence of Santa Claus or Immaculate Conception.
FDR suppressed actionable intelligence about Japanese intent to attack Pearl Harbor, Enron conspired to artificially inflate energy prices in California, PHS doctors conducted syphilis experiments on African Americans without their informed consent at Tuskegee, The TARP program refuses to disclose recipients, the investigations of the JFK assassination and 9/11 attacks were compromised, Naval Intelligence colluded with organized crime to protect the American waterfront in WWII, Pat Tilman was shot by his comrades, the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran and Noah Cross fathered his own granddaughter.
These are all documented "conspiracies." It is not always possible to name the full cast of conspirators, the extent of their involvement or their motivations. But they were conspiracies nonetheless.
After the Pentagon Papers appeared on the front of the NYT, the Abu Ghraib photos in the New Yorker, the WikiLeaks video of the helicopter gunship murders online, they were no longer successful conspiracies but crimes exposed.
I watched a sizable chunk of an early edit of the first Zeitgeist movie. I abandoned it due to its insufferable poor production values and tediously repetitive script. But not everything in it was wrong. And some of it's critiques of dodgy institutions like the Fed were in essence right, but poorly supported.
The danger of tarring reasonable arguments as "conspiracy theories" is that it encourages prior restraint of thoughtful investigation. Orly Taitz is a clown, and the birthers are flogging a theory without a shred of factual basis. But that does not alter the fact that lots of well meaning moderates, progressives and liberals voted for a man who is substantially different than what he presented on the campaign trail. If I question his or his mother's possible involvement with the CIA, or the source of his campaign funding being predominantly from Wall Street banks and not on-line contributions of less than $100, then I am another crackpot deluded with Muslim Kenyan cant. I am not saying Obama is a Manchurian Candidate but he is certainly other than what we were told from 2006 to 2008.
The even greater danger is that liberals & progressives are ceding justifiable rage to the extremist fringe. Many of the horrible machinations Glenn Beck is shrieking about are true. The causes he attributes them to, and his recommended solutions are wrong and dangerous. If a plurality of the population is feeling victimized by forces greater than themselves, then a mountebank like Beck is free to blame ACORN or George Soros and suggest that we must return to the Gold standard and assassinate members of congress that we dislike. Liberals stuffing their fingers in their ears and humming loudly, "it's not real… it never happened," have surrendered a large swath of the population that could have been a valuable ally in the fight for meaningful change. People don't know what is wrong but they no something is wrong, and if DFA won't validate there feelings of unease, someone at Storm Front surely will.
All of this is absolutely meaningless with respect to Jared Loughner. He was just bugfuck insane. Anyone who goes to a supermarket and unloads a clip into 20 people is, by definition, plain nuts. Whether this was caused by video games, Twinkies, sinsimillia or Prozac is a separate & distinct question. But he was crazy.
