Scandals: Six 'conspiratorial' and six not

Mary Maxwell, Ph.D
Dec. 29, 2005

Six of the scandals about the US government that are currently making the rounds of the Internet are simply breathtaking. No one has ever heard of a democratic government being so bold in harming its own people, and thus there is an automatic reluctance (or refusal) to accept these.

Here's a list of horrible things that 'they' are doing to us:

1. They damage the environment, virtually for the fun of it, by causing earthquakes, hurricanes, and forest fires.

2. They instill fear and panic by actually carrying out a terrorist incident, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attacks.

3. They kill off potential leaders such as Sen. Paul Wellstone who died in a plane crash (Note: bumping someone off used to mean shooting them or arranging a car accident, nowadays it can include giving them cancer, heart attack, or infections).

4. They deliberately destabilize society, both by planting drugs among young people and by imprisoning millions, which breaks up families.
5. They outright attack us with biological or chemical weapons for example, it is said that about 50 percent of the American soldiers who went to the Gulf in 1991 are very ill from an intentionally harmful vaccination that was supposedly to protect them against anthrax.

6. They disrupt normal communication and thought via a barrage of lies, hoaxes, and disinformation.

Six Old-Fashioned Types of Scandals

I shall analyze the above conspiracy-type scandals in a moment, but for now please look at a different sort of six scandals. These old-fashioned ones have been considered normal over many generations and are unlikely to make us feel overwhelmed. Three of the most common kinds of scandal in democratic nations are related to voting, money, and sex. Another three involve aggrieved citizens (rather than naughty politicians) given that the strong arm of the state can be cruel, and the benefits of the state can be handed out inequitably. Thus:

1. Elections are rigged whether by miscounts, by concealed funding, or by last minute smearing of one's opponent.

2. With huge resources just waiting to be abused, financial scandals tend to take the form of bribes, hush money, and padded expense accounts.

3. In the old days, marital infidelity was itself sufficient enough to bring down a leader; today, something more imaginative may be required.

4. Brutality is often reported where police or prison guards assault or humiliate those in their custody.

5. Medical experiments may be carried out on a captive group, such as mentally retarded children or ghetto dwellers.

6. Since favoritism is not allowed in meritocracies, nepotism is the subject of many scandals. One person receiving an undeserved favor means another is overlooked.

A glance through newspapers over the years will show that these six types of scandal are ever recurring, and by now they barely evoke a yawn. Human nature assures us that there will always be competition for office, desire for money and sex, and an urge to mistreat underlings when there are no observers present. And which of us hasn't tried to get a summer job for a nephew?

A New Analysis of the Conspiratorial Scandals

By contrast, the six conspiratorial-type scandals evoke much more than a yawn. In those people who are receptive to the ideas at all, they induce shock. In most, of course, they induce disbelief. Can the head of our own armed forces have played a game in the air to let skyscrapers topple over on the people of New York? "Of course not!" "Don't be absurd!" Reviewing the six conspiratorial scandals again, note that human nature cannot be the explanation. Human nature does not predict that an elected government would wreck the human habitat, terrorize the population, kill off potential leaders, destabilize society by furnishing drugs and dislocating families, spread disease, and disrupt rational thought.

But wait! I think I do detect human nature at work here. Those six things are ones that a nation does to its enemies, and it does so without shame or inhibition. After all, when you're out to defeat the other population, you may as well go about it in a comprehensive manner. I'll grant that international law forbids it, but it is nevertheless standard practice on the part of certain nations, including our own. For example, we used the scorched earth policy in Vietnam (having tried it out earlier in Guatemala); we boasted of our terrorizing intent via the 'shock and awe' display in Baghdad; and we have 'dispatched' many leaders such as Mossadegh in Iran and Allende in Chile, and we are openly contemplating the fate of Chavez in Venezuela.

With the other three items, also, British examples will show that human nature does predict certain behaviors when we deal with enemies. The British used opium in China to ruin that society during the Opium Wars; it gave disease-ridden blankets to indigenous people during the French and Indian War in Canada, and during WWII it beamed radio programs into Germany (in the German language, natürlich) laced with disinformation. None of us in the Anglo-American world fell into a state of disbelief upon hearing these things. We are hard-wired to feel no sympathy for the enemy and indeed rarely credit the enemy with being human. We are also hard-wired to rejoice with our fellow warriors when we have 'bloodied the bastards to bits.'

Excuse Me, Who's the Enemy Here?

So then, if it is perfectly believable to envision a group harming its enemy, do we Americans today need to merely to relabel the people of the United States as an enemy in the eyes of their government? Would that solve the problem of the unbelievability of the six conspiratorial scandals? Indeed it would.

Say what? American people as the enemy of the US government? Isn't that so patently false that we must discard it without further consideration? Not necessarily. The hidden clue could lie in the fact that members of the US government may owe their allegiance to a nation other than the USA. And what might that nation be? I'm not thinking of a particular territorial state, such as Israel (although the US government is too obeisant to Israel). I am thinking of that supra-nation called Globalia or Club Med or whatever we name the hangout of the high-class people. Many of the members of this supra-nation happen to be American; many are not.

So as not to name names, let's call any three of these persons A, B, and C. Now why would A, B, and C want to disrupt American society, terrorize the people, or harm the habitat? As noted above, when you're out to defeat an enemy, you might as well do it comprehensively. But why in the world would A, B, and C have an interest in defeating the American people? I believe the answer is simply because we are their competitors. They want their will to prevail, but so long as we citizens have rights and ambitions, they cannot be assured of smooth sailing.

But isn't it absolutely wild to propose that they might do horrible things to us when in the course of a week or a month they deal with us as neighbors, alumni, or even friends? My answer is that the human brain is so able to switch off its altruism when it encounters 'enemy people' that it should be no problem. My guess is that they are able to do horrible things.

Of the six conspiratorial scandals mentioned at the beginning, it is perfectly believable that our government is guilty of two of them: it disrupts normal communication via a barrage of lies and it destabilizes families and society through many of its policies. Does it also do the other four? If it does, then I claim that my human nature analysis must be taken seriously. We must acknowledge that the US government has adopted the position of 'enemy of the American people' and is acting accordingly. The four scandals that you would have to accept as real are government participation in 9/11; the killing of Paul Wellstone; the deliberate use of a harmful anthrax vaccine on soldiers; and environmental devastation.
Mary Maxwell, Ph.D. P.O. Box 4307, Ann Arbor, MI, USA 48106, is a political scientist. She can be emailed as 'mary' at her website: marymaxwell.us She hereby permits anyone to copy or distribute this article as long as it remains unaltered and contains this notice.