(Sigh) Yes, youread that right. And while I’m sure someone has addressed this topic before, let’s do so again given that Clinton-pounding is all the rage again.
Over the past eight years, a constant stream of right-wing commentators, conspiracy mongerers, and board-certified nuts have postulated that Clinton and his past co-conspirators were responsible for the deaths of some 80 persons–persons who somehow stood in the path of William Jefferson Clinton and his underhanded dealings, and therefore had to be liquidated. Some of the zanier sources claim that Clinton himself may have personally killed some of these individuals. Amazingly, untold millions of Americans, it appears, buy into this conspiracy theory.
I recently mentioned this topic to a friend–in a laughing manner–and he replied: “Hey, I wouldn’t be so sure. A lot of Clinton’s enemies have died in really mysterious ways. I wouldn’t put it past the bastard!”
Apparently, this alleged homicidal activity can be traced to when Clinton was governor of Arkansas. Frankly, the whole thing about an “Arkansas mafia” sounds assinine. Were it true, someone would squeal–a jilted lover, someone who found God, whomever.
Problem is, Dan, a large number of well-educated, seemingly respectable Americans believe this crap. Can’t provide any hard numbers, but one hears this stuff often.
While we’re on the topic, I’d say that most of the “Great Debates” are rather inane: Satan repenting, interracial Dating, etc. etc.
My real interest is how so many people could believe this rubbish. Perhaps a better OP would have been to ask how Americans have become so conspiracy minded…
Are Americans really “more educated than ever”? Even if the number/percent of people receiving college educations has continued to rise since the 60s, I’m not sure what that would indicate. Colleges have engaged in a fairly steady trend over the last few decades of becoming more career mills and trade schools and less acadamies of learning or scholarship. Even liberal arts colleges frequently allow kids to pick majors rather early, specializing in narrow studies of related topics rather than demanding a breadth of experience. (I am not claiming that every college graduate of the last 30 years is a one-trick pony; I am noting that the frequency with which many colleges allow many students to escape broad-based education has been increasing.)
Second:
There has been a growing feeling in our society that we cannot control our own destiny. It is a perception of powerlessness that suggests that “something” “out there” prevents us from accomplishing our goals. Whether that is the natural cynicism of a society that has reached middle age, or whether the change from an up-and-coming country in which every challenge could be surmounted by more effort to being the world’s dominant country where our every effort is second-guessed by someone, I don’t know. The fact that a fairly large number of conspiracies–some active, some merely of silence–have been uncovered in the last several decades has done nothing to allay those sorts of fears. Nixon used the CIA against our own citizens for political purposes. He also involved us in a secret war in Cambodia. Love Canal and numerous other ecological disasters were initially hidden from the victims. We have learned that the U.S. military performed secret experiments with LSD on their own troops. We have finally been told that the above-ground nuclear tests of the early 1950s probably contaminated many communities down wind of them. We have learned of the Tuskegee Experiment failing to provide a cure for people for who a cure would have been a salvation.
People who do not feel that they can control their own lives and destinies are more likely to look for an outside force that is interfering with their lives. People who have seen that there actually have been conspiracies are going to be more open to the suggestion that the outside forces controlling their lives are the result of conspiracies.