Right Instincts, Wrong Conclusions

About a half-hour into his luncheon speech, Jack McLamb paused, joined his hands in front of him and told his rapt audience: “All this ties together. You’re beginning to see how it all ties together.”

No, I wasn’t. But I almost wished I was.

We all yearn to tie things together, to seize upon some anchor of certainty in this whirling, shifting world. To make sense of the scary events flashing across our political horizon.

Or, even better, to have someone do it for us.

McLamb, a former Phoenix cop turned Celebrity Patriot, is happy to oblige.

And even if he and his fellow conspiracy peddlers are not worth believing, they are worth listening to.

McLamb was, of course, referring to the deadly 1992 shootout involving federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The 1993 incineration of cult members at Waco. This year’s 81-day federal siege of the Montana freemen.

And this month’s arrests of the Viper Militia for supposedly plotting to blow up government buildings.

So what’s the common thread?

For McLamb, for the 80 or so people at Tuesday’s “briefing” by the local John Birch Society, it’s obvious.

These events were executed by federal agents to discredit and silence the patriotic opposition; their larger goal is to incite anarchy - via drugs, class and race war - to justify creating a police state in keeping with the New World Order planned by the international elite.

Sound impossibly complex? Wildly implausible? Even … nutso?

It does. But the people sitting around me - friendly, middle-aged men and women - were deadly certain.

America’s Secret Establishment; Global Tyranny Step by Step; The Ashes of Waco; The Secret Side of History - it was all there, in books and pamphlets on sale after lunch at a central Phoenix restaurant.

I had paid $13 for salad, spaghetti and cake to see whether McLamb had anything new to say about the Vipers. He didn’t.

Like the rest of us, he’d never heard of them. Like the rest of us, he advised that we “wait and see” how strong the government’s case is.

I also went to see whether anybody would offer any new or intriguing conspiracy theories. They didn’t.

Still, I came away with the same sense of unease that usually hits me at meetings of right-wing “patriots” or “constitutionalists.”

It comes not just from the fact that their conclusions are so wrong. It comes more because their instincts are so very nearly right.

Personally, I have no patience for fantastic tales about mysterious black helicopters, U.N. military coups and insanely complicated federal plots.

I’m disgusted by conspiracy theories about international bankers that are merely an updated version of traditional anti-Semitism.

And I’m saddened to see conscientious citizens wasting their time, money and energy battling hidden enemies when there are plenty of real villains around.

But, like it or not, McLamb and his sympathizers do reflect the fear and rancor and sense of injustice that seem so widespread in America today.

Are they wrong to dismiss Republicans and Democrats as merely two bureaus of the same economic elite? To cry alarm at government’s increasing infringement upon individual liberties? To lament the cheapening of our civic culture?

Are they crazy to anguish over the increasing gap between rich and poor? Over the human wreckage caused by economic globalization? Over the inability of average, unorganized citizens to get a fair hearing from those in power?

They’re not.

They are wrong - and worse - to pin the blame on the Clintons or the Rockefellers or the Rothchilds. They’re foolish to think that rifles and homemade explosives are going to make the slightest difference if their feared Apocalypse ever does come.

We can shun Jack McLamb and his fellow true believers. We can rebut their more vicious fantasies and arrest them when they break the law. But we can’t ignore them.

Just because they can’t seem to tie things together in any realistic way doesn’t mean that things aren’t unraveling.