Don’T Let Nonsense Close Minds, Borders Or Opportunities

Doc Gilliard, a chiropractor and a childhood neighbor of mine, introduced me to the world of conspiracy theories.

The Gilliards were as poor as church mice. Not because Doc was unsuccessful but because they gave so much to the community.

For years, Doc drove the neighborhood kids to school in his Volkswagen bus, despite having no kids of his own. As far as I know, he never charged my parents a nickel for the vitamins and chiropractic treatments he gave us over the years. Doc didn’t believe in charging the poor or the neighbors for his services.

But Doc did believe in conspiracies. All wars, he firmly believed, were intentional and were fought for one purpose only - to create wealth for international bankers. The conspirators (the Rockefellers and European banking houses) operated from a secret headquarters in New York City.

A key player was Franklin Roosevelt, although his wife Eleanor was the true power. When President Roosevelt decided to be a man and quit playing along, Eleanor had him killed. So said Doc.

A local group, called The Citizens Study Group, popped up around 1962. These folks were convinced that the communists would subvert us through trade. To combat this evil, they printed a bunch of stickers advising the reader: “This product was made in a communist country. Please don’t buy.”

Those folks would then go into stores and place stickers on products made in communist countries. Since Poland was a communist country, numerous stickers were placed on Polish hams.

Vietnam brought a conspiracy theory with a different twist. This time, the “military industrial complex” was said to be sponsoring a war for profit.

I was a college student at the time. The most dangerous job on campus was to be a corporate or military recruiter. The anti-war protesters - in the name of peace and justice - were capable of some serious violence against these folks.

My first landlady hated Jews. She believed Jews were part of of a conspiracy. Her reasoning? A Jew will buy a failing business and make it profitable. I didn’t bother asking her to explain.

Then there are shortages. Remember the sugar shortage? The coffee shortage? The Volkswagen shortage?

It must be a law. A shortage of any consumer product automatically produces a surplus of conspiracy theorists. Particularly a gas shortage. Let the price go up a dime a gallon and the media fill with proclamations from folks who just know that Big Oil is conspiring to rip us off. Funny thing is, when prices drop (markets do work) these folks are noticeably silent.

And we mustn’t forget Hillary Clinton and the “vast right wing conspiracy” to destroy her husband, or the scores of Kennedy assassination theories.

One advantage - perhaps the only advantage - of age, is the advantage of having seen it all before. As I watched the protests against the World Trade Organization and hear the arguments against extending normal trading relations to China and Cuba, it all comes back. Substitute “multinational corporations” or “International Monetary Fund” for “international bankers”and you’ve got today’s version of Doc Gilliard’s conspiracy theory.

And so it goes. There’s always a villain, or several. The villain is usually someone we don’t know personally. Someone we believe is stinking rich - and evil.

It helps greatly if the villain is a foreigner with a strange ideology but that’s not mandatory. Any huge corporation, union or government agency makes an excellent villain.

Then there’s us, the good guys. The pure, the righteous, the defenders of justice, the possessors of the truth.

Most of us promote our interests in a way that’s rational, well-intentioned and beneficial to society as well as to ourselves. There’s no reason to assume that other people are less rational or well-intentioned than we are. Why, then, do we keep attributing evil intentions to others and blaming conspiracies for our own bad luck or failures?

Conspiracy theories rarely hold water. At best they contain an ounce of truth and a ton of fantasy and misinformation.

If we want others to adopt our values, we should seize every opportunity to open up the world. More trade. Fewer restrictions on capital flows. Freer immigration. Less criticism of other people’s institutions. Greater exchange of ideas. Less censorship.

This is the most effective way to promote ourselves and our way of life - not by building barriers and inventing conspiracy theories to demonize others.