Jessie Walker: United States of Paranoid

He tells us that conspiracy theories have been around since before the United States was the United States.

Are Americans more susceptible to conspiracy theories than people of other countries? What is our biggest, most widely believed conspiracy theory? Is it worthwhile to try to debunk a conspiracy theory? Where does conspiracy theory stop and folk-lore begin?

22 Thoughts to “Debunking paranoid America”

  1. Wolverine

    Hah. That Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan intended to put American Blacks back in chains.

  2. Second Alamo

    A fair percentage of them are in chains … government support chains that is. Start with some tough love instead of bleeding heart handouts, and maybe they’ll be forced to fend for themselves. Maybe it will put an end to their younger ones ‘boredom’.

    1. There are a lot more white people on welfare than black people. (just something to think about)

      SA, what bleeding heart hand outs are you referring to? School lunches? WIC program?

      Did you just say that blacks will be forced to fend for themselves? What about white people…will they be forced to fend for themselves also?

  3. Scout

    I think humans generally are prone to pursuing bizarre, improbable explanations of events because they make for better stories. Reality sometimes is boring. Intricate, malevolent conspiracies are fascinating. I doubt that americans are more susceptible than others, although, fortunately, we have enough diversity, information and institutions, that it is generally possible to get right to the facts of a situation. The culture and area of the world that is really, really around the bend on conspiracy explanations is the Middle East. In my experiences out there, it always seems that there are at least three levels of parallel universe going on for any political phenomena.

    1. Dracula sure didn’t start in America. That’s pretty much a conspiracy theory also.

      I think you are right about human nature.

      I am watching some of the lead up info on the MLK speech. I remember many of the conspiracy theories going around about him, the biggest one probably being that he was a communist plant.

  4. Scout

    PS: Wolve, I think the “back in chains” allusions were metaphorical, not literal.

  5. @Scout
    Funny…ol’ Biden looked pretty serious about it. But lets go with metaphorical.

    How would the GOP do that?

  6. Rick Bentley

    The first two posts here touch on one of the big conspiracy theories in America.

    On the left, there’s a constant argument that America is inherently “racist”, that the deck is stacked against minorities. This ignores the fact that America has tried to do literally everything it could do to “level the playing field”, to the point that these measures have become counterproductive. We went so far as to introduce reverse bias into the system for many years. It’s clear to any rational thinker that the American people are generally not “racist” or any more biased than any other people on the earth.

    On the right, many like to see the welfare system as some type of gift that the Democratic party gives, disproportionately to minorities, as a reward for voing Democrat. This willfully ignores the reason we created the welfare system in the first place, which is to protect children from growing up in poverty.

    There’s a grain of truth in each side’s conspiracy theory, but many people’s beliefs on these things have become imbalanced and widly out of touch with what’s real. In part because the two parties feed off these misconceptions, like leeches.

  7. Wolverine

    Scout — Oh, heavens, we all knew what he actually meant. On second thought, however, with a brain like Biden’s, after learning that we have to speak with an Indian accent in a 7-11 store, etc., you never can tell for sure…………….

  8. Rick, maybe you aren’t old enough. Maybe you just don’t know or haven’t known enough rednecks and I just don’t mean southern ones.

    Believe me when I say that racism is alive and well in America. You might have a point about the nation (as a governmental system) doing a great deal to level the playing field. However, the nation can only establish rules. It doesn’t change thought.

    You seem to be buying in to SA’s notion that welfare is just a condition of black people. Check the stats out.

  9. Sorry, stats have changed since I last looked about 10 years ago.

    whites are down by one point:

    The percentages those on welfare by race as of 2011 are listed below in descending order by percentage.
    Black-39.8%
    White-38.8%
    Hispanic-15.7%
    Other-3.3%
    Asian-2.4%

  10. Wolverine

    Yep, Rick, the Northern town where I was born and raised was ruled politically by Yankee “rednecks” otherwise known as Democrats and closed-shop union types. I lived a block from a large Black neighborhood and never had a Black neighbor. Nor did I have a Black classmate until I got to the central middle school. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Not until I was older did I realize how the sub rosa housing color line actually worked.

    1. So are you suggesting that if the town ‘leaders’ weren’t union types and Democrats that the schools would have been integrated?

      When I was a kid many people were also Democrats. Now those same people have become Republicans. I grew up in the South. Think Strom Thurmond. Think Dixie-crat.

      Do not think JFK.

  11. Rick Bentley

    “You seem to be buying in to SA’s notion that welfare is just a condition of black people. ”

    Not at all! I was speaking of the distorted way others see things.

  12. @Rick,

    I think you are all too willing not see racism at times.

    I don’t like calling racism and I try to do it sparingly, mainly because it does exist and we desensitize if someone is always hollering racism.

  13. George S. Harris

    I sure wish some black person would get on here a d talk about their perceptions of racism. Might just change the whole tenor of the conversation.

  14. @Moon-howler

    Are those percentages the rates of welfare per total population or the individual subset population?

    Blacks, 13% of the population make up 38% of the total welfare population? Or is it 38% of the Black population that is on welfare?

    1. Percent of those on welfare are _____.

  15. Scout

    @CS (comment 7): You’re asking me? How would I know. That stuff came from Biden.

    I do, however, have some concern that the GOP is not perceived as the spearhead for equal rights and equality in this country. If the Party is not for absolute, color-blind opposition to all sources of inequality under the law, it has lost its way irremediably from its core principles. The difficulty with some of the recent hysteria over voter ID etc. is that these impulses are very susceptible to the perception that they are motivated by a desire to contract (as in diminish) the electorate.

    1. It appears that the GOP has really lost its way in North Carolina.

  16. Wolverine

    Don’t doubt me on this, Moon. Those union Democrats of MY youth were FDR supporters, Truman supporters, Stevenson supporters, and Kennedy supporters. They continued to be staunch Dems as long as I knew them. They were big civil rights talkers in vote-getting circumstances but very forked tongue when it came to actual performance. I could give you detailed chapter and verse on what they did and how they did it and how the first big hole was punched in that sub rosa housing color line by a conservative union man, a devout Christian who voted Republican and was turned into a pariah by his Dem workmates because of the action he took to start the crumblng of the local discrimination mold. That man was my father.

  17. I am not doubting you. I am asking if the Republicans had been in power, do you think the schools and neighborhoods would have been integrated?

    Its probably impossible to compare because I lived in the south. The Democrats of the day became Republicans and I am not sure when that happened. I know when I was very little very few of the old guard would have voted Republican because of Reconstruction. That still lingered on. I think in Virginia it started turning with Eisenhower.

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