Conspiracy theory

I just finished reading an interesting book “The Widow’s Web” by Gene Lyons. It’s about a murder in Little Rock Arkansas in the early 80s. A wife murders her husband but since the murder weapon isn’t found the Grand Jury reaches a decision not to indict. The woman then finds an individual who she convinces to murder the wife of her defense attorney presumably so she can then marry him. The alibi she sets up for both murders is that her husband was involved with a criminal mafia and that this mafia has connections at all levels of politics. This in itself wouldn’t be taken seriously except that the county sheriff, who had aspirations to higher office, does decide to take her seriously and gave almost daily press conferences in support of the wife’s claims even though not a shred of evidence existed to support them. There were at that time two newspapers in Little Rock competing for readers and both papers competed with each other to cover and lend credence to the sheriff’s claim. As the author makes clear large numbers of people in Little Rock and the state of Arkansas were perfectly willing to believe that there was in fact a massive criminal conspiracy involving lawyers, judges, prosecutors, even two State Supreme Court justices.
Reading the book a sane person can’t help but wonder how could people believe this (my short paragraph above doesn’t do the conspiracy justice) and then I remember, this takes place in the early 80s. This is the same time frame as the Satanic Cult child molestation trials which are described so well in the book “The Devil’s Disciple”.
Which brings me to my question: Why are we so willing to believe conspiracies? Is it an American cultural thing or is it human nature? Or is it human nature and here in the states we just fuel it more than others? Or is it just as prevalent in other countries and we just don’t read about it? From ten years in Israel I don’t remember there being conspiracies but when you are surrounded by enemies whose stated goal is to wipe you off the map maybe you don’t need conspiracies. Certainly the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is evidence that other countries do have conspiracies and the fact that surveys show that large proportions of the Arab population believes that 9/11 was perpetrated by the Mossad leads credence to conspiracy theory being human nature.
I’m leaning more to human nature but two factors I believe make it more pervasive here in the US. The first factor is the Republican Party has nothing to really offer voters. Yes, there are some who think that free market forces are better than government regulation but I think a large proportion of the people who vote Republican are voting against the Democratic party not necessarily for the Republican party. At least since WWII (I don’t know enough about before) the Republican Party has pushed some form of conspiracy agenda. Senator Joseph McCarthy wanted people to believe that our government, especially the State Department was infiltrated by communists from top to bottom. The John birch society was pretty much founded on the same idea with President Eisenhower no less a communist agent. Today millions believe that Obama wasn’t born in the US and therefore is illegally President and is promoting some never quite fully explained socialist agenda on the US. I remember in West Chicago helping a friend Len move some furniture from Bill’s house (he was a nut case for those who don’t know) house when Bill started to spew utter nonsense about the Clinton’s having 750 million dollars in a Swiss bank account from cocaine smuggling. This was straight out of the “Clinton Chronicles” which was some of the most wildly unbelievable conspiracy stuff at the time. We didn’t read much about it in Chicago, it was mainly popular in the south, particularly Arkansas. Prior to this I was never sure if anyone did actually believe it but obviously there were believers. (To his credit, Len Mahoney who had a serious case of Clinton Derangement Syndrome thought this was over the top). But it obviously wasn’t for others. Ken Starr had two investigations to determine if Vincent Foster’s death was a suicide or murder. I could go on but I think the point has been made the Republican Party pushes conspiracy.
The second factor for why conspiracy theory is so prevalent here is we have nothing to rebut conspiracy claims. As Israel has long claimed a balanced media only benefits the liars. The most bogus idiotic claims such as “death panels” cannot be called bogus and idiotic. Conservatives in Texas have recently tried to introduce into the school textbooks a statement to the effect that McCarthy has been largely vindicated by history when the opposite is true. I don’t think it is generally known that the Satanic Cult trials of the 80’s have all been discredited. And I think with each conspiracy theory it becomes easier to believe the next one. When the inspectors couldn’t find the evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq it wasn’t evidence that there were any instead it was evidence Saddam had hid them so well. How many people today know that there just plain weren’t any WMDs? That Saddam had destroyed them in the mid 90s.
I have always thought that if someone had told me and others back in the Nixon administration that Richard Nixon had claimed to have invented something he obviously didn’t I’m convinced that we would have laughed in their face. That literally tens of millions believed that Gore claimed to have invented the internet is just evidence for me that once people start to believe nonsense it’s easier to believe more nonsensical.
There was no greater point to this post, just a rambling thought. And again the book was interesting.