Any number of people think we’re going to hell in a basket. It’s a strangely attractive mindset, despite the fact that it feels – with just a little thought – a lot like conspiracism.
If we line up the global troubles currently exercising our minds – and sometimes our economic policies – we’ve got quite a compendium. Climate woes [crises, perhaps], the rise of populism [mostly right wing] and the consequent [perhaps] erosion of democracy, a pandemic or two, a seemingly endless series of nasty tectonic shocks – earthquakes, tsunamis, etc., potential war between superpowers [and perhaps the fear that the superpower we’ve mostly rooted for in Oz – the U.S. of A. – is in fact not such a superpower now], and the clamour of voices announcing all sorts of other worries [sex education is wrong, body dysmorphia isn’t real, WOKENESS, non-awokeness, cancel culture, et al]; all these whisper [ no, shout] that times are indeed troubled.
It’s easy to ring a good conspiracy theory out of much of this. China concocted SARS-CoV-2, the WHO enabled them, vaccines were laced with tracking nano particles (no – it was alien DNA), Russia did/did not get Trump elected, Bill Gates is in league with the UN and wants to steal all your money and establish a new world order… climate change is not real, no – yes it is but there’s nothing we can do about it and people like Mike Cannon Brookes are going to get rich off of renewable energy programs. And somehow people’s distrust of government or the so called mainstream media leads to the idea that mass shootings are being faked in the U.S., and that the 9/11 terrorist attack was government inspired [or even didn’t happen]. And of course humans have never landed on the moon, perhaps because the earth is [was?] flat. Then there’s all the QAnon nonsense – and why shouldn’t Q be anonymous. That’s the way Bond likes him.
Anyone spending too much time [and that’s not much time at all these days] watching the news is overwhelmed with woe, human and natural misery, and a sense that things are – indeed – shit. Isn’t it therefore a fairly simple step to suspect that someone must be to blame for all this. There’s some malevolent outside agency fucking up our nice, neat world. We – or at least us – are being conspired against.
Welcome to the strange and tempting allure of a potential conspiracy – or two. Or three, even.
Personally, I am attracted to the idea [yes it may just be a conspiracy theory] that the world is ruled by plutocrats who somehow believe they will – when the shit hits the fan – be able to retire to Planet B. Or at least an island they own, or a mountain top somewhere. And there they’ll retire to a bunker and await the rapture, or some such epiphany that miraculously fixes everything and lets them get back to business as usual.
Hallelujah.
Inkstained fingers 