The Truth is Out There?

The Truth is Out There?

So here I sit, on my couch, laptop and TV going, living via the screen. I've just finished a particularly famous Episode of The X-Files which brings it's dense mythology to a tidy explanation of the Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr assassinations, and this week's Mythbusters is beginning to play from the DVR. The episode is dedicated to proving that the moon landing did in fact happen. According to the first five minutes, twenty percent of Americans still believe the landing was faked.

What is our fascination with the idea of government coverups, of men in dark suits riding in black helicopters, playing doctor for cattle in the middle of Bumble-Fuck Iowa? Why do some accept that our government would have the audacity or the wits to bring down the Twin Towers? How does one man convince millions that shape-shifting Reptoids have taken hold of our governments in the form of Bush, Gore, Queen Elizabeth (believable) and Bill Clinton?

The list of conspiracies is endless. I could go at length about any of them, from how water fluoridation is really a secret form of mind control meant to dumb down the American populace, or how the Navy actually harnessed Einstein's proposed "Unified Field Theory", and used it to to warp a navy destroyer from Philadelphia to Norfolk Virginia and back again, but I have my favorites. One is Project MKULTRA. It was a covert operation by the CIA to research mind control using psychotropic chemicals like LSD and mescaline sometimes combined with hypnosis for research in altering brain function and state of mind.

The project entailed giving drugs to unwitting civilians from all walks of life, and administering hypnosis to other test subjects. The tests in fact were relatively unscientific, as the "researchers" were CIA agents babysitting those experiencing the drugs. The main goal of the project is thought to have to have been to create a "Manchurian Candidate", though no evidence of their success has been discovered. (As a side note, it should be noted that many of the MKULTRA documents were destroyed following orders from Richard Helms.) This conspiracy, however unsettling it may be, was in fact broken wide open, despite attempts to destroy the documents involved. My point with this case is that even deep reaching conspiracies can be and are broken open.  When looking seriously at many of these cover ups one notices that the are never very complicated. MKULTRA was literally field operatives slipping unsuspecting civilians LSD, with little to no scientific data recorded or recovered. Statements made indicated that no properly and scientifically trained were involved in the project. The Watergate thefts were essentially cat burglaries, and while they led to more crimes in higher levels of government, there were no complex and advanced schemes to enslave the nation.

I am torn between passing off any suspicion of conspiracy as delusions and paranoia, and that nagging "what if". What if cocaine found its way into money and development deprived ghettos in the seventies through some hand other than black market supply and demand? What if the Twin Towers fell not only through our own government's ignorance and failure to act on multiple signs of impending violence on America, but by the hand of dark forces working within the framework of our government control structures? What if the slow Katrina response, the failed war in Iraq, and every perceived failure of our government are really just part of an enormous, earth spanning conspiracy for control of the way we live? I had an interesting thought when looking through these lists of conspiracies that have been cracked and proven, which was that the men who have been brought to to justice, who have had their duplicity shown, are usually publicly known and elected, high ranking officials. Nixon for example, was elected by this country, yet we see that so many crimes traces back to his ever tape-recorded office. What if these publicly elected men, men we supposedly trusted enough to run our lives, are just the tip of the iceberg? What if in back rooms of the pentagon, where the lights are dim and the white washed walls have no markings, there are cigarette smoking men, planning and scheming to run the world's affairs? 

I think that's the draw of the X-Files, of UFO conventions, of the mysterious "Men In Black", of cattle mutilations, the JFK assassinations, and Area 51. It's the idea that we may be powerless, that our actions and daily failures and problems amount to nothing in the face of the insurmountable power of the government's deception and lies. The idea that we are all victims, to mysterious and unnamed men, working in the shadows, the secret heart and cause of our problems and tragedies.

I think that yes, there have been, and always will be corrupt members of government, willing and able to bend and break rules for whatever gains, but that they too, are human. All human endeavors, whether putting a man on the moon, writing a constitution, stealing files from a hotel, or simply recording a new album, will always have snags. This combined with the fact that there will always be those who suspect and fear those who are in power, will usually make it impossible to keep even a simple operation under wraps.

With JFK, and only JFK, I almost believe there may have been some kind of plot. Extracting one man from such a chaotic scene may have been possible with one extremely trained soldier, but this belief is a frightening slope. If there was someone else, who? And who hired them? If it was some dark government sect, does that organization still exist? 

To be honest, when it comes to these schemes of grandeur and violence, I don't want to believe. No matter how powerful our president may be, or any other person in our government is, they are all still human. They need worry about their mortgages, about their chidren's braces, about the fact that the bathroom tiles are far too cold in the morning. They're people too, and in a nation that loves to suspect them, thrives on demonizing their secrecy, mistakes will be caught. 

For your viewing pleasure, I present to you the most detailed maps of Area 51 available to the public, and some links to fun conspiracy theories:

http://fas.org/irp/overhead/groom.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_assassination

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mkultra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Experiment

Three Cheers To the Unknown