Theory

Scientific “laws” are few and far between. When people get over talking about the “theory of evolution,” they won’t necessarily promote it to “evolutionary law.” Here’s a page by Jerry Wilson that draws some nice distinctions between hypotheses, theories, and laws: http://wilstar.com/theories.htm. The author states, “Some scientific laws, or laws of nature, include the law of gravity, Newton’s laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics, Boyle’s law of gases, the law of conservation of mass and energy, and Hook’s law of elasticity.” He goes on to say, “The biggest difference between a law and a theory is that a theory is much more complex and dynamic. A law governs a single action, whereas a theory explains an entire group of related phenomena.”

What can we say about conspiracy theories? The phrase itself creates a marginalized framework for discussion. John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King died under circumstances not well understood and not well communicated to the public by the media. Bobby Hutton, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and uncounted others were defamed and died in an exercise of FBI power. Mel Carnahan died. Paul Wellstone died. Tom Daschle received anthrax in his Senate office and lost the next election. These three Midwestern Senators were needed to check the Bush administration’s misuse of executive power in the illegal Iraq war. One can hypothesize that there is a group in America that uses assassination and violence to influence the country’s direction. One can further observe that these deaths resulted in the chaos of Vietnam and the current misadventures in Irag. This leads to a corollary hypothesis regarding the intention of this group to profit from war.

But no matter the data that people bring to the larger questions posed by these deaths, those who would investigate further are marginalized, classified as conspiracy theorists, their information rolled up and dismissed as if it had to do with space alien abductions and flying saucers. Indeed there are those who believe in space alien abductions and flying saucers,their belief based on evidence that is thinner than the evidence that the 9/11 Truth movement brings forward regarding the destruction of the towers in Manhattan, and thinner still than the contradictions that Kennedy assassination investigators illuminate in their study of the Report of the Warren Commission. But I think when — in the media — you bring the flying saucer people together with the 911 Truth people you start to have the elements of a classic disinformation campaign to discredit the work of the latter by creating an association with the former. Can a reporter be expected to recognize satire when he hears it?

I’ve been reading James Ellroy’s “The Cold Six Thousand.” (A week or two ago Chris Locke told me that he was listening to it courtesy of Audible.Com and I grabbed a copy from the library.) Ellroy’s staccato narrative convinces. His style — short sentences, repetition, fragments, spare description — sketches a story that knits those sixties transgressions together in a perfectly believable way.

Compounding my folly, last night I saw the Matt Damon movie, the third Jason Bourne film. The producers use it as a vehicle to take a shot at US clandestine policies of sanctioned torture and murders. It ties Iraq nicely into the framework that Ellroy builds in The Cold Six Thousand. Good movie, better book. Read ‘em and weep. Weep for America.