by Dan Geddes

Arthur was chatting with his old friend, Professor David Denkins, who was visiting him in Amsterdam. They sat at the Grand Café Spinoza drinking strong Dutch coffees, and gazing up at the beams of the high wooden ceiling.  Arthur and “Denk” once had been college roommates, and had not seen each other in seven years. Although both had belonged to the liberal camp at university, they had found enough differences of opinion on the important questions to have a good debating relationship. Debating had been their favorite game, more than chess or backgammon.

They now bore themselves with the quiet confidence of longstanding professional success. Both had gotten to their early middle ages in the later Bush years without serious damage or scandal. Arthur was balding and his eyes looked exhausted. Denk had fleshed out, and looked very relaxed, just like a professor on a junket, which is exactly what he was.

“I hate to say it, but I think this last book is sort of a cop-out,” began Arthur, now grinning at Denk, who was stirring his coffee with a tiny spoon, despite not adding any sugar or cream.

Denk’s latest book had only recently been published, and so he was doing a reading and book-signing in Amsterdam. Reviews were now appearing in academic journals. A Philosophy of Conspiracy Theory History held the imprimatur of All State University’s Capstone Press, a small but prestigious academic publisher. Featuring a stately font and copious footnotes, it was treated as an original work of scholarship. Described as a “magisterial survey” by one reviewer, the book was in fact a cursory inspection of conspiracy theories about events from Roman times through the late 19^th century. The selection of topics (the assassination of Caesar, the Knights Templars, secret societies during the French Revolution) meant that historical evidence was scarce and inconclusive, and also that the book would not irritate any contemporary conspirators (should They exist).

Arthur found the book tame, but hoped Denk’s old sportiness about debate would keep their conversation buoyant, even while he was poking holes in his friend’s work.

“I think you were playing it a little safe. How could you not have covered 9/11? Or Aliens? Or JFK at least? Something a little bit topical.”

“These were all mentioned in the Afterword. If you read it. But the book is not really about any particular conspiracy theories per se. It’s about the inherent uncertainty of any conspiracy theory. Perhaps you didn’t understand that part, Art.”

“What do you mean? Understand what? That?”

“Ultimately the truth of who is running the world is as unknowable as the mind of God,” he said, sounding to Arthur as if he were quoting himself. “However, we have clues, just as Christians say that they can infer the existence of the Creator from His Creation.”

“Yahhh Way… cool. But what’s the bottom line here? That you can’t know anything anyway?”

“I’m just trying to establish the essentially skeptical nature of the good CT.”

“CT?”

“Conspiracy theorist. Good CTs are skeptical, and mainly ask questions. They hardly ever make assertions, because so few of the assertions will ever prove to be true. Bad CTs go farther than assertions, and develop explanations and even comprehensive systems. Powerful Conspiracies, if they exist, are like Descartes’ demon, actively trying to deceive us with illusions, to block our quest for Truth with disinformation. This makes the truth behind conspiracies far more slippery and hydra-headed than ordinary reality. Philosophers usually look upon the physical world as being indifferent to our attempts to understand it—but not actively frustrating us. The Conspiracy (if it exists) is different. It weaves entirely false master narratives out of whole cloth. Clearly, Conspiracy Studies is in this respect a far more challenging field than Philosophy itself, which is still somehow seeking static Platonic Forms like Truth, Beauty, Goodness.”

It wasn’t for nothing that Denkins had wangled himself a position as chair of Conspiracy Studies at All State University, their alma mater. Called “ConStud” by non-majors and “CS” (which still meant Computer Science to some) by majors, Conspiracy Studies was already one of the most popular programs on campus. Many professors were kicking themselves for not proposing it themselves. ConStud was a new and exciting interdisciplinary field, drawing from history, philosophy, literary criticism, political science, economics, sociology and psychology.

Critical reception to the new discipline was not always kind. Some critics saw ConStud only as a creative approach to the currently topical problem of information overload, and especially of keeping up with current events. By choosing one of the conspiracy theories out there on the menu, a person could greatly simplify the process of information gathering by filtering new data through a kind of unified field theory—history as a conspiracy of powerful forces, e.g., central bankers, aliens, or the Illuminati. ConStud was thus a “soft” science (or even a pseudo-science or an anti-science to its detractors), one which ignored scientific principles such as quantification or falsifiability, and was perhaps more likely to invoke numerology than statistical analysis. Yet many ConStud-ers themselves argued that historical events were unique, and therefore not subject to the repeatability experiments characteristic of the scientific method. In theory, ConStud utilized archival research and occasionally forensics, but in practice relied mainly upon secondary sources of sometimes dubious quality.

“But more important than any book, Art, perhaps you don’t understand what is really happening in the world.”

“Well, I try to stay informed. I can’t read news all day, you know.” Like you, he almost said. “I got to work. I have to work.” Arthur wrote deathly boring tomes about international tax law for a living. Whenever he thought of his profession, his mind flashed back to his wife’s old joke that their pre-nuptial agreement expressly forbade him discussing his work with her. Ever.

“Well, I wouldn’t really have been comfortable writing about any alleged contemporary conspiracies. You get put on no-fly lists for that. Really, Art. You have no idea. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“Sure you do. Start with the wars. What are the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq really about? What about all those 9/11 theories? Fill me in.” Arthur clapped his hands together in mock eagerness. He was jealous that Denk made a living doing something as frivolous-sounding as Conspiracy Studies. He too had started a Ph.D program, but had quit and ended up in tax hell.

“Arthur, Arthur, Arthur,” said Denkins, his eyes scanning the room. “I know you’re just teasing me, but you’re also being a bit simplistic.”

“How so?

“As I said. In any case, it’s all ultimately unknowable anyway. There are just so many theories. I couldn’t possibly prove anything about the JFK thing, for example, one way or another. It’s more interesting to me as an iconic image. Part of the American mythos. JFK takes years just to scratch the surface. Who am I, a mere professor, to produce a definitive account?”

“Ok, sure. But if there is that much to it, then there must be something to it after all. It can’t just be that Oswald acted alone. I mean, if there’s still classified information about it forty years later, then it can’t just have been some lone nut, right? If it’s a lone nut, then you can release everything, even his high school report card, and case closed.”

“Well, you would think so, wouldn’t you? I admit, most likely, there’s a conspiracy of some kind behind the JFK assassination. So we’ve taken one fork in the road, and still agree. So what’s the next step?”

“I asked you. You’re the expert. This is your job, for Christ’s sake.”

“Very well. As a Professor of Conspiracy Studies, I have indeed reviewed the JFK literature. It is clear that: 1) Oswald did not act alone; 2) that the government zealously hid evidence from the public; 3) that the most likely powers involved were either: LBJ; the mafia—meaning the Giancana family; pro-Castro Cubans in the US; the FBI and the CIA; the British Royal Family; or the International Bankers. Truly International Bankers. Like the Swiss.”

“The Swiss? Why would the Swiss want to whack JFK?”

“Arthur, don’t be naive. At the top, they think only in terms of Have and Have Not. They are not swayed by petty distractions like nationality or religion. Remember that Kennedy was going to put the dollar back on the gold standard, and that this would have weakened the powers of the central bankers to issue credit and thereby control the money supply.”

“Ok, ok. But you just gave me about 100 choices as to who did it. I’m not any closer to understanding what actually happened here. It just seems like your job is to read every cracked theory that has ever been proposed, regardless of its merit, and then you probably even classify proponents of each theory as belonging to certain psychological or even sociological types. But you don’t get to determine what actually happened!”

“But Arthur? How could I tell you what happened. I wasn’t there. I didn’t even write my dissertation on it.”

But where’s the value added? Arthur nearly blurted out. He knew that would be going too far, to question whether Conspiracy Studies had any value at all. Denk was clearly devoting his life to it, or was at least earning his living from it.

“Then what did you do your dissertation on, anyway? I forgot.”

“CIA mind control programs. You don’t even want to know.”

“Oh boy.”

“Anyway, it’s easy for you to take all this so lightly. You’re not living in the States anymore. I don’t think you would recognize it.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“People are afraid, Art. Afraid of the silence. No one is speaking out. At least not enough people.”

Well, you’re not speaking out either, Professor ConStud. They paused at a palpable lull in the conversation. Arthur felt a pang of conscience: that something was wrong with the world and he wasn’t doing enough about it either. He was only putting down an old friend for not doing more. Arthur had read some articles in Harpers, for instance, that suggested that things in America were deteriorating, especially in areas such as civil liberties. He heard murmurings from other friends as well, usually academics or journalists who spoke of the deadening silence after even outrageous invasions of privacy and individual rights. He had read that the U.S. Constitution was in most respects already a dead-letter.  But since this fact wasn’t a CNN headline (“U.S. Constitution Scrapped”), many people seemed unaware or unconcerned. Art was concerned, but from a distance.

“I’m sorry, Denk. You’re right. I’ve been over here. But I still know the score. But what can I do about it? I’m just a cog in the machine. I mean, I write books that help multinational corporations pay less corporate income tax. I’m part of the problem.” Too.

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Denkins sometimes saw himself as a moral coward for championing a superficially daring subject, and then hiding behind philosophical uncertainty or relativism. ConStud attracted students who before the fall of the iron curtain would have been attracted to Marxism. With Marxism thoroughly discredited, with Sociology departments everywhere withering and dying without the nourishment of corporate sponsorship, with the perceived anomalies of 9/11 attacks, with the explosion of the World Wide Web and the unlocking of Pandora’s boxes of information—ConStud’s moment had arrived. In the 1990s, “The X-Files” TV show had done wonders to give identity to conspiracy theorists everywhere. Throw in the UFO crowd, alternative health practitioners convinced of Big Pharma/FDA collusion, born-again Christians certain the Apocalypse was nigh, some Thomas Pynchon readers, and dozens of other subgroups, and ConStud was a heuristically-interesting and fertile field. ConStud also examined the people “prone” to such theories, often described with “sub” words like “subtype”, “subgroup”, and especially “subculture,” all of which sounded a bit, well, “subhuman.”

But Denkins also knew that the radical promise of ConStud proved something of a tease. Many students flocked to his ConStud 101, which surveyed the field as a whole, including the major topics deemed worthy of study. Although Denkins considered himself aware of every conceivable brand of government malfeasance, and even convinced of it at times, his air was mainly sophisticated and worldly-wise rather than urgently activist. This was just how the world worked. A smart, curious, investigative guy like himself was able to figure these things out—to a point—unlike the unwashed masses. His very sophistication suggested the unknowability of all things conspiratorial. A conspiracy is, by its nature, people “whispering together,” trying to keep a secret, right? So will we ever pierce the veil to see that Smoke Filled Room, a conspiracy so small they can sit around the table being served their cigars and caviar, and plan the fate of the world?

Denkins also knew that some students had been hoping to find in ConStud a rallying-point against the perceived authoritarian excesses of the Bush Administration. They were first baffled, then disappointed, then outraged as they moved through the program. Many began to see ConStud only as a kind of literary criticism of the World. Some sensed their own impotence at the frightful approach of the coming police-state and could not face it. They found in ConStud a psychologically safe outlet for their intellectual energies. They saw that the tools of literary deconstruction could be safely employed in the sandbox of Conspiracy Studies, as long as one didn’t get too strident and start Naming Names. These types were suited to go on and do graduate work in the field. Others recoiled in horror from ConStud, upon discovering how useless it was, as if they had narrowly escaped from a religious cult. Others sensed a trap, quit the university, or dropped out of society, or even fled the country, more convinced than ever that the major institutions of society, including universities, were organs of the Conspiracy, funded and tracked by the obvious corporate and government powers-that-be, and so were not a safe place for a true rebel to be. Still others gave in to despair that the Conspiracy, especially since it was so difficult to identify the individuals at the top (other than perennial suspects such as David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger), or its power was so entrenched that it was hopeless to resist. For them it was clear that The Conspirators were masters of gradualism, who would take great care to solidify their power behind the scenes drop by drop, and to pass the Point of No Return well before passing the boiling point of intolerability for the enfeebled masses.

Denkins could juggle all of these groups in his head, and understand their positions. On honest days, he could admit to himself that he belonged to the impotent academic type. It had never bothered him. But he had recently learned that some of his most talented graduates had been recruited by the Agency.

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