Gordon B. Arnold Conspiracy Theory in Film, Television, and Politics (2008)

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

television series Millennium, which had been created for the FOX televi-
sion network by Chris Carter. (He had also created their The X-Files series,
which by then had also peaked in popularity.) Despite the apparently timely
combination of millennial and conspiracy themes that ran throughout the
Millennium s narrative, the series soon floundered. It was cancelled by the
network in 1999.
AMERICAN POLITICAL SCENE
The year 2000 signaled the coming of the next presidential election in
the United States. The polarizing figure of Bill Clinton, having survived two
terms, would be ineligible to run. And so the prospect of a wide-open field
of candidates from both the Democratic and Republican parties generated
widespread anticipation and speculation well before the beginning of 2000.
When the primary season was over, the conventions of the two major parties
anointed their candidates. Vice President Al Gore received the Democratic
nomination and Texas governor, George W. Bush, was selected by the Re-
publicans.
Gore and Bush conducted vigorous, hard-fought campaigns in a close
contest. But when the November election finally came, it produced results
of historic ambiguity. At first, however, this was not apparent. Soon after the
polls closed, some news organizations announced that Al Gore would win the
contest, basing this prediction on exit polls. Within hours, such predictions
Belief and Disbelief 161
seemed premature. As more tallies became available, it appeared that the
vote in Florida (the governor of which was the brother of the Republican
candidate) would determine the final outcome. The Florida numbers were
very close, but by the early hours of the next morning it appeared that Bush,
rather than Gore, had carried the state.
When the official vote was finally recorded, therefore, it seemed that George
W. Bush had defeated Al Gore in Florida, apparently settling the matter. But
to Gore s supporters, the results did not seem correct, especially in three
counties that usually voted Democratic. Further investigation revealed issues
with vote counting procedures and, indeed, with the ballots themselves. The
Gore camp requested a recount. It was a lengthy and tortuous path from that
point forward.
A series of legal challenges led all the way to the Supreme Court. Indeed,
though there was apparently dissension within the Court, America s highest
judicial authority entered the fray and ultimately made the final decision
about how to interpret the results of the election, and hence who would
assume the Oval Office. The Supreme Court issued its 5-to-4 decision in
mid-December, finally settling the matter. Despite some public apprehension
about the legitimacy of the vote, George W. Bush was sworn into office
on schedule in January of 2001. In the early months of his term, American
politics seemed poised to return to relative calm.
SEPTEMBER 11 AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM
Whatever sense of calmness emerged in the first eight months of that year
was shattered by the horrifying events of September 11. When hijacked planes
were piloted into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York
and the Pentagon just outside the nation s capital, the world changed. By
mid-morning of that fateful day, it was clear that the attacks were the greatest
tragedy in at least a generation. The death and destruction stunned and
traumatized the nation, deeply scarring the American people.
In the wake of 9/11, the president solemnly announced that the attacks
had constituted an act of war against the United States. He promised that
swift and forceful justice would be carried out against the perpetrators of
the catastrophe. Although the hijackers had died along with their victims in
the attacks, officials soon determined that a known, but previously shadowy
Islamist terrorist organization was behind the plot. Calling itself Al-Qaeda,
the terrorist group seemed to be taking refuge in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda s
leader, a Saudi national named Osama bin Laden, soon became America s
most hated and most wanted man.
The 9/11 attack was a genuine conspiracy of international proportions,
and it brought the world to a dangerous new level of fear and hostility.
When, immediately after the attack, the president framed the traumatic event
as an act of war, however, the conspiracy aspect of the event seemed almost
incidental to the greater threat. The newly recognized enemy was not feared
162 Conspiracy Theory in Film, Television, and Politics
primarily because it was a conspiracy, even though it was on a grand scale.
Instead, it caused fear and anger because of its terrorist goals and methods.
Thus, in post-9/11 rhetoric, Al-Qaeda was cast more in the role of a tradi-
tional enemy than a conspiratorial one. The conditions were seemingly ideal
for the growth of conspiracy fears, however. Like the situation a half-century
earlier, the September 11 attacks presented Americans with an external threat
emanating from people who espoused beliefs that were highly dissonant with
American ideals. Five decades earlier, the threat that global communism posed
to the American way of life fueled fear and paranoia about conspiracy in the
nation s midst. Now it was the threat of Islamist extremism. And just as there
had been constant efforts to identify hidden enemies in the Cold War era, af-
ter 9/11 there were constant struggles to identify hostile persons and sleeper
cells in the United States. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Linki