dlmCommentary

I have just seen a most chilling film - “Arlington Road.” It is about conspiracies, sophisticated cultural deceptions, terrorism and various versions of justice or so called justice.
What follows may tempt you to label me a conspiracy nut. (I wonder if anyone was ever given that label in Germany during the 30’s?) But please allow me the opportunity to explain myself on that point.
The strict denotation of the word “conspiracy” is: a group plot - secret, to some degree - to enact some significant social change that will benefit some at the expense of others.
No intelligent person would deny that conspiracies of all kinds, in this sense, exist in this country. The standard argument against conspiracy crazies, if that’s what they are, comes when their views include something beyond this strict denotation - when they add the connotation of large numbers of co-conspirators, or a great deal of money or political power behind the conspiracy. This is normally the red flag that paranoia is involved.
I agree with his latter point. No one conspiracy has such widespread support in any explicit sense.
But please consider the simple fact that the majority of people in a given culture implicitly share many things in common: unconscious paradigms, language structures, popular beliefs, strategies for living, psychological patterns. The television alone is an astonishing source of such commonalities.
I submit to you that when commonly shared dangers are feared, then the impulse to find protection will also be widespread, along with commonly held perceptions about how that protection may be found. The impulse to scapegoat will be widespread - not because there is any one conscious, explicit conspiracy, but because the directions in which a culture is moving must - by definition - be shared by the majority of that culture’s participants.
“Arlington Road” is a pretty compelling indicator of directions in which our culture is moving. The film was a revelation to me. I feel that I now know where it is all headed in this country. Violence against an increasingly parental government will increasingly be perceived as the greatest evil confronting us. Political and cultural conservatism - “right wing extremists” - will increasingly be perceived as the hotbed of anti-government sentiment. The foundation of conservatism will be a surprise to no one: Evangelical Christians.
In a nation populated by many who are morally and spiritually confused - sometimes often by choice - what choice is there but to engage in ever higher levels of pseudo-transcendent political passion? Look again at the faces of whatever group most recently rioted for whatever cause. These people are fanatics too, but the hidden assumption is, it is not fanaticism if you are right and if the issue is significant enough.
As if two-thousand years of history never happened, Nero will again eventually seek to blame the Christians (and Jews?) for the burning of Rome.
For me, this is not just so much detached theorizing. I am an active member of a mainline Christian denomination, and have been standing aghast as I have witnessed evangelical Christians mischaracterized and increasingly marginalized by people - people in the church! - who have more in common with a liberal atheist than they do with a politically conservative Christian.
While watching this “Arlington Road,” I finally realized why the left-wing protests tend to get so aggressive. These folks see conservatives and evangelicals no differently than the film depicts its “bad guy”: sick (perhaps even evil) and latently violent (don’t forget the guns!), with only an external pretense of decency.
It is painful and chilling. And the outcome seems so inevitable, given the psychological and cultural forces at work, that it may as well be considered a conspiracy.

Copyright © 2001 Donald L. McIntyre All Rights Reserved