still more paranoia ...

[kelber at mindspring.com]

>From the description of the book: The United States of Paranoia (posted by Dave Monroe): "When a tale takes hold, it reveals something true about the anxieties and experiences of those who believe and repeat it, even if the story says nothing true about the objects of the theory itself."

Last night I watched the pilot episode of the Lone Gunmen (a spin-off of the X-Files, cancelled after one season).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRtqQLMAZek

I'd watched and enjoyed the 13 episodes of the show when they were aired from March - May, 2001, but had forgotten what happens in the pilot: a government conspiracy to crash a domestic airliner into the World Trade Center. As a would-be whistleblower explains it (paraphrasing): "The Cold War is over. It's abad time for arms manufacturers, so the plan is to crash the plane, let some nutcase dictator claim credit, then smart-bomb the hell out of them."

I could put myself in the mindset I must have had when I originally watched it: that's contrived and dopey. I certainly didn't remember it when 9/11 happened, six months later. I gather 911 conspiracists have seized on the episode as "proof" of whatever, but I see it as a fascinating example of the "ethos" (or "mythos"? - using terms I don't have a solid grounding in), of the times. Because all the tropes were there for the creative reassembling: vehicle crashing into the Trade Center? Already happened. Plane crash linked to terrorism? Already happened. Cynical US invasion of Iraq for murky reasons? Already happened. I remember the flurry of anxiety after the US bombed Libya in 1986, that Libyan terrorists would retaliate by bombing the Trade Center (and that's after Back to the Future, where Libyan terrorists are the big threat). Yes, all of it solidly in the public's imagination, long before 9-11.

Laura

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