The problem with conspiracy theories is not that they are implausible. If they were, they would not be seductive. People of like interest do meet and plan, or plot, to get their way, sometimes secretively. But is that normal or a conspiracy? Since it can be hard to say what’s wrong in a conspiracy theory, let me, as an exercise, work through the Hollywood remake of the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate. See if you can spot the flaws.

A monster U.S. corporation, Global Manchurian, kidnaps a company of U.S. troops during the 1991 Persian Gulf war and “brainwashes” them with electroshock, thought patterning and surgical implants. Then it returns them as (sincerely deluded) war heroes. One, the son of an evil U.S. senator, becomes a congressman, then vice-presidential candidate of his party. Their goal is to make him “the first privately owned and operated vice-president.”

Freeze frame. The first? What about Dick Cheney? Doesn’t he count? What about Richard Nixon or the first George Bush as vice-presidents? What did they do, or fail to do, that was not at the behest or in the interest of large corporations? There have been loads of privately owned and operated U.S. leaders. Okay, move on. They plan to assassinate the president so his VP will move up as their “sleeper in the White House.” Stop again. Same query. George W. Bush? If he were a sleeper, what would he do differently? What about Ronald Reagan or, on most matters, Bill Clinton and John Kerry?

The point is not just that planting a sleeper in the White House to serve corporations would be superfluous. The point is they do plant presidents, but not through arcane plots. They use campaign contributions, interflow between business and government, bribes, social events etc. With this toolbox available, the use of sinister brain implants following a kidnap would be risky, expensive, danger-prone and low-yield. That’s one flaw in the conspiracy mentality: The scheme is often unnecessary and inefficient.

Conspiracy theories are also flawed in a positive sense. They aren’t just wrong, they do harm. How? By obscuring the nature of the status quo. If it takes a devious conspiracy to put a sleeper in the White House, then the system must be basically sound and democratic. On the other hand, if there already are slaves to corporate interest in the White House and elsewhere, then the system itself is corrupt. Conspiracy theories don’t so much shift attention to bizarre cabals as draw focus away from the normal processes that are the real means by which privately owned vice presidents and virtual corporate sleepers slip into power. Think of this as the conspiratorial purpose behind conspiracy theories.

There is, for instance, an idiotic conversation in the film between the evil senator (Meryl Streep) and the evil corporate heads. The scene suggests that everything fateful for our planet would be revealed if you could just eavesdrop on such encounters and tease out of them the agendas of a few individuals. It ignores all the other vectors of force, power, need, resistance etc. that go into making our world the splendid mess it is. This implies, in turn, no need to deal with those many other issues and actors.

Sure there are tight groups that slither into power — but often they aren’t too secretive. They hold public posts and have names like Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle etc. They issue manifestoes (Project for A New American Century) in out-of-the-way but hardly inaccessible places. Their conspiracies, in other words, are fairly public.

And it is true that in our time they are intimately linked to corporate power. But that does not mean they are reducible to corporate tools. George Bush and his (relatively open) co-conspirators thrive on business backing, and serve corporate interests. Yet they remain a separate social group operating in the political, not the economic, realm. What I like about Sen. Streep is she at least represents that political impulse. You can’t picture her going to all the trouble of their convoluted conspiracy merely to increase quarterly profits. She’s in it for other ends: power, ideology, ego.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.