What Makes A Scandal?

What makes a scandal? What builds a conspiracy?

The past week, and to a broader extent the last several years for the Obama administration, have been marked by allegations of scandal and conspiracy. There is the IRS targeting of conservative groups over 501(c)(4) applications, the Justice Department tapping phones at the AP for a leak investigation, the continued back and forward over Benghazi, the closing of Guantanamo Bay Prison, the Boston Marathon Bombing, gun control, Fast and Furious, the healthcare reform, bailouts and tax policy, you can even go back to the whole birth certificate thing, and there are a number of others I haven’t mentioned or don’t know a lot about.

But I don’t want to re-litigate the matters of those past scandals/conspiracies, or prejudged the ongoing ones. What I want to do is put forth my understanding of the source and lifecycle of conspiracies.

The first thing I believe is that conspiracies are rarely ever new, and are never susceptible to death. You cannot kill a conspiracy theory; you can only squash attention given to it. Now obviously there are conspiracy theories that pan out into real scandals. Most scandals tend to start out as mere conspiracy theory – someone alleging someone did something wrong, and that second party not wanting anyone to know about it. The idea that Nixon had spies break into the Watergate Hotel to steal information was only a conspiracy theory, until evidence came out to confirm it was something that really happened. 

But what if there had never been any evidence? What if Richard Nixon was never found connected to any such plot? What became a massive scandal would have remained a mere conspiracy theory. Certainly there would be people who continue to offer what they allege to be evidence of bad deeds, some would even come forward to allege they were somehow privy to the inside information, either as having worked for or worked with one side or the other, and will swear that it happened. Naturally because we are dealing with the scenario of no Nixon never being found guilty or connected to anything, there would need to be a number of individuals who can allege just the opposite.

That is where conspiracies get their life; the very nature of, “A said, B said”. I can accuse anyone of anything. That person will, naturally, deny it. I say their lying. They say they can prove they are not lying. I say there is a cover up… and that’s that. You can’t disprove a theory that cannot be tested. People lie, that is a fact. One the seed of doubt is sown it’s hard to remove it. It’s the lesson our parents always tried to teach us as kids – when you get caught in a lie it become difficult for others to trust you about anything ever again. Sometimes a person doesn’t even have to lie. Just the mere perception of a lie can foster unending doubt.

This is why it is simple for any administration to generate conspiracy theories; governments lie. We all know the government lies about certain things. Why? Because lying is a natural byproduct of keeping secrets, regardless of whether it is expected that the secret should be kept or not. If you’re going to keep a secret that means it is something someone else likely wants to know about. The government does this all the time, with just about everything. The government hates talking about the things it does for multiple reasons. Usually it’s nothing malicious, just a matter of it taking less time to get stuff done if you aren’t discussing it with a ton of people. Clearly, however, there are many instances where that discussion is necessary.

This is where scandals are born. The big scandals are fairly straightforward. Some bonehead decides to do something that is clearly illegal, or at the very least morally repugnant, and goes to a lot of trouble to cover it up. But there at that that a lot of the time headaches can be saved if there was just a little more open discussion going on. I call these faux-scandals because these tend to be not about a real issue of something wrong being done, but the impression of something wrong, or an improper focus.

Take the AP/Justice Department story for example. So far as can be judged thus far, in the course of investigating leaks to the media of highly sensitive information the Justice Department subpoenaed phone records from the Associated Press. Of course the media is up in arms about it. This is essentially like snooping in their house. Everyone always hates a subpoena when it targets too close to home. There are also some legitimate concerns about the freedom of the press. But here is where the problem comes for me in terming this a “scandal”. There has been no allegation that the government has done anything wrong. The subpoena was obtained legally, executed legally. There is no scandal here. It wasn’t that long ago that the media was talking up how important it was that a thorough investigation take place and was essentially raking the administration over the coals for letting so much sensitive information leak out, even accusing the administration of doing it purposely to bolster their own credentials. My question to those upset about the subpoena is how do you propose that an investigation finds out who leaked sensitive information? From my viewpoint there is no clear indication that there is any “scandal” here outside of media upset that one of their own is being investigated to find the source of the leak.

Conspiracies are immortal. It is the Schrödinger Cat conundrum. It is like solving a Devil’s Proof. I can ask you to disprove the existence of witches, but the hurdle is impossible to meet because the theory supports itself. How do you disprove a cover-up when there can forever allege that there is information being covered up that could prove there was a cover-up? Any effort to deny a conspiracy is liable to gain you the label of being either a fool who believes everything they’re told, or a conspirator. It is why so many think that the government knows about aliens, or why there is still a measurable percentage of the population that thinks the planet is flat (I won’t use the other term that can be used to describe people who believe such things). Once a conspiracy is believed, it becomes a scandal. Scandals, likewise, are prone to surviving for a very long time, but only if they are true scandals meaning they involve criminal or unethical activity.

That’s how I look at the matter. Feel free to agree or disagree.