O.K., let’s file this one under …
THE CONSPIRACY OF A BRAND NEW DAY
How quickly we forget our past.
I’m not talking about the fact that a couple days ago it rained about an inch an hour, flooding the streets of New York City…
… and now that it is bright and sunny outside, people are back to their every day lives with nary a memory of the deep water or the loose branches…
Look Out-
… Nor am I talking about the fact that a couple of days ago business owners were boarding up stores with shelves that were already picked clean, and that the city’s population was preparing for long-term loss of electricity and water, and indefinite suspension of public transportation…
… and now that there power and water system seem once again safe, there is not a single hoarder in any of the stores along Second Avenue.
There are also thousands, maybe millions, of apartments with unused, and soon to be forgotten, portable generators that will take up badly needed closet space.
In this problem-filled world, we move quickly past the old, and into brand new challenges.
History itself stays locked in archival video, ready to be dragged out for the next approaching hurricane, around which talking heads will refer to 'Irene', the storm of 2011, and how New York City “dodged a bullet.”
Life goes on. What’s past, is past, and thankfully so…
Not so for Conspiracy theorists.
Conspiracy theorists tend to hold on to the past. They grab on to certain events and seek to explain their cause by connecting them and filling in the blanks with supposition. They often do this with remarkable creativity. Usually these explanations defy rationality.
One does not need much of a memory of the past few days to be confused by the shift of focus within the culture of conspiracy.
For those who hold on to the past, and make sense of its randomness in creative ways, it’s been remarkably out of character.
It’s almost as if there was a collective use of mid control over the entire conspiracy theorist population.
Before the storm, a conspiracy theory involving the control of the weather was in full-Hurricane-force. As I blogged about previously, conspiracy theorists, like my roommate Jeff, believed that there was a coven of mad scientists somewhere, working in secret, with the ability to make and chose the trajectories of large and powerful Hurricanes, formed to target American cities, and decimate populations.
The idea of global warning didn’t really seem to play into this belief, nor did the randomness of nature. The theory involved weather control on a massive scale, and the once-in-a-hundred-year trajectory of the storm only fueled their belief.
For days on end, weather forecasters projected the track of the storm would take it near or over Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Depending on the exact track, and the storm's intensity, these cities could all be hit extremely hard by the effects of the storm during a very short period of time.
The forecasters warned that the devastation could be massive. Homes, businesses, transit, and other basic infrastructure could be destroyed.
According to the conspiracy the next thing that would happen would be the Masons swiftly moving in to start rebuilding massive structures for our new leaders, and these stone structures would be decorated with Swastikas and Sickles.
Cut to now, and the storm has passed us by, and the destruction, though significant, has not destroyed civilization.
Now, say conspiracy theorists, the potential disaster itself was, and is, a smokescreen for the something far more worrisome that a simple storm.
Whether or not the weather (I couldn’t resist) was man made, is just no longer important.
That particular issue had been blown off the map.
As regularly followers of this blog know, I work as a field cameraman for NY1, a 24 hour a day news network that covers the five boroughs.
I read enough other blogs to know that the large news organizations and corporations get accused of everything from leaning in a certain way politically, to trying to manipulate public opinion, to over-hyping events to create sensationalism and keep viewership.
The latter is what conspiracy theorists are now hanging their hats on… over hyping the Hurricane.
This collective bout with exaggeration was not done to boost viewership and discourage channel changing, or even to spur the economy with impulse spending, but to create mass-hysteria and to give public officials the necessary standing to be able to easily evacuate certain areas.
My roommate Jeff, just days ago, had been strongly advocating the “Hurricane as the weapon” theory, but now he’d moved on from that and focused on the “convenient evacuation”.
What follows is part of the actual conversation that occurred in this very apartment early this morning between my roommate Jeff and I.
Jeff: It’s no coincidence that September 11th is just around the corner.
Me: Have you been drinking at that bar around the corner?
Jeff: Listen dummy, what areas did they evacuate?
Me: Fire Island? Far Rockaway. Atlantic City?
Jeff: Ground Zero.
Jeff’s conspiracy theory is that government officials used the impending storm to evacuate the area around Ground Zero – that’s the site of the former World Trade Center Towers -- to be able to be prepare, far from watchful eyes, for a spectacular world changing event, planned for the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, which is just days away.
From This Spot Was Borne So Many Conspiracy Theories-
On it’s face, Jeff’s theory is attractive and I can see how it can easily catch on with those who are given to the fear that the very media seemed to create this week. The big bad hurricane is coming, you’d better prepare, and then it all turned out to be just a bag of wind.
The City’s Administration. taking a “better safe than sorry” attitude, had indeed ordered mandatory evacuation of certain downtown areas.
I freely submit that it’s true that a mandatory evacuation of New York City had never been ordered, but neither had the city ever potentially experienced a direct hit from a Category 1 Hurricane for many years, and the one dubbed the Long Island Express, in the 1930s, had left massive destruction in its wake.
Conspiracy theorist have asked why buildings that have been built to withstand up to 120 mile an hour winds would need to be evacuated. That only deals with a small part of the issue. The potential loss of power in high-rise building for many days, the potential flooding of low lying areas, and the possible loss of other infrastructural elements, made the area potentially unsafe and dangerous.
Now, it is true that none of it came to pass, but it did in the outer boroughs, and it did in upstate New York.
Being a news cameraman I have the opportunity to see footage in its unedited stage, without any spin or hype and there was a strong possibility the level of the rivers would rise up so high as to completely flood downtown Manhattan. With the possibility of downed power lines, it would hardly be safe to wade around in this. Nor would it be safe to drive in, in case of emergency, like the need for ambulances or fire trucks.
But conspiracy theorists see this whole thing as fishy and a smokescreen for events that are yet to be revealed to an unsuspecting public. They connect the dots to the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. That, plus the evacuation of the same area, seems like a large red flag to them.
Of course, it’s impossible to seek the truth about events that have not yet happened.
So, just like the Hurricane failing to take out the entire Eastern Seaboard, I am going to sit back and wait until September 11, 2011 passes.
I’d love for the day to pass eventless, and so, I’m certain will all of you.
This is one conspiracy theory I will be personally grateful to have quickly forgotten.
Until then, feel free to comment…
… and check back on September 12 to see if we are all still here... or if the conspiracy theorists are correct.
