Recently I have been discussing the prevalence of conspiracy theories with some friends. These are friends who have always and forever been on the outside of the razor wire, and they are concerned with the kind of discourse that gets spouted by their fellow innocents on social media and elsewhere. I share their concern, and I also admit that I’m more than a little surprise that, over the course of the years I was away, conspiracy theory has become pretty much as popular outside prison as it is inside. Maybe I was just sheltered in my pre-felon life from hearing such widespread paranoia. Yes, I saw all the 9/11 truthers and knew of the flat-earthers, etc., but I never ran across them in such prevalence as I do now. In prison, I expected more conspiratorial thinking, and my prediction wasn’t disappointed. I found the prison-bred love of conspiracy annoying, but I could also take it with a bit of irony, if not some smug superiority. Of course, it inspired several limericks:
It's no wonder that you are not free When you worship a conspiracy. Every con, scam, and ruse Makes you slave to abuse, While you revel in ignorant glee.
OK, so not the most charitable or empathetic verse, but sometimes I just had to get my frustrations out. I wonder how much direct social action good be taken for wide-spread benefit if the possibility of such action weren’t derailed by conspiratorial thinking. One of the great ironies of prison conspiracy theorists that kept me amused, however, is that pretty much everybody in federal prison knows somebody there who has been convicted of a conspiracy charge of one sort or another; it’s pretty much unavoidable. There is a kind of beautiful scorched-earth logic that operates here. Of course you are going to believe in conspiracies if you have been participating in them and/or are close to those involved in them. Yet if you ask pretty much anybody convicted of conspiracy whether they actually conspired, they will utterly deny it. In my experience, conspiracy charges are among the most denied charges among inmates. Still, that leads a kind of credence to conspiratorial thinking in general; after all, the whole point of a conspiracy is for the conspirators to deny that it exists. It beautifully circular reasoning, both self-reinforcing and self-denying at the same time. There is also the wonderful little bit of logic that ignored this potential bit of evidence: If conspiracies work so well, then why are so many of us in prison for it? Is it that the good conspirators remain free and the bad ones get caught? Moreover, with the emphasis that inmates put on worrying about prison snitches, how well can any secret remain hidden? I can write all this here, but it really wasn’t something to be argued with in the context of the lock-up. Just let it go, and you life will be far easier. Just hearing it is exhausting enough. Trying to combat it is utter folly, as the next limerick suggests (Hey! Two for one limericks on this post!):
Do you want me to moan and look weary? Then start spouting conspiracy theory. When you toss evidence, Like trash, over the fence, It's just plain that you see things more clearly.
I wasn’t completely alone in my weary bemusement, however. Luckily, my buddy Skateboard, who was an attorney in his previous life, also found the constant wave of conspiracy both exasperating and amusing. Just at random I would sometimes ask him, “Skateboard, do you know who is responsible for X random thing happening?”
“No,” he reply.
“The gubmint,” I would blandly answer. It always got a laugh. If he tried at all to resist, I would tell him, “If it’s not the gubmint, it’s the secret gubmint.” It was a nice running joke for us. Eventually, Skateboard found the words “secret” and “government” printing next to each other in a magazine headline. He cut them out, denuding them from their context, at taped them to my locker. I just kept them there. Why not just acknowledge the air I was breathing?
The funny thing is that his joke “paid off” in some weird ways. One day I was standing by my locker talking to another inmate and he spied the “secret government” cut out on display. He looked at it, then looked at me. “You know about that?” he asked. I just nodded once, virtually imperceptibly. He looked back at me, and nodded sagely twice. After that we had a real bond.
So remember, if you want to fit it, subtly signal your belief in the secret gubmint.