da: The New York Times
Conspiratorial thinking has been a staple of American political discourse since the founding of the Republic. But lately the rhetoric of sinister plots and endangered liberty has reached new heights, or depths, whether it is Glenn Beck using a whiteboard to explain how the Progressive Era reforms of Theodore Roosevelt put the nation on to the path of totalitarianism, or Tea Party activists deploring the impending loss of constitutional liberty.Effective conspiracy theories depend, to a considerable extent, on the presence of actual dangers that seem to demand immediate and even extreme responses. As the dangers grow more familiar, the urgency fades. A good case study is the Fox television series “24.” First broadcast in the aftermath of 9/11, the show, with its tense air of moment-to-moment exigency, once reflected the psychology of its time. In those years it was a small step from legitimate fear of further attacks to imagined conspiracies planned at the pinnacles of power. When its hero, Jack Bauer, administered inventively brutal counterterrorism tactics, including torture, he was in effect punishing two sets of…