Reading some of the more off-the-wall comments about
yesterday's tragedy, I was reminded of Richard Gid Powers'
comments in the introduction to Daniel Patrick
Moynihan's book Secrecy:
As the original political intent behind the search for
government secrets slipped from memory, what survived of the
politically rooted plot conventions might be called
post-modern secrecy mongering. Balzac said that the
fundamental principle of popular writing is that
behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Postmodern
popular culture holds that behind every great political
career lies a great scandal -- a formula that provides the
catharsis of discrediting the powerful, thereby vicariously
empowering everyone else.
. . .
Postmodern secrecy mongering is part of what might be called
postmodern paranoia, an aesthetic preference for
"alternative" modes of thought that leads to a playful
interest in conspiracy theories about government secrecy
just for the hell of it.
. . .
The history of secrecy has finally reached a point where
people choose to believe in conspiracy theories -- and even
concoct their own -- to satisfy aesthetic criteria, to purge
themselves of personal demons, or just to have something to
think and talk about.