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.