According to PPP, 35% of the country thinks either that President Obama was not born in America (23%), and / or that George W. Bush had something to do with the 9/11 attacks (14%). My favorite line in their press release is "a very troubled 2% of the population buys into both of those conspiracy theories." Ha!
On the bipartisan front, 25% of Democrats think that Bush was involved in the 9/11 attacks, while 42% of Republicans think that Obama was not born in the United States.
The idea that the left and the right are both inhabited by a "fringe" is a favority mainsteam trope, which PPP plays off of, though it does note that, "It's hard to call a third of the country a fringe." Nonetheless, the "fringe" characterization is a long-standing one, and it's always a handy way to avoid discussing the substance of any sort of criticism from the left. One simply equates the criticism with crazy ranting from the right, and then smiles a knowing "we're all above such foolishness" smile.
But who's to say that the "center", such as it is, is not similarly beset with ludicrous counter-factual beliefs, even though they may not take the same conspiricist forms? In fact, there is substantial evidence that this is the case, and the centrist counterfactual beliefs are far more injurious to the health and welfare of the republic than either the Birthers or the 9/11 Truthers. Here a sampling of such centrist myths, which, to my knowledge, no one has ever thought to poll.
(A) We can provide universal health care, like all other advanced industrial nations, and cut costs to 12% of GDP or less, like all other advanced industrial nations, while still allowing insurance companies to skim 30% off the top.
(B) We can militarily subdue Afghanistan with enough troops and machismo, even though no one in history has ever done this before.
(C) We can successfully deal with global warming without even trying to reduce atmospheric carbon to 350 ppm, which is what the world's scientists say is required.
(D) We can fix the financial system without actually fixing the financial system, simply by trusting the folks who helped bring us the meltdown in the first place.
(E) Money is speech.
(F) Corporations are people, with all the Constitutional rights that entails.
(G) Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on weapon systems that don't work, and/or aren't designed to fight enemies that actual exist means you are "strong on defense," even if you did everything human possible to avoid serving in a war zone when your country called. Questioning the wisdom of doing so makes you "weak on defense", even if you are a war hero.
There are literally dozens and dozen of such crazy beliefs that enjoy strong "centrist" support, at least in Versailles, if not always in America. But does anyone ever thing of them as evidence of some sort of dysfunction? Yet, that surely is precisely what it is--evidence of a deeply dysfunctional political system.
Which brings us back to the issue of the conspiracist form of the questions that PPP asked about. In PPP's blog post that Chris pointed to, they went on to note:
When more than a third of the population either thinks that the current President doesn't legitimately hold the office or that a former President was attacking the country from within for political gain it shows a pretty remarkable lack of trust in our leaders.
But isn't that distrust very well earned? Consider:
We have suffered nearly 40 years of wage stagnation.
This is the first generation of Americans coming into its own that will be worse off economically than its parents--and will not live as long, either.
We face catastrophic problems with our financial system, our wider economic system, and our health "system", as well as the prospect of global catastrophe, due to global warming.
Indeed, when was the last time that our political elites actually helped us to solve a major social, economic, or political problem?
One might count Clinton and the Congress eliminating the deficit in the late 1990s, except for the fact that Bush and almost exactly the same Congress immediately recreated the deficit within a year of taking over from Clinton. Some would like to count "winning" the Cold War--but there's no real evidence we actually won it: the Soviets merely lost it first.
Political elites have done very well for themselves over the past 40 years, but America as a whole has not. So, broad distrust of our political leaders has been very well earned, indeed.
Conspiracism is a complex phenomena, but in addition to the key characteristics described in the Political Research Associates report, "Toxic to Democracy: Conspiracy Theories, Demonization, & Scapegoating", two additional things can be said about it: First, it bespeaks a distrust of political motives by perceived elites (whether they are real or not), and a corresponding sense of helplessness by those who identify themselves with "the people." Second, it is intellectually simplistic, explaining adverse circumstances in terms of simplistic evil-doing by a small cabal. Conspiracist beliefs tend to flourish where sophisticated criticism fails, for whatever reason.
As a result of these central facts, elites may well distrust one another, and engage in conspiracist fantasies about one another--particularly elites that represent different nations, religions or ethnicities. Elites may even fantasize the very existence of so-called "shadow elites" when mass phenomena seems baffling to them--such was the genesis of most modern conspiracism not directly related to anti-Semitism, in the form of conspiracist explanations for the French Revolution, centered on the defunct Bavarian Illuminati, and various other groups, such as the Freemasons and the Rosecrucians.
The genesis of rightwing conspiracism is fairly straightforward. Conservatism in general is inherently incapable of complex critical discourse--for one thing, conservatives routinely distrust critical reason, as it leads to questioning authoritites--and thus the progression from perceived threat to conspiracist discourse is generally a rather swift one. But leftwing conspiracism does not naturally arise where there is a strong progressive/critical tradition in place, and thus leftwing conspiracism tends to flourish in part as a result of successful rightwing repression.
In contrast, what we see with political elites today can be conceived in terms of Kevin Philips' observations (in Wealth and Democracy) about the rise of reactionary politics in the aftermath of unexpected imperial defeat at the peak of imperial power. As Philips describes it, prior to this defeat (for us, Vietnam) the economic system worked for the betterment of all, but afterwards its benefits only extended to a relatively small elite. This has clearly been the case for America since the 1970s.
So long as the masses are effectively excluded from shaping political discourse, elites may develop models of economic policy, as well as a wide range of other models and narratives, which don't actually get the job done, but also never have to face sustained criticism from those whom they fail. This is the situation that gives rise to the elite, centrist lies listed toward the beginning of this post. It is as isolated from sound fact-checking as any conspiracy nut you might care to point out.
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