Conspiracy Theories

I've been hearing lots of conspiracy theories from people I know who are completely turned off by the political scene.  It's hard to blame them, and occasionally their theories even seem plausible.  Here are a few recent theories I've been hearing.

The presidential election is meaningless.  The battle between Obama and Romney's all for show.  The fix is in.  Some folks think the election's already been fixed for Obama; that no matter what the voters do, the Obama administration will cheat on the vote counts and claim victory.  With what knowledge I have of the voting process, that theory's hard for me to swallow, since I've not seen any feds around the process that's mostly controlled at the precinct level and the president is elected by the electoral college.

Another theory is that there's no difference between Obama and Romney.  All the arguments about Obama's socialist policies versus Romney's free market policies are window dressing - if Obama gets elected, we'll get more of the same of what we have had the last 4 years.  If Romney gets elected, he won't change anything.  Because the invisible big shots that pull the strings have rigged things to make sure no matter which guy gets elected, he'll be sure to do their bidding.  I'm not sure who exactly the big shots are that are pulling the strings, but there's a sort of chilling plausibility to this theory.

Some think the string-pullers behind the scenes are from places like Goldman Sachs.  They note that despite all the angry accusations against Wall Street for destroying the economy with those real estate derivitaves, not a single person responsible for that destruction has been named or prosecuted.  The only name I've heard who misappropriated investor funds is John Corzine, who is apparently just as bad as Bernie Madoff but doesn't go to jail because he is being protected by the Democrats.  He actually is a financier for Obama, so that theory is pretty true, but I can't say with any certainty that he has a great deal of influence on US policy.

I hear lots from Ron Pauliacs about the Federal Reserve.  Maybe Bernanke and the Fed Reserve board are the string-pullers.  The Fed definitely needs a lot more transparency, but I worry about giving control over their policies over to politicians.  But sometimes I wonder if we've already done so by allowing Obama to seat Bernanke and Geithner, who seem beholden to him.

A theory that worries me the most is the one where Obama has a plan to transform America into a Communist Dictatorship under the same tactics used by Chavez in Venezuela.  All he has to do is get his own supreme court judges seated, then issue more unilateral laws like he has with immigration, energy regulation, and the HHS mandate.  Once he has no court to stop him, who could stop him if in his second term he outlaws conservative talk radio and Fox News, jails prominent conservatives, and either appoints his own sycophants to the House and Senate or simply dissolves congress?

Most people would call that last theory crazy, that can't happen in America!  Why not?  If it can happen in places like Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, China, El Salvador, Korea, etc., why couldn't it happen here?

Personally I think the pollsters are purposely over-sampling Democrats to give the Obama campaign the results they are demanding (based on a story about Gallup, it seems to lend credence to that last theory).  But I actually think there's a decent chance that Romney will win in a landslide, as long as the Obama campaign can be stopped from cheating.

So to put the conspiracists to rest, these things need to happen:

1. Romney has to win in a clear landslide
2. Obama leaves office quietly and graciously
3. Romney actually implements positive policy changes as promised

I hold out hope for number 1 and 2, but can't be sure whether we'll see #3.