Nobody Is In Control

Nobody is in control. As America careens toward a 1930s economy and a 14th century Crusading foreign policy, nobody wants to believe that catastrophic events are simply guiding themselves without very much human intervention, and this fear of no control helps explain the numbers coming out of several recent polls from Scripps-Howard and Newsweek. One third of Americans now believe that everything is under the control of a small group of all-powerful men operating behind the scenes, pulling the strings of government and commerce. These same believers (33% of us) think that 9/11 was an inside job to throw the public off the track, and to open up foreign, mostly Arab lands to an expansion of their power. But our national tendency to look for shadowy explanations doesn’t stop there.

28% of us believe in witches, and 40% of us (46% of women) believe in ghosts. 61% of us believe in Satan, 59% believe in hell, 73% believe in miracles, and more than 50% believe in angels. The astrological community which makes up 20 % of our population believes that the stars have absolute control over our destiny. And finally, let’s not forget that 35% of us believe in UFOs and the power exerted over us by aliens. Which brings me to the field of science fiction, and the writer Alan Moore who once advised us that, “The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is far more frightening, nobody is in control.”