Rule By Secrecy

I must say, I am quite the hypocrite when it comes to conspiracy theories. I usually laugh them off as the ideas of paranoid lunatics who can't understand facts, and yet I do just as little research and claim to be "above it all." I don't think George Bush had anything to do with the attacks on September 11, but all I have to back me up is some Loose Change debunking and popular opinion on my side- how can I claim that I have any more knowledge of the attacks than a 9/11 truther? One might wonder, then, what I'm doing with a conspiracy theory book on my backlog- Rule By Secrecy by Jim Marrs. The truth is, while I don't put much stock into them, I'm still at least interested in these ideas from an entertainment standpoint. I've seen plenty of made-for-TV documentaries ranging from aliens to JFK's assassination, and while they haven't really made me a believer, they're damn good at giving me the heebie-jeebies. So when on a trip to Barnes and Noble years ago I happened upon a "fringe science" shelf I had never known existed, I figured "what the heck" and bought the first book that interested me. Attempting to read Rule By Secrecy from an entertainment standpoint, I don't think I got more than 50 pages in, and put it down to remain untouched until roughly a week ago, when I picked it up with the intent of finishing it. I tried to keep an open mind this time as well- like Loose Change, the statements in Rule By Secrecy might not be entirely factual, but I shouldn't let a few miscalculations make me entirely discredit Mr. Marrs. Unfortunately, I also noticed that Marrs was the author of a book called Alien Agenda, leading me to believe that he's just an across-the-board conspiracy theorist and not someone completely devoted to this one subject. The subject tackled in Rule By Secrecy is, obviously, secret societies and their influence on history. The first 200 pages or so dealt with exposing some recent secret societies- Skull and Bones, the CFR, the Bilderbergers, etc., and how they impacted the last 300 years of world history. I admit that this was the portion of the book I was most ready to receive, as it doesn't seem to me like a huge jump in logic that our world leaders might have some ulterior motives, which Marrs used to explain plenty-presidential assassinations, quagmires like Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, the French Revolution, even the rise of Hitler. While I tried to keep my skepticism in check, Marrs didn't really have me convinced- perhaps a few of these were orchestrated by some sort of secret society, but nearly every major historic event? Really? Maybe if Marrs had just tackled some of the ones he had more evidence for I'd be willing to listen. Anyway, the next 150 pages or so covered stuff I won't bore you with- Knights Templar, Illuminati, Jesus had kids, yadda yadda yadda. Nothing you haven't heard before with all the Da Vinci Code hype from in the past 5 years (although I should note that Rule By Secrecy came out first, so Marrs wasn't just cashing in on the trend). This information, while I had heard most of it before, was still pretty interesting, but it seemed like there was a disconnect here- the recent secret societies of the first half of the book seemed mainly concerned with political power and establishing a New World Order, while the older ones were much more focused on the secrets of religion. I kind of hoped that Marrs would explain this change in the last 50 pages, but instead he went off on a wild tangent that I did not see coming in the slightest. If you thought the whole "Jesus' bloodline is still alive today" theory was out there, then good luck swallowing this one. I won't spoiler his idea, as I don't believe it's some common conspiracy theory that everyone's heard of before, but also due to the fact that without reading the rest of the book it is much easier to discredit Marrs and not give him the benefit of the doubt. The craziest thing about this is, he backs it up. I have to hand it to Marrs on this one- while the idea is on the same level as creationism, he provides a litany of examples that support his idea that as far as I know haven't been disproved. It's still hard to take him too seriously, even when he admits that it's just a theory and might eventually be explained away, mostly because he's not really using the scientific method- the hypothesis is something that can't be tested with current technology. And so I come away from Marrs' book with mixed results. There may be a few historic events that I now view in a different light, but I'm just not ready to buy the entire history of man being the product of secret societies. Sorry, dude. On a lighter note, I was surprised to see that on page 307, while discussing a possible trans-Atlantic trip by the Knights Templar in the early 1300s, Marrs cites our very own Westford Knight as "compelling evidence" of their landing in New England. It's pretty cool to see your own small town referenced in such a way. Well, that completes one more book, and it might be time to get a few video games out of the way.