This is not a 'basic theme' of conspiracy theory. As I see it conspiracy theories attempt to expose the parapolitical workings of the state and try to get people to work together to counter these dangerous trends. In fact, the principal 'conspiracy theory' of our day, that which posits that the state was complicit in 9-11 has brought tens of thousands of working people *together* who share a common perspective on the devious workings of the corporate state and are fashioning strategies to oppose it. I don't see anyone 'flailing against' a system - I do see many people actively deconstructing the lies of our times and forging ahead with a pessimism of the mind and optimism of the will, that we can fight the system.
You have also dismissed an important aspect of the Manchurian Candidate, that of mind control and its significance for the US national security state. (Read on at http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/05/far04017.html):
.....When you peek beneath the Manchurian Candidate’s fascinating plotline, however, you learn that it is not "just a movie," but is based upon actual cases of government-sponsored brainwashing, torture, Nazi collaboration, bizarre interrogation tactics, biological warfare and cover-ups.
And though such an assessment sounds like paranoid lunacy, a quick study of CIA operations like MK-ULTRA (mind control), Operation ARTICHOKE (extreme interrogation) and Operation Paperclip (the Nazis’ role in exporting both), along with their connection to the murder of Dr. Frank Olson, reveals otherwise.
In 1950, the U.S. government established the first program to develop human mind control techniques. Known under a variety of codenames (most notably MK-ULTRA) throughout its 23 year history, this program was designed to exert such control, according to declassified documents, that an individual would do another's bidding, "against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature such as self-preservation." 25 years later, the Rockefeller Commission uncovered CIA plans for "programmed assassins" and said that MK-ULTRA led to American citizens being drugged, kidnapped and tortured on American soil. [lisatrust.bogie.nl]
In 1975, as this information was exposed, the government paid $750,000 restitution to Army biochemist Dr. Frank Olson's family, after admitting the CIA slipped Dr. Olson LSD days before his 1953 fall from a New York City building.
When the Ford administration finally came clean, they promised they'd revealed everything. Yet key officials, including White House aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, pushed to continue to conceal information.
"The family has learned that the Ford administration was keeping information from the family," the Baltimore Sun reported in 2002. "Among those who advocated keeping quiet were Dick Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the vice president and defense secretary, the Olsons learned from memos and other papers received last year from the Gerald R. Ford Library." [FrankOlsonProject.org]
Operation ARTICHOKE, a CIA program that preceded MK-ULTRA, involved the development of "special and extreme methods of interrogation," according to declassified documents given to the family by the late CIA Director William Colby.
The chief architects of the program were also "very concerned with the problem of disposing of ‘blown agents’ and with finding a way to produce amnesia in operatives who had seen too much and could no longer be relied upon."
By the time Dr. Olson’s family uncovered the truth about Olson’s death, the role Operation ARTICHOKE played became clear. "In these documents the overall context for Frank Olson’s death is related not to the infamous MK-ULTRA program for mind and behavior control, as is generally assumed," the family reported. "The Colby documents locate Olson’s death in the context of a CIA operation called ARTICHOKE." [FrankOlsonProject.org]
Both MK-ULTRA and ARTICHOKE grew out of "Operation Paperclip," in which Nazi scientists were smuggled into the U.S. to provide the government with information on everything from rocket science to germ warfare to torture and interrogation techniques.
This "assimilation of Nazis into the U.S. government," the National Catholic Reporter explained, also spawned the now common practice of labeling people of conscience "enemies of the state." [Findarticles.com]
A German documentary on Operation ARTICHOKE put it succinctly: "The search for the circumstances surrounding the mysterious death of Dr. Frank Olson begins in 1945, with the liberation of the concentration camp at Dachau, Germany." [FrankOlsonProject.org]
In his book, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, author John Marks devoted an entire chapter to Dr. Frank Olson, describing how Olson felt the CIA was "out to get him." [DrugLibrary.org]