Throughout history there have been episodes in which groups of people have suddenly been overcome by irresistible urges. There were, for example, the dancing mania of Germany in the 14th century and the laughing mania in the 1960s in which schoolgirls were overwhelmed by uncontrollable laughter followed by anxiety that lasted for weeks on end.
There have also been crazes like the Tulip craze of the 16th century, six day bicycle races, the radium craze of the early 20th century, and the fad of starting utopian communities in the 19th century.
Today we seem to be in the midst of our very own mania and it involves conspiracies everywhere. A conspiracy is when two or more people plan in secret to do something, usually something illegal or harmful. When the conspiracy exists, it’s a crime or at least a scandal. When it doesn’t exist, it’s a conspiracy theory. We seem to have a bumper crop of both today. I’m no longer sure how one would go about distinguishing a conspiracy that hasn’t been uncovered yet from a conspiracy theory.
Is Trump’s collusion with Russia a conspiracy by Trump, a conspiracy theory, or a hoax? Was there, has there been, or is there a conspiracy to keep Bernie Sanders from becoming the Democratic Party’s candidate for president? Was Barack Obama born in the United States? Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide? Anti-vaccination?
Some blame Donald Trump. I blame the Internet and the generally lamentable state of education..
No wonder people believe in conspiracies, given that the believe in the Bible’s talking snakes and donkeys, resurrection, assumptions, water that is turned to wine, wine to water, crackers into human flesh, unicorns (in nine verses), eternally burning bushes, faith healing, and so on. Though they seem to skip over the biggest clear conspiracy in the Bible, in which God conspires with Satan to persecute Job and kill all his children, slaves and livestock.
Well, people conspire commonly, and ordinarily. When conspiracy is clothed in secrecy it becomes interesting.
Every conjecture is a theory until proven. So I don’t find a problem with conspiracy theories in general.
I would say recently that a general lack of trust in authority is the root cause, and that is deserved.
The Boy Who Cried Wolf, first for fun then for real, we shall know soon enough.
“we shall know”
Not too sure about that.
Take a poll, did O..J. really do it?
Did Oswald act alone?
Were the twin towers actually imploded?
Did anyone actually land on the moon?
Did Roosevelt enable Pearl Harbor?
Gulf of Ton-kin, false flag?
It’s really common in foreign policy as well – “false flag†theories abound.
You make a good point, GS. Conspiracy theories have been around for a long time. But they don’t seem to be going away.
We can now be quite confident that the Rosenbergs were not framed, that Alger Hiss actually was a Russian agent, and that none of the many, many weird hypotheses about Amelia Earhart were actually true but people keep persisting in them. That means not only that they don’t go away but that they’re mounting up.
It’s one thing to wonder about what really happened to Amelia Earhart, or believe the JFK assassination was a conspiracy – it’s quite another to believe the earth is flat, that the world elites are actually lizard people, and the Denver International Airport is a cover for a FEMA death camp.
Maybe the difference is that conspiracy theories today are just more stupid than they used to be.
I don’t see much difference between thinking that Amelia Earhart was sent to spy on the Japanese or that JFK was killed by a CIA conspiracy and thinking the Denver International Airport is a cover for a FEMA death camp.
Stupid? Maybe. I’ve read that some 20,000 Americans polled believe they have been abducted by aliens, some more than once. A very large number have seen things in the sky they cannot explain. Many report seeing ghosts. people I know well have described UFO sightings to me with amazement. They don’t claim aliens, they just know they’ve seen something that cannot be.
The best that I can come up with is that there are things we just do not know, because we perceive the world within the limitation of our sensory organs. Dogs hear what I cannot, birds see what I cannot, who can tell what a fish’s world appears as through lateral lines.
There may be things quite natural we are barely equipped to sense.
Even as I sense this has wandered onto the wrong blog.
To be a bit more specific then the internet; the key factor is the exponential decreasing cost to storing and transmitting information.
Before the printing press – one had to be very wealthy to hire an educated person to preserve and spread an idea by writing it down. So only the most worthy knowledge circulated.
Now your tweets are forever; and takes 1ns before everyone around the world sees them — there is no cost to spreading useless info.
Then combine with the fact the human mind is relatively irrational — tendencies to see patterns out of randomness; low threshold to trigger flight or fight reactions; and desire for belonging; and it’s not surprising the results.
I like COs general explanation. To that I would add that there are people now who get paid to keep those conspiracies alive. From family I get to see old conspiracies get recirculated that I thought were dead years ago, so there is a zombie aspect to some of these conspiracies.
My initial thought was to scoff at Andy’s idea the they are more stupid today, but then I remembered the guy on Fox TV spreading the conspiracy that there are lesbians with pink guns living in the subways of major cities catching people and killing them or forcibly converting them to be gay. Then to gets worse when the guy who spread that was cited as a credible witness for another less bizarre conspiracy. So, they really can be more stupid, but if it comes from the correct source, then people believe it.
Steve
Always apply Occam’s razor to any conspiracy theory and you’ll rarely go wrong. The people I have trouble with are those going along with the scam or enabling it for their own benefit. Thus Slender Man, Area 51, Scientology, Evil Clowns in daycares, the Bilderbergs, and so much more.
We interrupt this brandy and cigars discussion of conspiracy theories to bring you cold hard fact.
The sophisticated whistleblower, who also happens to traffic in hearsay, is required by law to file a form with their patriotic observations identifying all individuals they had contact with prior to the filing. Failure to do so is a felony. Unfortunately, the whistleblower did no such thing. The ICIG reports he had no idea there were the contacts with Team Schiff. I’m sure it will be reported widely in the media (Snicker).
Not to worry friends, the Dems, right on que, have produced another whistleblower………. No word on whether applications are still being accepted for future whistleblowers.
You just couldn’t even make this shit up.
So now it’s being reported that the whistleblower was not just a registered Democrat, not damning by itself, but, well, you see, he/she formerly worked for one of the 2020 Dem candidates. Now given that our intrepid whistleblower has been working for the CIA, that probably takes us back a number of years.
Bernie? Nah, too recent. Lizzy? Perhaps. Qui bono. Swallwell? Sorry, brain cramp.
Hmmm. Who really needs a get out of jail card? Can you say Joe Biden? I think that might be a bingo! Wait, is that a conspiracy theory?
When people wish to discredit evidence or redirect misdeeds away from themselves, call anything or anyone who who gets in their way as being part of a conspiracy. It’s a proven tactic that has been a helpful tool to detour around avenues often leading to the truth.
With a really good conspiracy, the people involved leave little evidence, and the best conspiracies are those with no evidence. Thus, less evidence of a conspiracy makes it more likely.
This is the first thing learned in Conspiracy Theory 101.
Conspiracies need to be marginally in the realm of possibility. Believing the earth is flat or there are lizard people walking among us is altogether different.
Drew,
The provenance and background of the whistleblower is becoming less as less relevant as the administration continues to publically admit that yes, it has been purposely going after Joe Biden with foreign governments.
So, a candidate and his/her family cannot be investigated. I bet Blagojevich wishes he had thought of this defense.
“So, a candidate and his/her family cannot be investigated.”
Sophistry. No one has said Biden can’t be investigated, assuming there is a legitimate basis for it.
Asking highly corrupt foreign governments with no tradition of following the rule of law to “investigate” the Bidens – and no one else – as a personal ask from the President is not on the same planet as US federal authorities investigating and then prosecuting Blagojevich.
Want to investigate the Biden’s legitimately? Then turn over whatever evidence exists to the proper federal authorities and let the process work out as it is supposed to instead of handing it over to your personal lawyer and up-classifying all the documents to avoid scrutiny.
Why is it that Biden is the only person Trump asks other governments to investigate? Why is Trump personally involved in asking? As I said when this first started, if there is evidence that Trump has been asking other governments to investigate specific individuals, or we have evidence of prior presidents asking that of foreign leaders, that might put things in a different light. We all know that isn’t going to happen.
Steve
I think I get it now. A president openly trying to have a rival party’s potential candidate where there is probable cause of a crime is wrong, but a president who allows his intelligence agencies to ensure his rival party’s candidate from being elected using bogus information is ok.
Got it. I am going to go out on a limb here. It is also OK for that same president’s intelligence agencies to overthrow his successor using bogus information.
Oh wait, it was not bogus information. There being no evidence that Carter Page was an international spy is proof that he was an international spy.
“I think I get it now.”
Nope, but I cant tell if is because you are too F&ing stupid or just dont want to. Probably the latter. If a POTUS asks a foreign leader to look into their country that is legitimate. If a POTUS asks a POTUS to look only at his leading political rival, there is no believable legitimate reason. If a POTUS has a record as a campaigner against corruption and asks about a single individual, it might be legit. However, remember this is the POTUS who was OK with Mohammed Bone Saws killing someone as long as we could sell them arms. This is not a president who has been worried about corruption.
“but a president who allows his intelligence agencies to ensure his rival party’s candidate from being elected using bogus information is ok.”
Obama was calling foreign presidents to help stop Trump? Never saw that. Have any citations? (If this conspiracy, so appropriate that you would bring up a conspiracy on this post, was intended to keep Trump from being elected, why weren’t they releasing the information before the election? Trump has been in office along with his DOJ for almost 3 years. Why arent they finding anything? Oh, I know. Trump is going to release that FISA thing any day now. LOL.)
Steve
Calling out conspiracy theories are usually a subjective exercise, especially when derived from positions with political implications. However, it’s mockery to bring “lizard people†into the discussion. As for “flat earth†references, it’s going back to the days when theocracy ruled the dictates of science. Ironically, green house gases being pushed as the culprit of global warming, is reminiscent of that bygone era of flat earth believers.J
Steve, even if FISA irregularities were documented, if there was malfeasance shown on the part of multiple government and intelligence agencies, I truly think you would find a way around such discovery to royally dispute it. You call people questioning the allegations against Trump as being blinded. But, perhaps it is you who willfully sees only that which supports your political beliefs, countering what appears to be close familiar republican roots.
…..I’ll extend the above comments by saying if something arises in the Trump Presidency that is as egregious as any action taken by President Obama – assuring more flexibility to Putin once re-elected; digging up dirt on a president opponent/elect (via help from the Kremlin and the Russian dossier, Australia, Italy, UK, Ukraine); invoking presidential privilege as was done in the F & F saga; using the IRS to target groups supporting your opponents; deep-sixing an FBI investigation dealing with foreign drug trafficking because it might jeopardize a deal with Iran; being called the least transparent president by news media; having the highest whistleblowers convictions of any presidency; having a letter signed by a majority of IGs in the country criticizing their access to requested documents; having 25 military analysts sign a letter asserting their information is being subverted to fit the narrative the WH wanted the people to know – I will totally reverse my support of the current president.