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While I enjoy a good conspiracy theory, I don't indulge in them.
I also don't much tolerate the theorists either.
I will smile politely while they spew, occasionally grunting or nodding, but mostly I'm waiting for them to run down and talk to someone else for a while.
It has been so for me since I discovered Occam's Razor.
So, using the barometer of "the simplest explanation that fits all of the known facts is likely the truth."
The holocaust happened.
Lee Harvey Oswald, working alone, shot and killed president Kennedy.
The United States, in six separate missions, landed 12 men on the moon and returned them safely to earth.
The white cloud behind an airplane at high altitude is just the water vapor from the exhaust freezing.
All helicopters are black under the paint.
Every train full of armored vehicles is on a rail line that leads to or from a depot or training center.
Not every time US and Israeli interests align means that Israel controls Washington DC.
It's almost never "The Jews." Antisemitic conspiracy theories have their own section in many lists. I've covered USS Liberty before.
Near as I can tell, enthusiasts for such theories don't read history or pay much attention to politics.
Needlessly, let’s also assert that the earth is a spherical solid and birds are just small flying animals.
ReplyDeleteException to anon policy made for this excellent and far above average reply.
DeleteBruno Richard Hauptmann kidnapped and accidentally killed Charles Lindbergh Jr., and then extorted money from the Lindberghs on the promise of returning the child.
ReplyDeleteLizzie Borden took an axe and gave her parents eighty whacks.
Pearl Harbor happened because the US was complacent and overconfident, not because FDR secretly engineered it.
I love conspiracy theories because they give me ideas for roleplaying games :)
ReplyDeleteDaosus
The thing is, sometimes they are right! Domitian, the last of Suetonius' "Twelve Caesars," commented once that an emperor was always an unhappy man, because nobody believed in conspiracies against his life---until one of them succeeded. And Viktor Suvorov makes a very plausible case that Stalin was planning to jump Hitler, but Hitler twigged to what he was up to and struck first, knocking the Soviets badly off balance.
ReplyDeleteThere were a lot of conspiracies against Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Most of it was table talk in Southern-leaning households in Washington---but one of them was serious enough to succeed.
There's a distinct difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory.
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