is this the golden age of conspiracy theories?
Stop me if you’ve heard any of this before. The government is plotting to institute a New World Order and every war, terrorist act, and a case of the sniffles anywhere in the world is just a carefully planned step in their quest to rule this planet and use its people as a workforce, which is why they distract us with meaningless celebrity news and human interest stories in the media, to keep us from talking about their crimes and conquests and sinister plots. Oh you’ve heard that too? Really? Well no wonder. Today, thanks to the web, we’re living in what I could only describe as the golden age of conspiracy theories. We have hundreds of them customized for any political leaning, religious belief, spiritual mood, and national affiliation, just waiting to be discovered on some dark alley of the internet, being continually refined in more and more elaborate and wildly outlandish detail.
Now, to be fair, there are very real plots and cover-ups which were eventually exposed. Unfortunately for many conspiracy theorists, most of them were either somewhat simple and almost boring, involving bribes, public denial of alarming facts on the news, or hopelessly over-elaborate and destined to go off the rails if they ever got underway. In fact, the most sinister and successful conspiracies are of those by terrorist organizations so often ignored by New World Order enthusiasts, who take their cues from some version of the Taxil Hoax, and see them as nothing more than tools of evil governments, sinister reptilian overlords, or aliens who live on the dark side of the Moon, ready to launch an invasion. Some conspiracy theorists will quite literally see the signs of nefarious machinations in absolutely anything and everything for seemingly no reason. Just take a look at the SPLC’s list of today’s trendy conspiracy theories embraced by the far right and quite a few on the far left, albeit with their own partisan adjustments to the plot and the villains.
In the world of the ardent conspiracy theorist, government mistakes and corporate avarice are cast as shrewd and cunning moves by brilliant puppet masters in charge of anything everything, training their secret armies for the moment they’ll divide the world according to the agreements they’ve drawn up in secret meetings of the various lodges, think tanks, and conferences regularly held by secretive offshoots of their organization in posh hotels and Masonic temples. The most adamant proponents of bizarre conspiracies will even resort to what’s known as negative evidence, arguing that their inability to collect anything more than circumstantial concepts based on hearsay and trying to connect every dot even when those dots shouldn’t be connected, is actually a perfect demonstration of how good the cover ups are as well as how widespread the conspiracy really is. The notion that the news today focused on the superficial not because it’s being manipulated by the Illuminati or a government plot to distract its citizens from important events, but because their fellow citizens just don’t care, as disheartening as that is, never seems to enter their minds.
I can understand the desire to feel like a hero in a thriller, uncovering some complex international conspiracy, taking on The Man, and getting access to things marked off limits to many of us. But for every authorized and approved campaign to torture terrorist suspects in secret prisons, there are thousands of cover-ups of bribes for someone’s friend or campaign contributor, and for every secretive society which had any sway with anyone important or powerful, there are thousands of imposters. This fact alone should show that the vast majority of conspiracy theories out there simply wouldn’t work. They’d constantly interfere with each other in spectacularly disastrous ways and if there really is a secret society behind them all, we could ignore it as that of ambitious, but totally incompetent buffoons. Maybe, rather than connecting dots and looking for hidden meanings where we really don’t have to, we should default to greed or incompetence instead of picturing brilliant tacticians on the quest to carve up our planet and sell us all to the Grays of Zeta Riticuli as slaves.
[ illustration by Then One Art ]
If you haven’t met him already, may I present Richard C. Hoagland of EnterpriseMission.com. He’s got it all – ancient Egyptian secret societies, a 1950s viewmaster of “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet,” and HyperDimensional physics. “Freemasons run the country!” indeed.
There is an innate human need to be the first one “in the know”. This is very much the same reason so many are falling for woo peddlers. Any “knowledge” of something few others are in on is too tempting to the ego.
I am a natural flo kind of guy. That is to say if it looks like an Apple and Tastes like am Apple you can be safe asumming it is a real Apple and not an Egg or Leather Shoe no matter who tries to tell you otherwise. Most folks trying to convince the world the conspriacy theroy folks are just a bunch of Doom and Gloomers that have nothing to do but make up stories out of notheing andshould be discounted as nutts and crackpots. I say the ball is in your court to prove us theroy people WRONG and we will win everytime because you can not produce any evedince or we would see it before you and we would not be having this discuesion about conspriacies. There would be no consptiacy theroy if it were out in the open. Lets say for instance can you prove there is any GOLD left in Fort Knox. They won’t let anyone in to see. They won’t even let the Gov’t in for inventory. WHY? There now is a Gold Frindge around all American Flags displayed at all Gov’t buildings and Officies and Courts. Know why? Ever hear of ADMRIELTY LAW, and Meritime Law ? As you can tell by my bad spelling I am not a very Educated man but since my retiremrnt I have had lots of extra time to look behind the Curtains so to speak and they have everyone including you fooled into thinking everything is fine and their is really a Santa. Lookup JECKEL ISLAND-1910 and start from their. Then see what you can find out about JACOBE’S stone that sits under the Throne of the QUEEN of ENGLAND. Yeah, there are alot of dots to connect and if you do it right and are’nt done in buy the ” This Can’t Be ” factor you will belive because it all falls into place, fact arfer fact after fact. I must say that after many people questioned the gold frindge on the flag they started hideing it as best as posible when they could. Notice the next time you see the President or press sectary or any gov’t officael mskeing a statement to the press the flag behind them is folded in such a way as to hide the gold frindge. There is more to the free world of ours than meets mosts eyes. In fact this web-blog-site is being set forth by the members of the org’s that have theire own agendia’s in mind. The old saying you can fool some of the people some of the time never fit so well. I’ll be suprised if you let this post.
I say the ball is in your court to prove us theroy [sic] people WRONG and we will win everytime because you can not produce any evedince [sic]
Okay George, let’s lay off the caps lock there. Also, some paragraphs would’ve been really nice. But here’s the real problem with that assertion. You see, the conspiracy theorists are the ones making a claim, not the skeptics. Therefore, it’s up to you to produce evidence. It’s not the skeptics’ job to do your homework for you, nor are we supposed to go on cryptic, misspelled scavenger hunts. If you have something to say, say it. Hint dropping doesn’t give your point validity. Or substance for that matter.
Ben Franklin: “Three can keep a secret if two are dead.” That pretty much sums up most conspiracy theories right there.
The key in real, historical conspiracies is to keep things secret long enough for the plot to work. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln is a classic of this type. We know a great deal (now) about the conspiracy; but it was secret long enough for Booth to shoot Lincoln. The plot to kill Hitler falls into the same category, even though it failed; it was exposed after the attempt.
Most police ‘stings’ can also be considered conspiracies, and also are exposed once they’ve done their job; witness ABSCAM.
The most dangerous conspiracies are the ones sponsored by governments. Be it bombing Cambodia (hardly a secret to the bombees, but meant to be unknown to the American public) extra-ordinary renditions and torture, or just plain bribery, a great deal of damage can be done before the secrets get out.
Most of us love to be in on a secret. That’s the key to conspiracy theories. By accepting them, you’re part of the elite who knows ‘the truth’ as opposed to the unwashed masses who blindly accept the news as written. You’re an insider, or at least are privy to the same secrets. (This is how reporters are seduced into helping keep secrets; being ‘brought in’ with the understanding that they’ll keep quiet until things are over.)
And they can make for really great thrillers. But after the book is closed, or the end credits roll, we have to return to a reality where even the people in power who can sponsor really cool plots are terribly mundane and ordinary.
The most successful documented conspiracies that I know of would be the US scheme to seize Panama from Colombia and Lenin’s overthrow of Kerensky.
Potential candidates include the Kennedy assassinations and perhaps the post-9/11 coverup, though convincing documentation on any of these has yet to emerge. (No small thanks to the “truth” crusaders in each situation, surely infiltrated & provoked by agents of their respective conspiracies if such exist.)
Nobody has yet produced a coherent answer to my question about any given secret-controllers-of-the-world theory: why, if the Elders of Zion/Illuminati/Grays/whoever can order around all the visible power centers, do we have so much chaos and waste when in that case our planet ought more to resemble a well-run plantation?
why, if the Elders of Zion/Illuminati/Grays/whoever can order around all the visible power centers, do we have so much chaos and waste?
You know Pierce, that’s a question I’ve been asking since the third day of this blog…
Boy, George, that was a masterpiece! You would have gotten full marks from me, but you missed one crucial bit: you never mentioned you’d been threatened by the government. You can’t leave off a staple like that and expect to win.
However, there’s one that no one has ever explained to me yet, and that is, how does using spelling check lead to mind control?
why, if the Elders of Zion/Illuminati/Grays/whoever can order around all the visible power centers, do we have so much chaos and waste?
That’s simple, really. All the Secret Masters are vying for control. The battles between the multiple Illuminati generate the waste you see. Get Steve Jackson Games’ Illuminati card game for more details…