Many people who know me are fond of referring to me as a conspiracy theorist. I don't know who’s paying them to say those things about me, but whoever it is needs to be on notice that A: It just isn't so, and B:They'll never stop the truth from coming out.
Conspiracy theorists have gotten a bad name in the last ten years or so (coincidence? You be the judge.) In the post X-files world, the phrase has become more or less synonymous with UFO enthusiasts and other eccentrics. Do you think that conspiracy theories are confined to believers in wild, unsubstantiated claims of alien abduction, paranormal activity, secret human cloning experiments, freemasonry and the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard? Think again, bucko.
Conspiracy
n. pl. con·spir·a·cies
1. An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
2. A group of conspirators.
3. Law. An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.
Do you believe that Watergate really happened? How about the Iran-Contra Affair? The Lewinsky Scandal?Do you believe that tobacco companies knew of the dangers of tobacco for fifty years and engaged in a concerted public relations strategy to conceal said dangers from the public? Do you believe that the laws governing the trajectories of objects in motion are consistent throughout known space?
If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, then congratulations. You , my friend, are a bona fide conspiracy theorist. If, on the other hand, you think that widespread reporting of these and other stories relating to the supposed efforts of powerful parties to engage in unethical and/or illegal practices and to conceal said practices from the public is nothing more than a bunch of hype promoted by the mainstream media to advance their own liberal agenda, then you are also a conspiracy theorist. Here’s your tinfoil hat, you moonbat.
Now if I were anywhere near as paranoid as people say I am when I’m not around, I might take all this as evidence that conspiracy theorists are everywhere, all around us, even in the highest positions of power and influence, plotting and scheming all the time to make us their hapless pawns. But of course that would be crazy talk. And that is not what I’m about. I’m all about the sane talk.
Like all good-hearted, right-thinking Americans who know what’s good for them, I am certain that there are no such thing as conspiracies. The problem with conspiracy theorists is that they believe that things are connected somehow, whereas I know that they are not. Nothing is connected to anything.
It is in this spirit that I bring you a little feature I like to call Complete Coincidence Theatre, in which I present two stories that might appear to be related to certain crazy people viewing them through their special X-Ray Conspira-vision Crazy Glasses, but in fact have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. Won’t you join me?
Tomorrow:Complete Coincidence Theatre, Episode 1!
Posted by flamingbanjo at February 22, 2005 06:38 PMYou know it baby! Front-row seat - 'natch.
Posted by: John Galt at March 3, 2005 01:37 PM