I do not believe there are captured aliens being interrogated for their technological expertise at Area 51 - or that aliens have infiltrated our ranks and are controlling the world, through the Jews. I do not find it likely that Dick Cheney being a 33rd Degree Freemason (which he is, if I recall correctly) means the Bush administration was the cornerstone of a centuries-old Weishauptian plot to destroy the governments of the world. I do not hand-exchange cryptographic ciphers with my good friends, scan my potted plants for listening devices, look over my shoulder for helicopters, or wear pointy foil hats to block out the evil alien mind rays (although that's partly because I really doubt they'd be effective).

I'm not one of *those* people. But the derision in the term "conspiracy theorist" has really got to go. You slap that label on crazy people and suddenly anyone who can fit the label is crazy. Well sorry, folks, that's not how logic works. Just because there are brown dogs doesn't mean all dogs are brown. Go back to school if you can't understand that.

A conspiracy is a plan that you keep a secret. Two or more people setting out to do something that will benefit them, and not telling everyone else. Have we really become so intellectually inept that we now believe attributing this behaviour to human beings is unrealistic? Or is it simply that we assume that when an oil company or a telecom or a media corporation or the NSA or Blackwater make secret plans to benefit themselves, they will *of course* pay careful ethical attention to the boundaries of common morality and the needs of ordinary citizens everywhere before doing so?

*Of course* an oil company wouldn't conspire to ridicule (or kill) the inventors of alternative energy technologies. Why, that would be immoral! Sure, alternative energy would mean the loss of trillions of dollars to them, but they want a healthy Earth for their children as much as we do! *Of course* the government of the United States wouldn't conspire to kill a tiny percentage of its own people in the name of securing echelons of greater power and expanding the empire that keeps the bulk of its populous safe and well fed. That too would be immoral! JTF2 with boots on the ground in 2000? Well, that must have been for a fucking poker game with the Taliban, 'cause I can tell you what they definitely were *not* doing, and that's preparing for an invasion they already knew was going to happen.

Human beings kill their own parents for life insurance payouts. They rape their daughters in front of webcams to make friends with other sick people and purge their deviant sexual urges. People do bad things very readily for almost any reason at all. We all know that, and that's why we have software firewalls, put our hand over the pad when we type in our PIN, and have witnesses sign our contracts with us. We have KEYS for fuck's sake! Most of us don't trust the people we've lived next door to for fifteen years not to go into our houses and steal our televisions. So I want to know, when and how did it become cool and trendy to implicitly trust large, powerful, strongly motivated groups of complete strangers with your very way of life? When did it become "crazy" to do otherwise? And how, people, how did you get so motherfucking stupid?

 

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