I think the issue is that people forget to account for the massive SCALE of human activity in their lives. We mostly only know a few hundred people in our circ

I think the issue is that people forget to account for the massive SCALE of human activity in their lives. We mostly only know a few hundred people in our circles, and for a lot of us, not a large precentage of that circle is criminal, or engaged in unethical/immoral behaviour. But when you scale things up - at massive quantities - you have to account for the illegal/immoral/unethical behaviour scaling up as well. It may be completely inconceivable that criminal behaviour occurs in circles of power - but when you are dealing with people who are involved in the lives of millions, upon millions - literally tens of millions of humans, or even hundreds of millions - criminality at scale starts to become a thing. And yes, a group of a few thousand no-good types can hide their activities in the realm of humans-at-scale. This has been proven time and again throughout history, and anyone who thinks 'its impossible for people to be that well organized' are fooling themselves. Humans are incredibly good at organizing themselves to get things done - nefarious or otherwise - and anyone thinking otherwise is just manifesting a form of personal anti-social neurosis. If its unreal to you that conspiracies could form at scale, you need to read more history and pay attention to how so many of our cultures and societies throughout the world have been constructed. Heck, even the American state began as a conspiracy that nobody could believe would result in anything much ..