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Conspiracy has a legal definition. People are prosecuted for it quite frequently. "An agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with

Conspiracy has a legal definition. People are prosecuted for it quite frequently. "An agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal."[1] If the wars in the middle east, (I would say Iraq moreso than Afghanistan, as at least Afghanistan actually harbored Al Qaeda/Taliban), don't count as a textbook definition of conspiracy, I'm afraid nothing does. Indeed, I would even disagree with the statement about the DoS (a subsection of the government), their entire job is supposed to be diplomacy, not war, thats what DoD is for. This is why I strongly disagree with the now common knowledge among those in the realm, that intelligence agencies embed and use DoS as cover so frequently, as it undermines diplomatic initiatives heavily. As for dismissing something as "something Britta said on community", it isn't even worth addressing. "What happened on 9/11 is that we didn't have a strategy, we didn't have bipartisan agreement, we didn't have American understanding of it, and we had instead a policy coup in this country, a coup, a policy coup. Some hard-nose people took over the direction of American policy and they never bothered to inform the rest of us. Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, if you're an American you ought to be concerned about the strategy of the United States in this region. What is our aim? What is our purpose? Why are we there? Why are Americans dying in this region? That is the issue." - General Wesley Clark [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/conspiracy https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/conspiracy

UncleMeat 6y ago
Conspiracy has a legal definition. "Conspiracy theory" has a different meaning. It is the sort of theory that resists evidence, since any evidence that opposes the theory is instead proof of the conspiracy. It is a form of magical thinking.
- arminiusreturns 6y ago
  No, thats just the definition you want to apply in order to dismiss anything that makes you uncomfortable or disagree with. Like I've said before the history of the world is a history of conspiracy, and often the people who were calling out those things were labelled as "conspiracy theorist" as basically a form of ad hominem attack. I can't tell you how often I was talking about the NSA et al prior to Snowden, but was called the same thing. Then almost all of those people now bend over backwards to say stuff like "well, we all knew it, why are you surprised?" etc, but it's just dismissing the fact that many conspiracy theories have truth to them. Like I said, everyone is a conspiracy theorist, they just want to get to pick and choose which ones they like. Russiagate is a conspiracy theory that the mainstream media and many people pushed for 4 years, for example. We literally just had a "billionare" pedophile sex-trafficker assassinated in one of the most secure prisons in the world, with connections and likely blackmail material on tons of high up businessmen and politicians. Memory holed - these are not the conspiracy theories you are looking for.
klmadfejno 6y ago
> If the wars in the middle east, (I would say Iraq moreso than Afghanistan, as at least Afghanistan actually harbored Al Qaeda/Taliban), don't count as a textbook definition of conspiracy, I'm afraid nothing does. Indeed, I would even disagree with the statement about the DoS (a subsection of the government), their entire job is supposed to be diplomacy, not war, thats what DoD is for. This is why I strongly disagree with the now common knowledge among those in the realm, that intelligence agencies embed and use DoS as cover so frequently, as it undermines diplomatic initiatives heavily. As for dismissing something as "something Britta said on community", it isn't even worth addressing. The Britta joke is entirely my point. I believe there's corrupt actors in the state department who hawk war for profit. You believe the same thing, but have added some specifics that you probably can't support any better than the general statement about corrupt actors. Maybe that's not true and you DO have more evidence for the specifics than the average conspiracy theory, I don't care much. But either way, you've assigned great importance to something that most people would agree with at a high level but doubt at the very low level. The fault with conspiracy theories is they vastly overindex on specifics they can't defend, which makes generic problems sound much more urgent than most people would interpret them
- arminiusreturns 6y ago
  > I don't care much. Well I think we know who is arguing in good faith here then...

UncleMeat 6y ago

Conspiracy has a legal definition. "Conspiracy theory" has a different meaning. It is the sort of theory that resists evidence, since any evidence that opposes the theory is instead proof of the conspiracy. It is a form of magical thinking.

arminiusreturns 6y ago
No, thats just the definition you want to apply in order to dismiss anything that makes you uncomfortable or disagree with. Like I've said before the history of the world is a history of conspiracy, and often the people who were calling out those things were labelled as "conspiracy theorist" as basically a form of ad hominem attack. I can't tell you how often I was talking about the NSA et al prior to Snowden, but was called the same thing. Then almost all of those people now bend over backwards to say stuff like "well, we all knew it, why are you surprised?" etc, but it's just dismissing the fact that many conspiracy theories have truth to them. Like I said, everyone is a conspiracy theorist, they just want to get to pick and choose which ones they like. Russiagate is a conspiracy theory that the mainstream media and many people pushed for 4 years, for example. We literally just had a "billionare" pedophile sex-trafficker assassinated in one of the most secure prisons in the world, with connections and likely blackmail material on tons of high up businessmen and politicians. Memory holed - these are not the conspiracy theories you are looking for.

klmadfejno 6y ago

> If the wars in the middle east, (I would say Iraq moreso than Afghanistan, as at least Afghanistan actually harbored Al Qaeda/Taliban), don't count as a textbook definition of conspiracy, I'm afraid nothing does. Indeed, I would even disagree with the statement about the DoS (a subsection of the government), their entire job is supposed to be diplomacy, not war, thats what DoD is for. This is why I strongly disagree with the now common knowledge among those in the realm, that intelligence agencies embed and use DoS as cover so frequently, as it undermines diplomatic initiatives heavily. As for dismissing something as "something Britta said on community", it isn't even worth addressing. The Britta joke is entirely my point. I believe there's corrupt actors in the state department who hawk war for profit. You believe the same thing, but have added some specifics that you probably can't support any better than the general statement about corrupt actors. Maybe that's not true and you DO have more evidence for the specifics than the average conspiracy theory, I don't care much. But either way, you've assigned great importance to something that most people would agree with at a high level but doubt at the very low level. The fault with conspiracy theories is they vastly overindex on specifics they can't defend, which makes generic problems sound much more urgent than most people would interpret them

arminiusreturns 6y ago
> I don't care much. Well I think we know who is arguing in good faith here then...