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Why is it that in a lot of recent American articles, the words 'conspiracy theory' are invariably linked with 'nutjob' 'wacko' 'tinfoilhat'. (This is the 'ince

Why is it that in a lot of recent American articles, the words 'conspiracy theory' are invariably linked with 'nutjob' 'wacko' 'tinfoilhat'. (This is the 'inception' of conspiracy theories.) I am a European wacko and proud; I believe that whole JFK thing was highly suspect.

fit2rule 13y ago
Because you can't have control over a population like America without resorting to hatred and bigotry, plain and simple. Time and again, we've seen that conspiracy theories OFTEN prove to be correct. Until that happens, however, it behooves the powers that be to draw lines in the sand - and calling someone a crackpot sure is a nice line.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Time and again, we've seen that conspiracy theories OFTEN prove to be correct. We have?
  - adventured 13y ago
    Plenty of them, yes. From the Gulf of Tonkin; to "weapons of mass destruction"; to Iran Contra and the allegations the US knew about (and helped) Saddam use chemical weapons on Iran (claimed to be equivalent to a conspiracy theory at the time, turns out it was completely true). Echelon, Carnivore and the NSA spying on everybody (including Americans)? Conspiracy theories. Joe Nacchio and Qwest? Conspiracy theory. The US involved over the decades in toppling governments in South America? The US Govt. denies it to this day, just a bunch of conspiracy theories.
    - fit2rule 13y ago
      All of this is of course due to the Politik exercising the ability to keep secrets. Such agency is exactly the environment in which one conspires; without walls erected to maintain a mystery, it is near impossible to hate in peace.
adventured 13y ago
There has long been a collective delusion in America, that for example, our government is pure of heart and wouldn't do the horrifically evil things some other governments do. Because, you know, we're supposed to be the good guys and all that made up jazz. Here to make the world safe for Democracy. Despite the fact that the US Govt. has been doing horrifically evil things for most of its history. An awful lot of the popular conspiracy theories in America have to do with the government. One could certainly also argue that the government has a vested PR interest in making conspiratorial types look like nutjobs. If a leader is assassinated in most parts of the world, one of the first things that springs to mind is: coup. If it happens in America, it's assumed to be a nutjob, a "lone gunman." Americans have been extraordinarily naive about their own government, and perhaps critically far too much so in the last four or five decades (in which the US became the sole superpower and all the responsibility that entails). Even now as our government slaughters civilians with drones, tortures people, threatens allies, tries to start new wars regularly (Syria), spies on every world leader they can get their hands on, abuses every friendly relationship in just about every way possible - Americans still think it's all for the best, to fight "terrorism" or some other horse shit made up excuse. In a word, Americans don't want to believe their government has become evil. So into the sand the head goes.
- VLM 13y ago
  A good analysis but there's also some wish fulfillment WRT being the world policeman and having the largest .mil in the world etc. Wouldn't you REALLY like the guys in charge to be nice guys? Even if you have to overlook some things to make it appear that way? This is the source of the intense push to extremism and denial of much more minor, yet more likely, events. I strongly suspect Cuba was involved in the whole JFK thing. Now to discredit my view you'll get screaming nutjob conformist extremists claiming "I" must think cuban special forces paratrooper sniper army teams blew away JFK and ridiculous stuff like that in order to enforce conformity. What I actually personally think is he was a nutcase and most likely went to the Cuban embassy and told some minor functionary his plan and asked for cash or help, at which time the Cuban embassy functionary, if he wasn't a total idiot, told him he's nuts and get the heck out, they're not going to help start WW3. Maybe the Cubans even told the SS but the SS blew them off too (just another nutcase or some triple crossing secret agent BS). Maybe the Cubans even gave him $10 and some bus tickets just to go the heck away. But after it actually happened, the whole thing has to be buried or it turns into an icky international incident. So my view is technically Cuba was involved, its just not at the level that extremists on either side claim in order to poison the well and prevent any further discussion. Or maybe the local police chief who laughed at him instead of reporting him was "involved". Or some SS agent who thought Oswald was a joke was "involved". My point is there was a coverup of bad (sorta) judgment not an elaborate conspiracy / coup. Only sorta bad in that you can't assume every nut will actually do something, that would be a massive denial of service vector, handy to implement if you were actually planning something real... I suspect that in a century when its all dusty and blown over, someone will release a letter some crackpot wrote to the Cuban ambassador explaining exactly what he planned to do (and did in fact do) and asking for help. Was it good to prevent WW3 in the 60s by covering it up? Yeah probably. Is it still a good idea in 2013? Eh. In 2113 will it matter? Probably not, so we'll finally get the truth. Its the difference between information and actionable information. So the Cubans knew what was going to happen because he told them, well who cares what matters is what action is taken. In the 60s when the blood was still wet that would have meant WW3. Until Castro dies I guarantee nothing will be released because otherwise people will be asking for his head. In fact I'd give it an extra decade after Castro dies just to make sure theres no possibility of any course of action. As for a conspiracy, well, it seems to have worked, JFK ended up fairly dead, now if there was a high level conspiracy you can examine history and see what they unleashed, which is pretty much ... nothing. Not even something failed. Other than certain Cuban political leaders getting downgraded from dislike to being more hated than any other human on the planet beyond any public rational level, not much really happened.
stephen_g 13y ago
People just tend to associate the term 'conspiracy theory' just with the ones that are actually crazy (such as the suggestion that we didn't land on the moon, or that the US Government perpetrated the 9/11 attack). And on top of that, many of the ones that actually turn out to be true do just sound crazy at first (who would have believed anyone last year if you told them the NSA was collecting metadata on almost everything that happens on the Internet and millions of US citizen's phone records etc.?)...
- FedRegister 13y ago
  >Who would have believed anyone last year if you told them the NSA was collecting metadata on almost everything that happens on the Internet and millions of US citizen's phone records etc? Anybody who was paying attention and had heard of Mark Kline and William Binney. The whole NSA story isn't new. Part of what makes Edward Snowden's leak of documents as powerful as it does is that it corroborates many stories that former intelligence officers have told about the internal workings of the agency.
- jffry 13y ago
  ...who would have believed anyone last year if you told them the NSA was collecting metadata on almost everything... Anybody who had been paying attention over the past ten years?
- fit2rule 13y ago
  They're only crazy until they're unproven. Beyond that, they become history. Why everyone forgets that history is thus, crazy, beats me.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    No, some very certainly are crazy, and are likely the product of mental illness. See: The Queen is a lizard. It's a shame that "The CIA is making shit up again" and "The CIA shot somebody" gets mixed in with "The Queen is a Lizard", and "The CIA orchestrated an absurdly needlessly complex plot to shoot somebody from all sorts of bizarre angles in broad daylight in plain view of the public, when shooting them from one angle would have sufficed." I mean seriously, if you tell me that the CIA goaded Oswald into doing it, then had Oswald killed, that is something I'd consider plausible. I see no proof for it, but it is something that could have happened; I'm not going to say for sure that it didn't, because I don't know that it didn't. When people start ranting about magic bullets and multiple shooters though, that is an express-line into crazy-town. It's just making shit up, and I don't understand why. Was "The CIA had Oswald do it" not a fun enough plot or something? Yeah yeah, "The CIA had to be sure, so they had a backup sniper." Fine. Why the hell would that second sniper not be in the book depository as well?

fit2rule 13y ago

Because you can't have control over a population like America without resorting to hatred and bigotry, plain and simple. Time and again, we've seen that conspiracy theories OFTEN prove to be correct. Until that happens, however, it behooves the powers that be to draw lines in the sand - and calling someone a crackpot sure is a nice line.

icebraining 13y ago
Time and again, we've seen that conspiracy theories OFTEN prove to be correct. We have?
- adventured 13y ago
  Plenty of them, yes. From the Gulf of Tonkin; to "weapons of mass destruction"; to Iran Contra and the allegations the US knew about (and helped) Saddam use chemical weapons on Iran (claimed to be equivalent to a conspiracy theory at the time, turns out it was completely true). Echelon, Carnivore and the NSA spying on everybody (including Americans)? Conspiracy theories. Joe Nacchio and Qwest? Conspiracy theory. The US involved over the decades in toppling governments in South America? The US Govt. denies it to this day, just a bunch of conspiracy theories.
  - fit2rule 13y ago
    All of this is of course due to the Politik exercising the ability to keep secrets. Such agency is exactly the environment in which one conspires; without walls erected to maintain a mystery, it is near impossible to hate in peace.

adventured 13y ago

There has long been a collective delusion in America, that for example, our government is pure of heart and wouldn't do the horrifically evil things some other governments do. Because, you know, we're supposed to be the good guys and all that made up jazz. Here to make the world safe for Democracy. Despite the fact that the US Govt. has been doing horrifically evil things for most of its history. An awful lot of the popular conspiracy theories in America have to do with the government. One could certainly also argue that the government has a vested PR interest in making conspiratorial types look like nutjobs. If a leader is assassinated in most parts of the world, one of the first things that springs to mind is: coup. If it happens in America, it's assumed to be a nutjob, a "lone gunman." Americans have been extraordinarily naive about their own government, and perhaps critically far too much so in the last four or five decades (in which the US became the sole superpower and all the responsibility that entails). Even now as our government slaughters civilians with drones, tortures people, threatens allies, tries to start new wars regularly (Syria), spies on every world leader they can get their hands on, abuses every friendly relationship in just about every way possible - Americans still think it's all for the best, to fight "terrorism" or some other horse shit made up excuse. In a word, Americans don't want to believe their government has become evil. So into the sand the head goes.

VLM 13y ago
A good analysis but there's also some wish fulfillment WRT being the world policeman and having the largest .mil in the world etc. Wouldn't you REALLY like the guys in charge to be nice guys? Even if you have to overlook some things to make it appear that way? This is the source of the intense push to extremism and denial of much more minor, yet more likely, events. I strongly suspect Cuba was involved in the whole JFK thing. Now to discredit my view you'll get screaming nutjob conformist extremists claiming "I" must think cuban special forces paratrooper sniper army teams blew away JFK and ridiculous stuff like that in order to enforce conformity. What I actually personally think is he was a nutcase and most likely went to the Cuban embassy and told some minor functionary his plan and asked for cash or help, at which time the Cuban embassy functionary, if he wasn't a total idiot, told him he's nuts and get the heck out, they're not going to help start WW3. Maybe the Cubans even told the SS but the SS blew them off too (just another nutcase or some triple crossing secret agent BS). Maybe the Cubans even gave him $10 and some bus tickets just to go the heck away. But after it actually happened, the whole thing has to be buried or it turns into an icky international incident. So my view is technically Cuba was involved, its just not at the level that extremists on either side claim in order to poison the well and prevent any further discussion. Or maybe the local police chief who laughed at him instead of reporting him was "involved". Or some SS agent who thought Oswald was a joke was "involved". My point is there was a coverup of bad (sorta) judgment not an elaborate conspiracy / coup. Only sorta bad in that you can't assume every nut will actually do something, that would be a massive denial of service vector, handy to implement if you were actually planning something real... I suspect that in a century when its all dusty and blown over, someone will release a letter some crackpot wrote to the Cuban ambassador explaining exactly what he planned to do (and did in fact do) and asking for help. Was it good to prevent WW3 in the 60s by covering it up? Yeah probably. Is it still a good idea in 2013? Eh. In 2113 will it matter? Probably not, so we'll finally get the truth. Its the difference between information and actionable information. So the Cubans knew what was going to happen because he told them, well who cares what matters is what action is taken. In the 60s when the blood was still wet that would have meant WW3. Until Castro dies I guarantee nothing will be released because otherwise people will be asking for his head. In fact I'd give it an extra decade after Castro dies just to make sure theres no possibility of any course of action. As for a conspiracy, well, it seems to have worked, JFK ended up fairly dead, now if there was a high level conspiracy you can examine history and see what they unleashed, which is pretty much ... nothing. Not even something failed. Other than certain Cuban political leaders getting downgraded from dislike to being more hated than any other human on the planet beyond any public rational level, not much really happened.

stephen_g 13y ago

People just tend to associate the term 'conspiracy theory' just with the ones that are actually crazy (such as the suggestion that we didn't land on the moon, or that the US Government perpetrated the 9/11 attack). And on top of that, many of the ones that actually turn out to be true do just sound crazy at first (who would have believed anyone last year if you told them the NSA was collecting metadata on almost everything that happens on the Internet and millions of US citizen's phone records etc.?)...

FedRegister 13y ago
>Who would have believed anyone last year if you told them the NSA was collecting metadata on almost everything that happens on the Internet and millions of US citizen's phone records etc? Anybody who was paying attention and had heard of Mark Kline and William Binney. The whole NSA story isn't new. Part of what makes Edward Snowden's leak of documents as powerful as it does is that it corroborates many stories that former intelligence officers have told about the internal workings of the agency.
jffry 13y ago
...who would have believed anyone last year if you told them the NSA was collecting metadata on almost everything... Anybody who had been paying attention over the past ten years?
fit2rule 13y ago
They're only crazy until they're unproven. Beyond that, they become history. Why everyone forgets that history is thus, crazy, beats me.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  No, some very certainly are crazy, and are likely the product of mental illness. See: The Queen is a lizard. It's a shame that "The CIA is making shit up again" and "The CIA shot somebody" gets mixed in with "The Queen is a Lizard", and "The CIA orchestrated an absurdly needlessly complex plot to shoot somebody from all sorts of bizarre angles in broad daylight in plain view of the public, when shooting them from one angle would have sufficed." I mean seriously, if you tell me that the CIA goaded Oswald into doing it, then had Oswald killed, that is something I'd consider plausible. I see no proof for it, but it is something that could have happened; I'm not going to say for sure that it didn't, because I don't know that it didn't. When people start ranting about magic bullets and multiple shooters though, that is an express-line into crazy-town. It's just making shit up, and I don't understand why. Was "The CIA had Oswald do it" not a fun enough plot or something? Yeah yeah, "The CIA had to be sure, so they had a backup sniper." Fine. Why the hell would that second sniper not be in the book depository as well?