On Conspiracy

[I wrote the following as a comment on another blog in response to someone who had blogged with ridicule about conspiracy theorists. He was specifically responding to the recent article in Rolling Stone by RFK jr. that lays out evidence that the 2004 election was actively stolen. The author to which I was responding was throwing up his metaphorical hands and saying derisively "OK, I give up, everything is a plot, it's all a conspiracy..." This was my response (edited slightly to remove a few superfluous bits). --Liam]

Mr. XXX,

I actually agree with you, and I hate it about myself. However, I hate it more about this Administration.

As my wife and I have discussed often, the problem isn't that the crackpot theories are, for the most part, any less tin-foil-hat inspiring than before.

The problem is that this Administration has been caught in so many VERIFIED things that would previously have come predominantly from the paranoid set that it becomes a lot harder to dismiss out of hand the latest crackpot theory. I refer to things such as the two NSA programs that we know about, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, "Enemy Combatant" status, the outing of a CIA agent, taking the country to war on false pretenses when there was a very valid war on terror that we were deflecting resources from, and more, all of which they tried to keep secret and all of which eventually came to be proven.

Is it likely that Bush and company actually planned 9/11? No, certainly not. It requires too large a conspiracy to have remained largely unproven, and relies on too many "Well why the hell would they do it that way? What would it gain them?" arguments.

But is it possible that a few at the top knew it was coming and chose to feign ignorance and let it happen so that they could capitalize on it? It would only take a small extension on the pattern of verified behavior to believe it. Which does not prove that it is true, but does make it much harder for rational people to dismiss out of hand.

The problem with people who behave conspiratorially is that they make conspiracy theories about them believable. And the problem with conspiracy theories is that by their very nature, it can be hard to tell which are actual information that's made its way out of the inner circle and which are the paranoid delusional rantings of someone claiming to have insider knowledge when in fact they have nothing but their own fevered imagination.

Liam.