Conspiracies happen all of the time. It is not a surprise that people plot evil schemes and would be more strange if they did not.  But it doesn’t mean that everything that happens is a conspiracy.  Being old enough to recall the black helicopter theories and warnings of imminent UN takeover.  Who can forget the FEMA camp claims and those pictures of ‘coffins’ Barack Obama’s administration would soon be loading us into?  Strangely many dates come and go, but none of those who push these wild global plots come forward later and say, “You know, I may have been wrong about JFK being the Antichrist… “

Wild conspiracy theories are about political ideology more than evidence.  It is oftentimes a product of those who feel disempowered and seek uncomplicated explanations.  The left, for example, hallucinates nebulous things like systemic racism or white privilege.  Not entirely claims without any merit and yet if it is used to explain every outcome—if you see it lurking behind everything people do—then stop, get some help!  The fringe right likewise, turns to fantasy when reality is too hard for their simple minds to understand.  Inflation can’t just be about the Fed printing trillions of dollars devaluing currency, no it must be fires at food processing facilities! 

There is always a motivated misunderstanding of evidence that is involved beneath this kind of claim—a misuse of statistics and facts to form grandiose theories.

The common thread of conspiracy theories is that they can’t be disproven.  They are all established on faith, firm belief evidence connecting all the dots can be found and can shape-shift as needed.  If one part can be disproven they can simply move the goalposts or deny the evidence is legitimate.  If someone does not want to believe that the moon landing happened you could show a Saturn V rocket, introduce them to one of the astronauts, thoroughly explain all of the alleged irregularities they see and they’ll still believe that it was faked. 

It is a matter of political orientation, not facts or plausibility, and stems from assumptions and a general mistrust of the system.

To the conspiracy-minded folks, everything becomes a conspiracy, there can never be an accident, or a lone wolf attack, no such thing as coincidence in their world. Sandy Hook couldn’t be a deranged (drugged out) Adam Lanza.   No, to Alex Jones it must’ve been a false flag with the casualties being crisis actors rather than real people.  And some of those hunch I understand, this is what happens when every tragedy is treated cynically as an opportunity by control-freak politicians. 

Why did we go to war with Iraq after 9/11? 

Is it so hard to believe that the CIA may have played some role in the JFK assassination when they do regime change all around the world?

The real issue I have with Q-Anon, where all is a hidden criminal plot (and everything is going according to the plan) is how it sucks the oxygen out of the room for discussion of real observable corruption.  The far-flung theories, worse, are used to discredit those reasonable concerns about the expansion of government power and proliferation of unaccountable agencies.  We should be far more concerned with what those with power are ‘legally’ doing in plain sight—and not giving them cover of cockamamie theories they happily use to dismiss us all as crackpots.

That’s the irony here, the conspiracy theorist is aiding the conspiracy.  For example, fact-checks of “Covid is a bioweapon” were used to strawman the reasonable questions about a possible Wuhan lab-leak.  This is why we couldn’t have a serious conversation.  

So why do the kooks need to speculate so far beyond the evidence?  Why can’t they stick to what is known or factual, the most plausible explanation, rather than always having to gallop to the craziest possible conclusion?  In some cases it might just be stupidity, that they simply aren’t very good at tracking normal human motivation.  But in many cases, it is just a form of resentment, they are unserious people—with a massive inferiority complex—who both need to distinguish themselves and also discredit those who did attain more.

It is basically the working-class equivalent of pulling the race-card.  

And yet this is not entirely without cause.

They’ve endured globalism, they have seen their jobs outsourced, prices rise and wages stagnate.  This was not the America that was promised to them.  A place where their own dreams would be the limit.  They see things going the wrong way, opportunities drying up for people like them, as a flood of new faces replace the familiar.  There has been a sort of conspiracy against them, but not in the way they imagine.  Yes, in many ways, they have been screwed over by their betters—so perhaps that is where the deep suspicion originates?