There's certainly much to be paranoid about in an age of hyper-accelerated technology, culture, globalization, change and marketing. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), most conspiracy theories are like cold fusion--they look like they work and produce a Eureka moment but the reality usually does not match appearances. Ray Brown, a Bowling Green University professor, writes, "There is just enough sanity in some of these conspiracy theories to make them almost believable. By and large, however, they are creations of very rich imaginations because we simply can't accept life as it is." Usually, the essence of conspiracy theory is that an event happened; there are connections between the person involved in the event and other people with their own agendas; and it could be theorized that all of these people were linked to make the event happen for a specific reason. To use the World Trade Center attack as an example:
1. The World Trade Center is attacked.
2. George W. Bush is an oilman and many of his friends are oilmen.
3. One of Osama Bin Laden's brothers was a partner of Bush's.
4. Afghanistan, where Bin Laden is hiding, is where oil companies want to run a pipeline but the Taliban government is unfriendly.
5. The intelligence community knew that something "spectacular" was going to happen but did not prevent it.
6. Therefore, Bush allowed Bin Laden to attack the World Trade Center in order to have an excuse to invade Afghanistan and set up a friendly government, which would allow the pipeline to run through and make oil companies money.Events, connections, agendas form the basis for conspiracy theories. If we take the above example and flesh it out with more direct and indirect connections between various players, then it could sound plausible. I personally don't believe it, but it could sound plausible to many rational people. And this gets to the root of the problem with many conspiracy theories, the attempt to indict people and organizations based purely on circumstantial evidence. We could make the process of logic even simpler in this example:
1. Joe was murdered.
2. Bob hated Joe.
3. If Joe would die, Bob could try to date Joe's girlfriend.
4. Bob murdered Joe.
Another problem, with the massive, elaborate theories, is a lack of common sense. One has to ask how the world's greatest secret societies have volumes of material written about their inner plans and workings. Or how many years the U.N. army is going to hide in Mexico before they are finally allowed to invade the U.S. Or why 13 rich white men who already rule the world behind the scenes would want to stage a military takeover of our country. The larger the conspiracy is, generally, the more holes and greater contrariness to common sense. A final problem with conspiracy theories is that they are too often used to justify racial and religious prejudice and hatred. When you hear somebody say that Jews have a plot to take over the world, the menace and hatred makes you wish conspiracy theories didn't exist at all.
