Commentary: A conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories!

By Paul Rosenberg

September 27, 2016 - One of the funny things about conspiracy theories, including false flag attacks, is how often they are proven to be true. You have to wonder how long the shame-inducing slam, "That's a conspiracy theory," will keep working.

But that's not my point for today. Today, I want to introduce a conspiracy theory of my own, a conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories. Here it is:

The powers that be - the elite, the deep state, whomever - want wild conspiracy theories to spread. Because after these wild theories set the "outrage meter" very high, they can get away with almost anything below that line.

In other words, wild theories ensure that the "I'll act if I see that" trigger is never reached and Joe Average remains docile, even as he is progressively abused.

I hope I haven't given any nefarious people ideas, but I think this is already happening. In any event, I'm fairly certain it's worth pointing out.

There is a second reason for the lords of the status quo to love conspiracy theories, which is that such theories make it easy to discredit troublesome ideas.

For example, we now know - thank you again, Edward Snowden - that government agents are infiltrating websites to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt, as well as to destroy reputations.

So rather than just pulling out the usual manipulation to discredit a troublesome idea ("conspiracy theory"), why not tie it to some really nasty racist crap?

Lots of people have avoided discussions of the Federal Reserve, for example, because trolls attached to the discussions demonize Jews. Disgusted by anti-Semitism, people turn away from the whole subject, and the central banking scam remains unquestioned.

There are reasons open comment boards are overrun with hate-spewing trolls, and it's not that deeply deluded people make up that much of the general populace. (Though they do exist, and they do love to spew their filth.)

So, this is my second conspiracy theory:

Disgusting trolls are paid to promote certain ideas… ideas the elite want to eliminate.

Nowadays, paid trolls aren't even needed; artificial intelligence bots can carry out the work quite well and can even respond to counter-posts.

I'm not going to spend hundreds of hours tracking down evidence. That's not my job; I'm not an investigative journalist.

Still, these remain my own personal theories… and I'm just fine with that. People can take them or leave them as they choose.

The other problem with conspiracy theories is that they are far too hopeful. Yes, hopeful.

The implication buried in conspiracy theories is that the world is being controlled. Whether it's controlled by the Illuminati, the Jews, the Masons, or whomever, there is a strange sort of comfort in the idea that the world is controllable.

The comforting thought goes like this:

The world is being controlled by evil people, so if we can just get rid of them, control will revert to good people, and things will be great again.

This thought is false. The world is not controlled by any single group of people. Rather, it's a large, chaotic mess. Yes, the deep staters, central bankers, and so on do manipulate a lot of things, but they struggle endlessly and very often fail. Consider just two recent examples:

If they were that smart, these groups wouldn't have allowed the Internet to jump onto the scene in the early 1990s.

If they were that potent, they would have killed Bitcoin as soon as it appeared.

The truth is they’re nit that smart, and they’re not all-powerful. In fact, they have power only to the extent that they hoodwink people into serving them; and that's not an ironclad arrangement.

Presuming that this is all true, what do we do about it?

My first thought is that we should stick to facts, not imaginings. I suspect, for example, that Building 7 at the World Trade Center was purposely brought down, but I don't know that. My suspicions don't make it true. Furthermore, it isn't worth obsessing over. There are dozens of more important things to invest with time and energy - like actually building a better world.

I can't think of a single conspiracy theory that's worth majoring upon. Aliens at Roswell or the Kennedy assassination may be fun speculations - and I'd love to know the God's-honest truth about both - but they're simply not that important.

Rather, we should be busy building a better world, bypassing the institutions of abuse that dominate life in the West.