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I understand why people hate conspiracies


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I came to a great realization today.

Some people hate conspiracy talk.

Why?  When I was a kid, I was told JWB shot Lincoln.  Textbooks never mentioned it had been a conspiracy.  Nothing.

I think that when we hear people vilify conspiracy talk or conspiracists even though there is logic, science, or facts to some extent supporting their belief, psychologically, its really simple.  Conspiracy talk makes them uncomfortable.  They cant handle it.  That people are out there conspiring to do something.

Psychologically, they want to go back to when they were children and feel safe.  

I apologize that facts make them feel uncomfortable.

Edited by Cory Santos
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And BTW, that is because it many history text books, that is what the implication is.  That Booth was the only one.

And Parnell says, well look at those textbooks.  Yeah Tracy.  Look at how bad they are.

In reality, the plan was to kill three people: Lincoln, Seward and Johnson.  Seward was almost killed.  Johnson got off when the guy assigned to him got drunk.

Booth was killed while escaping, but nine people went to trial.  Four were executed.  One escaped to Europe was apprehended later.

These guys remind me of Allen Dulles at the first WC meeting passing out the book about American assassins and how they all acted alone.

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Back in the nineties, establishment historian Michael Beschloss (who has done some good work here and there)

announced he was doing a book on the Lincoln assassination. In my research on John Ford at

the Portland, Maine, public library, I found a lengthy, highly detailed eyewitness account of the assassination

in an obituary of a local man from around the turn of the century. I was not familiar with that account so thought

it might be rare. I sent a copy of the obit to Beschloss with a note saying, "I hope you don't write the Warren Report

of the Lincoln assassination." That was somewhat impolitic, I admit, and I did not hear back, but he has

not come out with that book.

Edited by Joseph McBride
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4 hours ago, Cory Santos said:

Psychologically, they want to go back to when they were children and feel safe. 

Cory,

 

There is that, and then there is the idea that the human mind needs to bring order out of chaos. With conspiracy, there is too much that is unknown, and that makes it hard to come to grips with. It's so much easier to wrap things up and put them in a tidy little box so that mentally, you can deal with it.

 

Steve Thomas

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And now with the Trump administration and its messaging arm -- Infowars, Breitbart, Limbaugh, Fox, et al -- conspiracy theory has been turned on its head. Everything is a damned conspiracy.  it's intentional. If you call "everything" a conspiracy, then real conspiracies like colluding with adversarial powers to subvert Democracy are ignored by the general populace, or at least it has less of an impact.

Edited by Andrew Prutsok
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2 hours ago, Andrew Prutsok said:

And now with the Trump administration and its messaging arm -- Infowars, Breitbart, Limbaugh, Fox, et al -- conspiracy theory has been turned on its head. Everything is a damned conspiracy.  it's intentional. If you call "everything" a conspiracy, then real conspiracies like colluding with adversarial powers to subvert Democracy are ignored by the general populace, or at least it has less of an impact.

Agree. In a way that’s been happening for years. Obviously fake conspiracy theories obscure real ones.

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9 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Cory,

 

There is that, and then there is the idea that the human mind needs to bring order out of chaos. With conspiracy, there is too much that is unknown, and that makes it hard to come to grips with. It's so much easier to wrap things up and put them in a tidy little box so that mentally, you can deal with it.

 

Steve Thomas

I agree Steve.  

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I recall when the full implications  of the JFKA conspiracy hit me. It was before reading Garrisons book or seeing Stone’s movie based on that book. I was stunned. I was quaking and shuddering. For some time it was all I could think or talk about. I passed, slightly, in and out of denial. Eventually I just moved on.

i can understand the denial. Thinking, caring and responsible can be ruined just by believing the truth and understanding it’s implications. For many, accepting the false tale of the WC is the only way to go on.

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8 hours ago, Andrew Prutsok said:

And now with the Trump administration and its messaging arm -- Infowars, Breitbart, Limbaugh, Fox, et al -- conspiracy theory has been turned on its head. Everything is a damned conspiracy.  it's intentional. If you call "everything" a conspiracy, then real conspiracies like colluding with adversarial powers to subvert Democracy are ignored by the general populace, or at least it has less of an impact.

Agreed, And the fact that the JFKA conspiracy has now been adopted into the  right wing's crazy government "deep state" group  and has  now it's most high profile media advocates there  doesn't enhance the movement, quite the contrary,  it soils  and diminishes it. It'll just be another dime-a- dozen conspiracy in an era, most people will be glad to forget.

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18 hours ago, Cory Santos said:

I came to a great realization today.

Some people hate conspiracy talk.

Why?  When I was a kid, I was told JWB shot Lincoln.  Textbooks never mentioned it had been a conspiracy.  Nothing.

I think that when we hear people vilify conspiracy talk or conspiracists even though there is logic, science, or facts to some extent supporting their belief, psychologically, its really simple.  Conspiracy talk makes them uncomfortable.  They cant handle it.  That people are out there conspiring to do something.

Psychologically, they want to go back to when they were children and feel safe.   

I apologize that facts make them feel uncomfortable.

 

13 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Cory,

 

There is that, and then there is the idea that the human mind needs to bring order out of chaos. With conspiracy, there is too much that is unknown, and that makes it hard to come to grips with. It's so much easier to wrap things up and put them in a tidy little box so that mentally, you can deal with it.

 

Steve Thomas

I've read a great deal about the conspiracy mindset.  This is one of my pet interests.  I don't believe that the above statements about the non-conspiracy mindset are true at all and have never read anything suggesting they are.  Prosecutorial offices in which I was employed as a lawyer routinely charged conspiracies of all sorts.  No one, including jurors, had any problem grasping what had taken place or was psychologically troubled by the fact that it had taken place in their community.  The issue was simply, "Is there sufficient evidence to support what is being charged?"

As previously stated, I've been deeply involved in many areas of Weirdness.  In some of these, typically involving certain areas of science, the paranormal and theology, there are indeed conspiracies to suppress evidence and theories in order to preserve a particular paradigm.  In some of these areas, the evidence that I find compelling and believe is being suppressed points toward Reality being far less tidy and secure than the governing paradigm.

Most people who don't have the conspiracy mindset (and this is the large majority of people) are savvy enough to distinguish between an alleged conspiracy that is consistent with logic, common sense and the best evidence and one that is not.  If the alleged conspiracy is consistent with logic, common sense and the best evidence, these people don't run from it even if accepting it arguably makes their world less tidy and secure.

Many areas in which conspiracy thinking predominates are simply not of interest to many people.  As unbelievable as it may seem to those of us neck-deep in ufology, many people simply don't care if the government is suppressing UFO evidence or the truth about the supposed crash at Roswell.  It isn't that a UFO crash at Roswell would make these folks' world less tidy and secure or shred their childhood security blankets; they truly are more interested in day-to-day living than in whether a UFO crashed at Roswell.

If the death of JFK were attributable to some deep, dark conspiracy, I wouldn't be troubled in the slightest.  I don't think most people would.  We'd love to know about it.  Who, in this day of utter corruption throughout all levels of government and business and massive technological intrusion into every area of our lives, lives in this tidy childlike cocoon that you're talking about?  Anyone?

When it comes to JFK conspiracy theories, there are two fundamental problems:  (1) There have been SO MANY diametrically opposed conspiracy theories, over SO MANY years, involving COMPLETELY DIFFERENT motivations and casts of characters, that it is difficult to take any of them seriously even if one has a completely open mind.  The whole ball of wax tells us far less about the assassination of JFK than about the conspiracy mindset.  (2) I at least have not encountered a conspiracy theory that stood up to logic, common sense and the best evidence.  Ergo, as I would do with any issue, whether it involved an alleged conspiracy or not, I go where logic, common sense and the best evidence lead me.  I don't find the Lone Nut scenario particularly tidy or comforting, but it does square with logic, common sense and the best evidence.  I'm not going to be dissuaded by Conspiracy Logic or Conspiracy Sense, neither of which bears any relation to logic or common sense, but only by hard, no-question-about-it EVIDENCE OF A CONSPIRACY.

Some conspiracies achieve the level of a meme.  Even people who really don't care about UFOs or JFK know from the noise that there is a huge amount of speculation about Roswell and JFK and "lots of evidence that isn't easily explained."  They may actually know nothing about either incident except what they've gleaned from the noise around them.  97% of the noise, of course, is generated by those who promote non-mundane explanations and conspiracies.  So I'm never surprised if some poll says 71% of Americans believe a flying saucer crashed at Roswell or Oswald didn't act alone.  It means nothing.

I wouldn't expect those who are in the grip of the conspiracy mindset to understand the conspiracy mindset.  I would expect them to try to portray the non-conspiracy mindset as abnormal.  The fact is, no one writes books about "Why Don't People Believe Harvey and Lee?"  They do write books like "Why People Believe Weird Things?" (by Michael Shermer, whom I cite even though I do believe some things that Shermer thinks are weird).

Google "Why do people love conspiracy theories?" and you'll find an abundance of credible evidence that precisely what you would like to believe about non-conspiracists is actually true of those with the conspiracy mindset.  This is from Scientific Americanhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories/:

Encouragingly, Uscinski and Parent found that education makes a difference in reducing conspiratorial thinking: 42 percent of those without a high school diploma are high in conspiratorial predispositions, compared with 23 percent with postgraduate degrees. Even so, that means more than one in five Americans with postgraduate degrees show a high predisposition for conspiratorial belief. As an educator, I find this disturbing.

Other factors are at work in creating a conspiratorial mind. Uscinski and Parent note that in laboratory experiments “researchers have found that inducing anxiety or loss of control triggers respondents to see nonexistent patterns and evoke conspiratorial explanations” and that in the real world “there is evidence that disasters (e.g., earthquakes) and other high-stress situations (e.g., job uncertainty) prompt people to concoct, embrace, and repeat conspiracy theories.”

Or from Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-apes/201801/why-do-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories, talking about a different research study:

The researchers found that reasons for believing in conspiracy theories can be grouped into three categories:

The desire for understanding and certainty

The desire for control and security

The desire to maintain a positive self-image

One of the reader comments on the above article is remarkably perceptive:  "My theory of why people like (love) conspiracy theories is - they get a physical rush from them … and they get addicted to that rush. Reasoning and believability go out the window once that addiction sets in hard, people just want that buzz - over and over and over. All they want to do is feed the conspiracy beast."

Unless someone is so utterly naïve as to be living in a Leave It to Beaver world where all is still clean, tidy and good, I can't believe that anyone would be psychologically or emotionally driven to the Lone Nut explanation.  "Yes, I need the Lone Nut explanation to preserve my Pollyanna vision of the world."  Really - who has a Pollyanna vision of the world these days?  Conspiracy thinking, however:

  • Is emotionally satisfying - the Great Man was taken out by a Grand Conspiracy commensurate with his greatness.
  • Helps explain to those who think America has gone to hell why it has gone to hell - the Grand Conspirators have been in control since 1963.  And, of course, those who think America has gone to hell are often precisely those who idolize JFK and worship his memory.  Conspiracy thinking helps make sense of a world that otherwise doesn't make sense to these folks.
  • Is fun and can be a consuming hobby - way more fun than the Lone Nut explanation.  It provides a sense of community that many people crave.
  • Provides an opportunity for ordinary folks to become big fish in the conspiracy pond - to strut their stuff as "experts" on sites such as this, perhaps even to write books, produce videos and speak at conferences.
  • In short, the JFK assassination provides almost the perfect arena for someone with the conspiracy mindset.
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Yawn.

Lance, there is a big difference between a plot to sell a stash of cocaine and a plot to kill the president.

The latter is something that is so ingrained against the psyche of the MSM and academia that to this day, many texts do not admit the Lincoln conspiracy.  And by the way, in that one, the guy who almost killed Seward said later "they only caught but half of us."  Do the arithmetic.

There was no way that the MSM was going to call the WC on this one.  Not with the likes of Dulles and McCloy on board.  In fact Peter Khiss of the NY Times later admitted that their inquiry had discovered the critics were correct, but the Times decided they were not going to admit that.  That was in the last bunch of docs of the ARRB, somehow that great research you do missed it?

So please, go back to your UFO's you are out of your depth here.

Edited by James DiEugenio
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1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Yawn.

Lance, there is a big difference between a plot to sell a stash of cocaine and a plot to kill the president.

The latter is something that is so ingrained against the psyche of the MSM and academia that to this day, many texts do not admit the Lincoln conspiracy.  And by the way, in that one, the guy who almost killed Seward said later "they only caught but half of us."  Do the arithmetic.

There was no way that the MSM was going to call the WC on this one.  Not with the likes of Dulles and McCloy on board.  In fact Peter Khiss of the NY Times later admitted that their inquiry had discovered the critics were correct, but the Times decided they were not going to admit that.  That was in the last bunch of docs of the ARRB, somehow that great research you do missed it?

So please, go back to your UFO's you a re out of your depth here.

Fleeting thoughts.  Wasn't Cord Meyer in charge of CIA media relations through Operation Mockingbird?  Didn't maybe Dulles both recruit him and save his career somehow?  

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I think he was in charge of that.  Did Dulles not save Meyer from McCarthy?

 

By the way, the CIA always denied they had a program called Mockingbird.

In one of their recently declassified docs, they actually admitted it to the Rockefeller Commission.

Edited by James DiEugenio
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My belief that two or more people conspired to kill the 35th President of the United States of America brings me no comfort, solace, joy or riches.

Nor does it make me a kook, a freak, or any other insulting name you choose to call me.

 

Steve Thomas

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Here's Scientific American explaining authoritatively how fire brought down a skyscraper for the first time in the history of skyscrapers, three times on a single day -- with one of the skyscrapers not even being hit by a plane and apparently only having some pieces of furniture on fire.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-the-twin-towers-fell/

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