"Conspiracy Theories" and the Fear of Speaking the Truth

After we have witnessed crime after crime being committed by the Bush administration we must ask ourselves why more people are afraid to call this administration what they are, criminals.

It is a crime for them to lie to Congress about the intellegence used to go to war. It is a crime for Bush to ignore literally hundreds of laws because of his "signing statements". It is a crime to rig an election to bring yourself to power. It is a crime to knowingly leak the name of an undercover CIA agent. It is a crime to lie to Congress about the cost of their Medicare proposal. It is a crime to illegally monitor the phone calls of tens of millions of Americans.

Yet people are still afraid to call George Bush a criminal.

Why? I believe a big part of the reason is that people are afraid to be labeled a "conspiracy theorist".

I have heard many respectable progressives rail against "conspiracy theorists" on many occasions, but it seems most of them have never really thought through the meaning of the word conspiracy.

Here is the definition:

con·spir·a·cy Audio pronunciation of "conspiracy" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kn-spîr-s)
n. pl. con·spir·a·cies

1. An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
2. A group of conspirators.
3. Law. An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.
4. A joining or acting together, as if by sinister design: a conspiracy of wind and tide that devastated coastal areas.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/conspiracy

Read that to yourself, and explain to me what is so crazy about talking about conspiracies? Do we really believe it is a ridiculous notion that two or more people could act together to commit a crime? I don't see anything about aliens or black helicopters in that definition, so why do we always need to bring those things up when talking about the possibility that the government commited a crime?

The truth is that changing people's thoughts on the word conspiracy is one of the greatest propaganda achievements of the United States government. It allows them to easily dismiss anyone who points out the numerous crimes they commit on a daily basis.

I do not believe in UFOs, but I do believe that the Bush Administration is a criminal organization. Maybe that does make me a conspiracy theorist, but it does not make me crazy. Don't allow the pundits to use these words to dismiss those of us making legitimate complaints about the crimes of the Bush administration. Speak out and speak clearly, it is those that believe the government always follows the law that are the real kooks. If you believe everybody in government is honest, and no group of people ever work together to break the law you are completely divorced from reality.

...both in theory and in fact.

I think we all know they are criminals. It's getting the MSM to see the truth and report it instead of blowing it off like we are a bunch of know nothing ignorant people who believe anything they report.

that give the plausible ones a bad rap. Sadly, there are more absolutely ridiculous theories out there than possible ones.

It is true that the most baseless theories give the plausible ones a bad rap. I am not so sure that it is true that there are more ridiculous theories than possible ones. Remember EVERY crime involving two or more people working together is a conspiracy. It doesn't matter if they are government employees or not. If two people go in to a store to shoplift and one watches the aisles so the other one can grab the goods that is a conspiracy. The propaganda agents have however worked to put the ridiculous theories that can be easily discredited front and center in an attempt to dismiss all conspiracies.

a significant majority of us here.
It's just easier to write "Conspiracy Theory" than "Ridiculous Conspiracy Theory", or RTC, because you'd have to explain you meant "ridiculous conspiracy theory".

Nobody I'm aware of has ever suggested that conspiracies don't exist.

edit: Mervin said it better in #6

attack has to be the greatest "conspiracy theory" of all time! Talk about ridiculous...

Anybody who was paying attention knew that we were at risk of attack from Osama bin laden.

It's not like they attacked us using sharks with laser beams on their heads, they hijacked some planes.
It had been done before, and it's pathetic that our guard was down.

It appears that you believe the basic story that we were attacked by bin Laden. I do not believe that at all.

I believe that the attack was orchestrated by some homegrown neocons who created their own Pearl Harbor so as to be able to throw this country into the chaos that resulted, enabling those neocons to begin to make the changes in American government, culture, society and leadership that they wanted. Those self-same neocons who designed and orchestrated this event are now in leading positions in American government and World Financial and Trade organizations. I think bin Laden was "used" by those neocon leaders to accomplish their dastardly deed.

interest is not a conspiracy. It is a network. Conspiracy theories are when someone who didn't witness events.. has a take on it that others have not witnessed.

We have all witnessed the neocon power grab. The lies. The perpetual campaign. The bullying of opponents or victims.

The difference is plausibility and proof.

OF COURSE there are 'Conspiracies'. That's obvious. If Bush and his staff sit down to plan an illegal war that's a conspiracy. It's plausible, and its pretty well proved.

It becomes a "Conspiracy Theory" when you postulate that a multitude of independent people and agencies participated in a complex plan. It's even more a Conspiracy Theory if you support this postulate with invalid reasoning and unsupported facts.

The Conspiracy Hobbyists or Conspiracists, yes, provide cover to the administration and prevent legitimate inquiries.

They will be all over this thread in a few minutes. Explaining how Bush planned 9/11 with Holographic Airplanes. And JFK was strangled by Martians.

The truth is that none of us know exactly what happened in the back rooms in the run up to war. Of course at this point the only plausible explanation given all the evidence that we have is that the case was manufactured, but we are still learning about how it was manufactured. Until you have all the facts there will be theories, but I would be surprised if there is a single DUer who honestly believes JFK was strangled by martians as you suggest. In fact I would be surprised if there is a single American who does not live in a mental institution that believes something that absurd, and there are many Americans who believe some pretty stupid things.

We need to investigate and seperate fact from fiction, but don't buy into this "all conspiracy theories are crazy" propaganda.

Welcom to DU! :hi:

Theories and speculation have no limits, other than the imagination.
They don't need evidence, they only need a beat and a hook.

its naked fascism writ bold. I can only suggest passive resistance because I believe it is the most powerful weapon known to man. Thats all I can do, try to build parallel systems and resist in any way I can. Create resistance.

The better conspiracy theories are the result of tested hypothesis. This is called the scientific method and this is how we determine fact from fiction. Truth is not such a rare and mystical commodity that it cannot be proven mathematically. E really does = MC squared and that fact literally rules the world. One fine day we may discover a greater power that eclipses even that. But until then we are ruled by the power of the atom.

Steel buildings can't fall down like that. Just a guess I don't pretend to know but thats just my gut on that.

The term "conspiracy theory" came into heavy use in the early 1960s after Kennedy assassination. People who suggested that Oswald was not the lone gunman were dismissed as "conspiracy theorists." Since then, the term has itself become a kind of Orwellian construct that simply shuts down all discussion of the criminal conspiracies that occasionally infect political life.

Think of its use as being similar to the use of the word, "liberal." This was once a word that people in the Democratic party and even left wing of the Republican party used proudly. Sometime in the 70s or early 80s, through constant repetition with other negative terms, like "tax and spend" or "bleeding heart," liberal became a dirty word. In the 1980s, journalists began humorously, but ominously writing that candidates did not want to be labeled with "the L word," as though liberal was actually a filthy curse.

The same happened to "conspiracy theory." Of course on one level, it just means a theory about whether a criminal conspiracy exists. Now, just as subconsciously everyone appends "tax and spend" to "liberal" whether or not that phrase is actually used, people subconsciously append "crazy" to every use of the word "conspiracy theory."

The effect is that most people, as your OP points out, literally cannot comprehend that a criminal conspiracy can infect our political system, even though several criminal conspiracies, such as Watergate and Iran Contra, have been proven. There are even people who cannot accept that Watergate or Iran Contra occurred, because, they say, that would mean that a conspiracy theory was correct, and we all know that NO conspiracy theory can be correct.