Conspiracy theories and their benefits

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like more people believe in more conspiracy theories than used to be the case. Or maybe more people are just being open about the fact that they believe in conspiracy theories. I am inclined to believe that the former is the case, because with the advent of social media it is easier for far more people to hear far more conspiracy theories than before. But I could be wrong.

That last bit is something you’ll never hear a truly believing conspiracy theorist say. The part about being wrong, I mean.

Maybe that’s why more people believe in conspiracy theories. They offer the believer a way to never be wrong, and that’s a good feeling, isn’t it?

Now, before I go further, I will say that there are some conspiracies that I do acknowledge as having occurred because I have seen confirmed indisputable evidence of their existence. For instance, the FBI did run its Counterintelligence Program, known more broadly as COINTELPRO, starting in 1956, to infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement and discredit its leadership. The program also targeted other groups and individuals that J. Edgar Hoover saw as a threat. I know COINTELPRO existed because I’ve read declassified COINTELPRO documents relating to the American Indian Movement and used them in a research paper I wrote in law school. I was skeptical of the FBI before Donald Trump came along and made it trendy.

It is unknown whether COINTELPRO is still in operation, but I am absolutely convinced that it is for reasons that could easily make another column and maybe more besides.

Also, it is confirmed that the Bohemian Grove exists. There is a publicly available (and hilarious) recording of Richard Nixon talking about going to a gathering of it in the Watergate tapes. Videos are available on Youtube of people dancing around the large stone statue of an owl at a Bohemian Grove party. Weird, right?

Operation Northwoods, a 1962 plot by certain Pentagon brass to use American forces to attack and destroy a major American city and blame the Cuban government as a pretense for war that thankfully never came to fruition, can be read about in declassified documents in the National Security Archive.

So yes, there are conspiracies that have been proven. As such, conspiracy theories ought not to be disregarded without inquiry. There are other examples I could cite, but I believe my point is made.

I will even say that I’ve seen enough to convince me that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing JFK, though I won’t share any more of my thoughts about that here.

I could be wrong about that though, and I am open to hearing evidence to the contrary and changing my mind. And again, a truly believing conspiracy theorist will never say that.

There are conspiracy theories out there though which are demonstrably false, but in which many people nonetheless believe.

One of the biggest is the idea that the Earth is actually flat and this fact is being hidden by the world’s governments. Such an assertion can be rather easily disproven, and you can watch that happen if you watch the documentary “Behind the Curve” on Netflix. It’s about a couple of Flat Earth activists, the first ever Flat Earth Convention (I remember posts about it online, where its organizers said that people all over the globe were coming. I’m not kidding.), and an experiment designed by some Flat Earthers to prove that the Earth is flat which winds up doing just the opposite. You get to watch the experiment, along with their reactions to it, in the documentary. If you haven’t seen it, you should.

I have given some thought as to why some people believe so fervently in conspiracy theories, and here are some reasons I’ve come up with:

1. They make you believe you’re smarter than everyone else without having to put in much effort to acquire knowledge or expertise.

If you believe in a conspiracy theory, you think you know something that most other people don’t, and that this awareness makes you smarter about a certain area of knowledge or inquiry than experts in that area. For instance, I’ve dealt with people who are absolutely convinced that they are Constitutional scholars and know more about the law than I do, even though I spent years studying the law and have dealt with it for a living for even more years. They believe in an entirely fictional body of Constitutional law that has no basis in reality, but because of their belief they are convinced that they have become legal experts without putting in the years of study or incurring the considerable expense of becoming an attorney, to say nothing of the thousands of hours professional attorneys spend practicing law to gain more knowledge and experience. It makes people feel that they’ve gotten a bargain. And who doesn’t love a bargain?

1. It makes you believe you’re special or superior to everyone who is still in the dark, while you know the truth. People like feeling special.

2. If you do it right, you can’t be wrong.

Many conspiracy theories are self-reinforcing. Anything that undermines or straight up disproves the conspiracy theory is regarded by the believer as part of the conspiracy, and is therefore taken as further proof of the conspiracy. Therefore, the more evidence that is amassed against the existence of the conspiracy, the more certain the believer becomes of its existence since the efforts on the part of the conspirators to hide the truth with all this proof to the contrary are so significant. This way of thinking makes it impossible for the believer to be wrong, and that is the most appealing part of it, I think. Because nobody wants to be wrong. And this way, they don’t have to be. Ever.

1. Conspiracies make it easy to claim victimhood.

Many conspiracies essentially say that there is an overwhelming and malevolent force or group of people that maintains control over the world. If the believer buys into this, then any shortcomings or failings experienced by the believer can be blamed on a conspiracy against the believer by shadowy forces that are vastly more powerful than the believer. Those shortcomings and failings can then be blamed on those shadowy powers, and the believer is left a powerless and blameless victim of forces beyond his or her control. This makes it easy to avoid responsibility for things that might otherwise be placed with the believer.

1. Conspiracy theories assure that someone is in control.

Sometimes the world is big and scary. But its less scary for many people to believe that someone is in control of all the bad stuff that’s happening, even if that someone is malevolent, than for the bad things to just be happening without anyone pulling all the strings.

Conspiracies happen. History is full of proof of different ones. You don’t have to look far to find them. But that doesn’t mean that everything we see in the world is the result of a conspiracy, or that the only reason our lives aren’t exactly how we’d like them to be is because we are being controlled by sinister and powerful forces arrayed against us.

Conspiracy theorists often ask us to keep an open mind. And we should. As I said, conspiracy theories should not be rejected without inquiry because conspiracies do happen. But if there’s a great deal of evidence that there is no conspiracy surrounding something, maybe there just, well, isn’t one.

An open mind is a two-way street. Remember that and you will always be seeking the truth earnestly.

Caleb Baumgardner is a local attorney. He can be reached at [email protected]

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