Really great article/essay by Russ Baker: WHY RATIONAL PEOPLE BUY INTO CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Should be read by everyone for a clear and intelligent perspective. My own opinion is you're sane and using sound, rational judgment if you question and don't just accept what is spoon-fed to us through the military/industrial complex and the intertwined corporate-owned major media. I especially like the following Reader's Comment to the article:
Why do they play the "conspiracy theory = kook" card?
Because it works.
A significant percentage of the human species thinks very shallowly. (If I had to pull a statistic out of my posterior, I would probably go with 75 - 85%.) A pronouncement from an authority figure is all they need to know, and they will own that pronouncement and shout everyone else down.
To overturn the disinformation spread by our media at the behest of our corporate ruling elites, people at the same level of authority would have to come clean.
President Obama would have to hold a press conference and declare that Oswald was a patsy and a CIA strike team had peppered the presidential motorcade with bullets from various vantage points, and that would probably be enough to undo fifty years of conspiracy theory denunciation. There would still be some holdouts, of course, who would dismiss Obama as an illegitimate Kenyan president, the irony completely lost on them.
President Obama could hold a press conference and declare that the three World Trade Center towers had been pulled by controlled demolition, that there isn't any other way to drop three steel-frame highrises into their own footprints at freefall speed, and that would probably be enough. Anything less? Kookoo for Cocoa Puffs. Doesn't matter what highly trained engineers and architects say, they don't have enough authority.
Roswell? Without an authority figure at the very top spilling the beans, it's all just weather balloons and nutjobs obsessing over little green Martians. Doesn't matter what astronauts, airline pilots, or military personnel say, they don't have enough authority.
This "daddy complex" thing that humanity has going is a severe mental disability. No wonder the world has been so easy to control over the past several thousand years.
And here's an EXCERPT from the article:
A recent essay, [judging conspiracy theorists as nut cases] by NY Times magazine columnist Maggie Koerth-Baker, implicitly suggests the public should immediately halt speculation once law enforcement officials “leak” information intended to shape our perceptions. No matter that these leaks are not the same thing as evidence presented at trial, that the leaks themselves serve an agenda, and that law enforcement has a long history of attempting to persuade the public of false narratives. No matter that the latter is a practice repeatedly, if often belatedly, chronicled by the Times itself.
Science Orders You: Stop Thinking Rationally
The author goes on to say that “recent scientific research” tells us that people who believe there’s more to a story may actually accept several competing theories as plausible. And because they are open to competing theories, they’re basically wacky. Such an ecumenical orientation to mysteries, akin to tolerating various conflicting religious faiths, is supposed to show that there’s something wrong with you.
However, another study might find that those who prefer pat explanations from the authorities are equally irrational.
For example, when the Tsarnaevs were first identified by the public from video footage released by the FBI, the Bureau told us the Tsarnaevs were previously unknown to it. Then the Bureau was forced by the Russians to admit it had known the brothers for quite some time. In fact, the Russians had briefed the Bureau on its concerns several years ago, and at that time, in response to the Russian information, the FBI had begun interacting with the Tsarnaev clan. This unexplained about-face was, according to establishmentarians, just fine. No questions, your honor.
Here’s another doozy. We were initially told that MIT police officer Sean Collier was killed in an altercation April 18 with the Tsarnaevs—perhaps at a convenience store. Later, the authorities said Collier was actually assassinated completely unawares—shot point blank in the head while sitting in his patrol car—at an odd spot in between buildings on the MIT campus—and by unknown assailants. This switcheroo was also A-OK with outfits like The Times. Nothing to investigate, no reason to be suspicious.
On April 19, the authorities told us that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev shot it out in a long gun battle with police before being apprehended. Later we learned, from the same authorities, that the young man, lying seriously wounded inside a boat parked in a suburban driveway, actually did not even have a gun with him. In fact, he was nearly executed in a totally one-sided gun battle. This fabulous flip-flop also raised no red flag with the establishment media.
On May 22 the authorities told us the FBI had to kill Tsarnaev’s acquaintance in Orlando, Florida, Ibragim Todashev, because he lunged with a knife and stabbed an agent several times. Later, it emerged that, well, maybe he didn’t have a knife at all, but maybe at some time he brandished a broomstick, or, at article press time, something else. And that was OK too, by gosh, for the journalistic glitterati.
Let’s face it: If a suspect in an interrogation room told this many contradictory stories, he or she would be locked up, and later probably prove eminently convictable by a jury. But a person who sees something sinister in such official confabulations gets lumped together with the people who see little green men from Mars floating in their soup.
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