Conspiracy Theories

I have a confession to make. I am an addict of Stumbleupon. This amazing website that is my vice in times of extreme boredom. I can attribute it to many different class failures, as I stumble when I indeed should be taking notes. But that is beside the point. Recently I have been stumbling through conspiracy theories.

Truly it amazes me what some people honestly believe in. Some of them seem to be sound, and some (most) are quite extreme. It makes me think, I talking about actual scratch my chin pondering, about how people come up with this stuff. I mean practically all of the "theories" involving the United States government. Honestly, is it even possible, let alone probable, that the same institution that loses billions of dollars to needless bureaucracies, the same institution that has so many devisions and projects that cannot be kept track of, the same institution whose own branches squabble and fight over meaningless issues can actually plan and execute an elaborate plan to trick the American people? I am not talking about secret military projects. But some people actually think the government caused the collapse of the trade centers intentionally. Really? Seriously? Come on. If they were capable of faking that terrorist attack, doesn't it seem likely that they would have been able to plant biological weapons and what not in Afghanistan and Iraq?

And yet there are theories even crazier than that. A race of humanoid shapeshifting reptilian aliens is about to take over the world. Did you know that? Because I sure as hell didn't. But of course it is possible, because if a species that much more biologically and technologically advanced than our own wanted to take over our world, they would most certainly do it through guile and secrecy, in order to make us into slaves, instead of the easy route of showing up with millions of star trek like warships and threatening us till we submit.

I ponder the question of how some people could come up with these kinds of stories, and the only two possibilities involve mental disorders and extremely creative drug induced paranoia. And speaking from experience, if it was drugs, most of the theories would be about mind control drugs in twinkies or doritos or something like that. And as for the crazy person theory? I have seen some pretty crazy people on the streets, and if they still have the mental capacity to spread misinformation as detailed as some of these theories, we could harness that raw, practically free resource to replace J.J. Abrams increasingly worse T.V. shows with something a little more interesting. Maybe they could also help out M. Night Shamalamadingdong come up with some better twists.