In a world where it’s considered normal for people to push their dogs around in strollers, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by much, but I still find myself still shocked at times at the weirdness that abounds.
Take conspiracy theorists, particularly the folks who are dead set positive that an elite, evil cabal drawn from the highest levels of politics and business is orchestrating events from behind the scenes and are responsible for every heinous act that ever happened; from World Wars to The Depression, to JFK’s murder to 9/11, and race wars and more. We the sheeple are kept compliant through brain washing via vaccines, water fluoridation and pesticides, all brought to you by a puppet mainstream media whose primary purpose is to keep us in the dark.
Seriously, these people exist. And with a straight face during what is otherwise a perfectly normal dinner, they will tell you that George W Bush colluded with the Jews in bringing down the Twin Towers and hey, could you please pass the mashed potatoes?
I still haven’t quite figured out what the end game is for these all-controlling, elite Dr. Evils. I mean, can’t people like the Rockefellers and Rothschilds, (public enemy #1 and #2 for conspiracy theorists) pretty much do and say what they want anyway? After world dominion takes place, then what?
No one seems to know other than it will involve globalism, shape shifting alien reptilians and lots of Free Masons. I sure hope I’m allowed to stick around so I can see what all the hubbub was about. I’ll be sure to blog about it if so.
While it’s tempting to dismiss this group as the Tin Hat Crowd being a few tools short of a toolbox, it would be a mistake to do so. Some very intelligent and otherwise normal people earnestly believe this stuff. I can’t for the life of me understand how they get sucked in to it, but it happens more frequently than you might think. Some interesting perspective on this can be found here.
Yes indeed, the world is a strange place and getting stranger by the minute. Maybe I should just get a dog. And a stroller.
Freedom Through Empowerment 
What’s behind this phenomenon is that people can’t cope with chaos. In the JFK case, people are disturbed that an envious loser with a used rifle could take down the President. It’s like a ‘safe zone’ emotionally to believe instead that a group more powerful than Kennedy was responsible. The same with 9/11: a ragtag band of fanatics couldn’t possibly attack New York and Washington: it had to be a group more powerful than NORAD. Most of these theories follow exactly the same dynamic.
It’s something like a reversal of traditional faith in Divine Providence.
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That is a great point Night Wind! Ordinary life where bad things happen to good people for no apparent reason (or such mundane ones) is too difficult to accept, so these crazy theories make more sense I guess.
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Oh…boy.
I am going back to my bunker.
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Lol Wally! They’ll find you there too!
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Oh..no they wont. And if they do they won’t be glad they did!
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😀
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They see you writing this.
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Darn…you are right Brandon! LOL
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Yet you have to wonder why the conspiracy theorists haven’t lost their faith in conspiracies by now. If the invisible puppet masters are so powerful and focused, why haven’t they accomplished their goals after all this time? It’s been many decades, at least. It doesn’t seem the conspiracy is very powerful after all. They’ve been on the brink of world domination for a long time!
I think some introspection is called for: WHY do I want to believe this, what about believing this gives me satisfaction?
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Exactly madblog! I don’t think these world dominion leaders are very good at their jobs, like you said they’ve been at it for eons.
A more serious point you bring up though is the satisfaction people get from believing this stuff. I guess it’s just one of many ways of coping with life and finding fulfillment from having “special knowledge” that others don’t.
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I think that is exactly it. It does put one in a higher rung than others, in the one’s mind at least!
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paranoia seems to go hand and hand in this fallen world of ours…
It would almost be funny, but for as you say Tricia, the numbers of such keep growing..
and it is why we, the family of Believers, are constantly reminded that we are not of this world—with it’s overtly paranoid fear and oppressive nature of stifling
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It does indeedJulie, seem to go hand in hand with unbelief. The further one moves from God, the more susceptible I think it leaves them to find fulfillment with stuff like this.
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Indeed, some people want to think that there is a Master Plan and that someone is in control; but they account for evil in the world by determining that the master planners are evil. How twisted is that? Genuine human conspiracies don’t run the world–they tend to turn out more like Watergate. J.
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Ha, that is an interesting perspective Salvageable, so true! Our government is way too incompetent too to keep such a thing secret.
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LOL! I so hear you. And I myself am a total conspiritress, at least when it comes to a willingness to listen when people try to sort out the world’s chaos. It’s not the facts or lack thereof that capture my interest, but the lengths people will go to make sense of things they don’t want to believe. Aliens is good example, there’s something about creation and the world around us that speaks to a Higher Intelligence, a Cosmic Handler of some sort. Hmmmm, who could that be? I know! Ancient aliens!
Ai yi yi. It is easier for some people to believe in little green men than it is to believe in God.
I thought I’d seen it all with the dogs in strollers, but the other day I saw a man with a cat in a front pack, as if he where carrying a baby. I admit, I stood there and stared and finally managed to give him a very uncertain and nervous smile.
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I know, right IB? I actually did a fair amount of research in to some of this stuff out of respect for a friend who believes it and you would not believe how elaborate it all gets.
God as the master planner? No, like you said, aliens! Lol. And men carrying cats like babies in front loading carriers? Now that is too much to take, make it stop……;)
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Great blog as usual Tricia!
One conspiracy you did not mention is “Global Warming” or “Climate Change” whichever they are calling it today.
Al Gore has made millions by lying to the sheeple. Just think a family that made a good business from oil is now lamenting the so called warming of the planet and the rising of the oceans. By the way Al is buying huge amounts of ocean front property just in case he’s wrong!
Access to the internet has a lot to do with the spread of conspiracy theories I think. Back in the day it was called gossip and passed around mouth to ear and a few newspaper articles or television. A person had a chance to “mull over” the latest item of interest whether learned from a neighbor, newspaper, or television.
Now, you can go from one theory to the next in the blink of an eye and pick and choose what to believe without using too many brain cells.
Don’t forget to hug a tree as your pushing your pet canine in the stroller!!!!
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Thanks Dennis and good comment as usual. Yup the whole global warming industry is loaded with falsehoods and people clinging to their beliefs as if it were a religion. I think in 50 or perhaps 100 years people will look back on this time in utter awe at our nonsense.
The Internet for sure too is a major player fueling the conspiracy nuts. I’m sure I’ve been fooled as well!
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I personally wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. As they say there is no smoke without fire. The other thing is that some of the worst historical atrocities have been shown to be 1. real and 2. homegrown simply by the release of information held for decades by the official secrets act. It would be kinda strange to believe that only people in the past were capable of these incredibly bizarre, evil, head scratching and inexpicable to the every day person activities.
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Well thanks for coming by and you are correct about fire and smoke and not ignoring truth. Believe me, I am right up there with those who are extremely skeptical about government motivations. Some theories, in my opinion though are just too much and take good people away from contributing to society because they are caught up battling a fantasy.
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Yes….and maybe even that is a trick! i.e hiding in plain sight. You put out the most ridiculous theories so that we couldn’t possibly believe them or they get mixed up in so many falsehoods that no one knows the truth anymore. Now, where’s my tinfoil hat? 🙂
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Lol! That’s a great point there! Sorry for the delayed response, you got sent to my spam folder for some reason.
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@Tricia
Interesting and timely post! We live in unsettling times. It is worth seeing how people respond and trying to understand.
When I was a teenager, America was top dog. We landed a man on the moon. Nothing seemed impossible for us. This is also when the news media started feeding us a bunch of stories about UFOs. Many people said they had seen one, and the Air Force investigated the matter. Were there UFOs? Well, yes. People do see things in the sky they do not understand. We are always seeing things we don’t understand and trying to make sense of what we see. Unfortunately, there are people who make their living trying to keep us confused and afraid.
Should we be afraid? There are, unfortunately, some truly dangerous people and real conspiracies. Look at the history books. Would be tyrants and actual tyrants have littered the world with their victims. Perhaps most of these would be tyrants and tyrants, because they find power in terror, do not keep all of their activities secret. Thus, the guy who runs Russia had his agents kill a man with a drop of radioactive poison, and the guy who runs North Korea had a relative murdered with a nerve agent. Still, Hitler, Stalin, and others have murdered millions out of the public view. And their wars? Those they excused with lies.
In this country, we have numerous factions battling for their cause. Some, believing the end justifies the means, will do whatever they can to “win”. Hence we have folks like http://projectveritasaction.com/ investigating and reporting their crimes. But how do we know who is telling the truth? Is it people like projectveritasaction, or do the people in the so-called mainstream media tell the truth? Whose bias is blinding them? Whose bias is driving them to manipulate us? How do we filter out our own prejudices?
I don’t have a simple answer, but I think the Bible is the place to start looking for answers. Why? Logical thought must have a foundation on which to rest, assumptions we can trust, “self-evident truths” which actually are true. Otherwise, everything we believe will be tarnished by the flawed axioms upon which we build our beliefs.
What does the Bible tell us about ourselves? We are sinners enslaved to sin. We are in need of salvation. What does the Bible command us to do? Love God and each other. If we understand the world is God’s Creation and ourselves as in need of salvation, we won’t make it our business to elevate ourselves at the expense of others. What would be the point? God is God. Because He loves us, we can love Him, but we cannot replace Him. Moreover, if we fear God, we won’t fear those who do not know God. Instead, because those are still lost souls in dire need, we will pity those who don’t as yet know and believe in Jesus.
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Your comment Tom wraps up the issue pretty nicely, thank you. I am a fan of the Project Veritas people as well and completely agree too that tyrants throughout history have done the most outrageous of things while under the cover of darkness and of protection from their cronies, media etc.. and I am not naive enough to think some pretty crazy things don’t happen here in the U.S. We must always be skeptical and watchful of the people that hold power and not afraid to speak out.
But, as I just mentioned to the editors journals, there is some crazy that is just too much, such as the belief that a very popular conspiracy theorist named David Icke is spreading about the world being governed by an alien hybrid species of shape shifting reptilians that have taken over the British Monarchy, The Vatican, the Free Masons, etc…and actually use pedoephelia somehow to further their cause. That kind of stuff is harmful and distracts from identifying and battling the true evil that does abound.
I do agree as well that God and the Bible are good places to start when measuring truth.
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@Tricia
Thank you.
There is some crazy that is just too much. Most off the people you mentioned tend to be regarded as ridiculous. “That kind of stuff is harmful and distracts from identifying and battling the true evil that does abound.” It distracts us from dealing with the so-called Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) which many in our government take seriously. In fact, many in our government add fuel to the fire of the SJWs. So it is we have Democrat Liberals running around accusing Donald Trump of colluding with the Russians to win the election.The appalling fact is that most of the mainstream media is invested in that scam, and they don’t even seem to need evidence. Meanwhile, the same folks compare Conservatives to tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorists.
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Yeah, the media has just been appalling in all of this, no disagreement there Tom. They’ve always been and the Right really needs to bake that in to all their strategic plans and predictions. Sadly not enough of them too.
Please note when I say “tin hat crowd” and talk down conspiracy theorists, I don’t mean those whose politics tend towards the paranoid on both the left and right. This I can live with and to an extant even agree with some of the time. It’s the crazy pants stuff I linked to in the post and surprisingly enough it’s not as fringe as you may think.
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Personally, I think these conspiracy theories give way too much credit to the conspirators. If they’re out there, they’ve been hanging around for over two centuries and haven’t gotten much done.
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I know, you’d think they’d have wrapped things up by now! 😉
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I deal with this in the health care field as well. Vaccinations is usually the topic that sets people off in a frenzy. I find there is often some level of TRUTH lost in the convoluted conspiracy. This level of truth is so diluted, people often choose not to even listen. All this does is reinforce the status quo preventing new TRUTHS from gaining acceptance. Those choosing to LISTEN and challenge BOTH old and new ideas usually finds a more honest reality in the end.
Great article as usual! Also like your new picture as well!
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Hey Jonathan, that is a very good point you make in that there usually is some truth involved or at least some area worth more exploration. Some unfortunately go completely off the rails so a lot, as you say gets lost.
Thanks for the compliment and for coming by! 🙂
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