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QotD: What Is and Is Not a Conspiracy Theory
To count as a conspiracy, a plan involving two or more parties must be covert. Not even Alex Jones would talk of a Democratic Party conspiracy to field a candidate who can beat Trump. The term “conspiracy theory” is to be used and understood accordingly. Had Lee Harvey Oswald spoken just before his death of a second gunman on the grassy knoll, one would not be a conspiracy theorist for taking him seriously. The information could still be wrong, but someone disagreeing with it would have to engage in actual refutation. The same goes for all who seek to dismiss talk of the ROK government’s confederation drive as a conspiracy theory.—Brian Reynolds Myers
B. R. Myers was speaking of conspiracy theories in responding to another writer and in relation to perceptions of the South Korean President. Yet his point is more widely applicable. It’s not a conspiracy theory if the people involved are coming right out and saying, “Yes, we did this, and here is why.” As a perfect example of this, we have several people testifying before Congress while admitting to crimes because Orange Man Bad. Those crimes need to be prosecuted.
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Gee, I wake up in the middle of the night, do my Quote of the Day thing, and the PIT breaks out.
There must be a conspiracy here…
From an old issue of TV Guide:
(7) (8) WELCOME BACK KOTTER [Color] — Horsheack gives Mr. Kotter a cryptic excuse note from Juan’s mom saying Epstein didn’t kill himself, and Mr. Woodman thinks Barbarino is somehow involved after seeing them on the Verrazano Bridge. [Rerun]
You were the one who asked a PITster to do the QotD. 😜
Every black man ever arrested was framed.
FIFY
But I heard he was pretty good with a slingshot.
And he was seen on the grassy knoll . . .
Now we need to make sure the Democrats get this message! They think they can reject ideas by calling them conspiracies and because they just don’t like them. Great post, @arahant!
Or at least they’re willing to try dismissing things this way.
The Mexicans have a saying: A secret is only a secret if just two people know it, and one of them is dead.
Mexicans suck at conspiracies.
When I said on this site some months ago that we’re seeing an attempted coup d’etat, a moderator redacted me for conspiracy theory.
But they’re good at keeping secrets.
Much more information has come to light in that time.
One thing about conspiracy theories is that people treat what is plausible as what definitely happened. Sometimes they start as “sure, that might have happened” and jump to “this is definitely what happened” without much evidence. To expand on @garymcvey‘s example, is it plausible to believe the police might frame a black man. It is plausible to think Mark Furman might have wanted to frame OJ if he could. But more evidence should be required to act on those suspicions.
That said, the opposite problem is people dismissing plausible theories as being without evidence before their is any chance for evidence to be obtained.
Strange, because we know from e-mails people were working together against Trump.
No, actually I was able to provide a list of links of various eminent personages who also said it was a coup d’etat.
What, Hillary going thru two levels of cutout to buy fake Russian oppo, then Brennan and Comey turning it into a secret intel investigation, and McCain and Reid hiding in there somewhere – this isn’t covert?
A “conspiracy” is two or more people working in concert to do something illegal.
Using the constitutionally-defined process for removing a President from office is therefore not a conspiracy.
(Aside: I’m not convinced that it has to be covert to be a conspiracy. It merely has to be illegal. Conspirators who don’t cover their tracks may be fools, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t conspirators.)
That’s the definition of a criminal conspiracy. Planning a surprise birthday party is a conspiracy.
I was thinking more of the Democrats and media (but I repeat myself) saying that he is: illegitimately elected, a Russian agent, mentally incompetent, and so forth. I guess there’s no reason there can’t be covert operations taking place along the overt ones.
I remember that book! There may even be a copy in our house, but if so it hasn’t seen the light of day for the past 20 years or so. If I remember correctly, the footnotes/endnotes were to a bunch of newspaper clippings, which made it less than impressive.
A coup d’etat is an illegal or unconstitutional seizure of power. People working together to use the constitutionally-defined process for removing a President from office does not qualify. One needs to prove that the people involved knowingly co-ordinated illegal means to do so.
When Malaysia Flight 370 went down without a trace, our daughter’s Irish friend made what I thought was a crack about the U.S. knowing where everything was. Mrs R later pointed out to me that he wasn’t joking. He was serious. He genuinely thought the CIA et al kept track of everything. It was a revelation to him to learn that the U.S. security agencies didn’t know.
Going by that definition, then accusing folk of conspiracy is no big deal.
None of those guideline eliminate you being the one who shot JFK.
My favorite nut during that incident was the guy who kept saying that the NGIA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) had pictures of the plane and wasn’t releasing them. See that hyphen in there? NGA did that so they could be like everyone else in the beltway and have a three letter abbreviation. At least that’s the scuttlebutt/joke in the intelligence community. Said nut didn’t know enough about his subject to use the correct abbreviation.
They did plenty of illegal things, starting with the fake Steele Dossier and changing the wording of a FISA warrant.
IIRC from my law school days there can be an illegal conspiracy to do a legal act.