I have a virulent disdain for conspiracy theories.  This stems from my youth where I imbibed a variety of conspiracies from my community, especially from my little church.  There was always the impending doom of “the communist conspiracy” that sought to overtake our country.  And on that note, I owned my own copy of John Stormer’s magnum opus, None Dare Call it Treason.  There were the “godless atheists” who wanted to destroy Christianity.  And there was a hefty dollop of anti-Catholicism conspiracy—the Pope waiting in a submarine off the coast on the eve of the 1960 election, ready to step ashore and take control of the government should Kennedy win.  And John Birch Society chatter was often in the air.  The “Tri-lateral Commission” was supposedly promoting “big government,” thus facilitating the ogre of them all, a “one-world government” that was an essential part of the “end-times” scenario.

Let me skip then to the 1990’s and Bill Clinton.  One of my all-time favorites was the notion then that Clinton was operating a drug-smuggling operation out of the tiny village of Mena, Arkansas.  And, most recently there is the falderal about O’Bama being a Muslim and not being an American citizen.

So, I have thrown the baby out with the bathwater and roundly dismiss anything that smells of “conspiracy theory.”  And I do this at my own peril; for, true enough, “conspiracies” do take place from time to time.

(Btw, one of the best books I’ve ever come across on this subject is Richard Hofstadner’s The Paranoid Style of American Politics)