> The other question, is why conspiracists never notice these
> things, either. Perhaps open conspiracies aren't sexy enough - they'd
> rather
> be battling secret subversives for the soul of the world. Who knows,
> certainly the psychology of the crazed is not my area of expertise.
I think that's basically right. I would put it this way: the idea that they battling secret subversives for the soul of the world is what boosts their self-image. They want to feel that they are smarter than everyone else -- that they can see more deeply into reality than anyone else. Basically the same frame of mind that motivates those folks who pester university physics professions with cranky "papers" proving that Einstein was wrong.
Like the Einstein debunkers, they can be recognized fairly easily by the fact that, while they claim to have superior insight to anyone else's, they have not bothered to master the fundamentals of the subject -- in this case, the economic and political realities of the world power situation.
But one must also concede that even apparent "kooks" may be saying something we "saner" folks need to listen to. I am somehow reminded of someone like Dostoyevsky, who steadily moved over his life into a more and more repellant (to us lefties) political position, but nevertheless had some very penetrating things to say about political psychology, especially the political psychology of those who consider themselves revolutionaries. What are the Kennedy assassination, 9/11, etc., conspiracy theorists saying? I'm not sure, but it may be that the shiny, rational, Marxist-tinged image of things that most of us are comfortable with masks a real world that teems with creepy-crawly creatures that we are not at all comfortable with acknowledging the existence of.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt