I complete agree with Kathy Shaidle’s memorable saying

“Conspiracy theories are history for stupid people.”

Conspiracies do happen. The murder of Caesar was a conspiracy. So was the murder of Jesus. And Lincoln. The Holocaust was a conspiracy. 9/11 was a conspiracy–but not one involving Bush or Mossad. So, for a little while, was Watergate.

But here’s the thing: we know all about them. Why? Because conspiracies to commit big crimes are inherently unstable. They unravel and the whole thing gets exposed. Bad people are mainly about Looking out for Numero Uno. When things go sour, they run to their lawyers, head for the border or get caught in complicated lies. What we never see is massive conspiracies which, of necessity, have to involve hundred or even thousands of co-conspirators, lasting for years and years and years with nobody being none the wiser. People who still believe, after all these years and after the multiple demonstrations of common sense, that some Grand Government Conspiracy killed JFK or that Bush ordered 9/11 or that Roswell aliens are sitting in a freezer in Area 51 are simply not in touch with reality. It’s due, not to evidence (“lighting a candle in my hamster cage scientifically proves that the Twin Towers were destroyed by controlled detonations!”) but to a sort of aesthetic judgment which says, “This small a cause can’t be the explanation for so gigantic an effect. One chinless weasel with a rifle and a chip on his shoulder can’t have cause so much suffering for so many millions of people.”) But, thanks to technology, he could. Just as, thanks to technology, 19 guys with a little coordinating, some dumb luck, and the ineptitude of the federal government, could accomplish what the combined might of all the Axis powers could not have done 60 years ago. Technology allows fewer and fewer people to do bigger and bigger acts of destruction. Live in reality and face that. Stop fighting vast phantom conspiracy scenarios from comic books and spy movies.

I say all this because I’m dropping a note to let you know that if you feel the urge to fill my comboxes with conspiracy theories and you find those theories unceremoniously deleted, this is not due to the Jews, the CIA, the Masons, the One World Government, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, the Skull and Bones club, Communist infiltration, Communist subversion, or the intenational Communist conpsiracy to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids. It’s due to me, acting as lone gunman and shooting your posts dead with my high powered delete button.

Be warned.

PS: Of course, I do make an exception for all Elvis Conspiracies: