Rethinking some conspiracy theories

The phrase has entered into normal conversation so strongly that every time someone utters the word conspiracy, it has to be followed by the additional word; theory. As I had always understood, conspiracy theories were easy, wild and ludicrous explanations of an otherwise obvious and clear fact. I always believed and to some extent still do that conspiracy theories were lazy explanations to all things we did not understand and refused to do some mental work to make sense of. But a friend of mine who teaches at a Las Vegas university recently joked about something that was quite shocking to me actually. We were talking about Epstein conspiracy theories as to how he might have been murdered instead of him committing suicide and how he might be still alive as some social media noise seems to suggest. His joke was that pretty much all the conspiracy theories he had heard since his school days turned out to be realities with the passage of time. When 9/11 happened, there were many conspiracy theories around the internet, which was still quite young, that this was an inside job and perhaps elements of the US government were complicit in it. And that this was done for the purpose of achieving goals such as the invasion of Afghanistan and other related issues. Time has proven a few things not to be just conspiracy theories: yes, elements of the US government were very much involved in it by allowing this to happen. The CIA knew of the plane hijackers and their plan and yet allowed these guys to go in and out of the United States before carrying out the attacks. Also, the Israelis knew of this attack but that information had been kept away from public sight. When Iraq was getting invaded, I personally remember that those who considered themselves smart kept repeating this mantra that the Bush administration was doing it for oil. There were also those who argued that Bush was doing it not because of Al Qaeda or WMDs as his administration was making it to be about, but rather that it was the unfinished job from the days of his father's presidency. Both of those rationales sounded perfectly reasonable and even intelligent. There was a small group of conspiracy theorists, which was basically saying that this was all done because the Zionists wanted it. This sounded completely ludicrous and smelled of a badly conceived conspiracy theory thought up by some unintelligent person. Today, we know that that is the only true, reliable and accurate explanation to why Bush went to war with Iraq while in the middle of fighting a major war with Afghanistan. Seems to be that the intelligent explanations are actually lazy mental work. I grew up in the age where I read about how the old method of the spy agencies was to use honeytraps to compromise powerful and important people in a government or a large corporation in order to not only extract secrets from them but also to turn them into workers for the spy agency. We were told that it used to be the method of the erstwhile Soviet spy agency called the KGB. The documentary films made about that topic all sounded as complete conspiracy theories about the methods. Turns out the very method was that of the Israeli spy agency Mossad by using Jeffrey Epstein who was luring powerful people in America to visit him on his island, have sex with teenage girls and in the process they were getting video-recorded. Those compromising videos were later being used to extract benefits from these powerful men to help one country; Israel. To think that a tiny country in the Middle East would install their spy in America and fund him to control the mighty America sounds like the most bizarre conspiracy theory except it is what actually was happening. And perhaps still it. Maybe Epstein is still alive. Maybe the moonlanding never happened either. I don't know what the truth is anymore.

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