Paranoid Android

I told myself that I wouldn't get all political and ranty on here...other than ranting about mild things like my family or the lines at Wal Mart or something nice and innocuous like that.  But here's the thing.  I just signed onto Facebook and within 2 minutes, I saw no less than 4 posts from my friends insinuating that the Boston Marathon bombing was some giant conspiracy.  After I quit slamming my face against the floor, I started thinking about this.  Then I had to go take a shower because that's how I roll when I get all enraged.  The flash of coherent brilliance that I had in the shower went down the drain with the shampoo suds, but I still have the ideas swirling around my head...so I'm trying to capture them & get them onto the computer before I get too mad to type.  So forgive the run-on sentences and "we'll get back to my point in a minute" segues. 
This is what I came up with:
Humanity has always had an...affinity...for conspiracy theories.  And I guess it would be all conspiracy theory friendly of me to be all THERE ARE SO MANY MORE OF THESE OUT THERE NOW THAN THERE EVER HAVE BEEN BEFORE! Because, in all honesty, that was my gut reaction.  But, much like conspiracy theories, my gut reaction was just fucking wrong...as gut reactions usually are when pitted against historical data. 
These go back for forever.  There was the "Jews poisoned wells and gave us all the plague" theories.  There were the "Jews eat our children" theories, the Knights Templar conspiracies and the whole "witches are magical" theories of the Middle Ages. 
I mean, the obvious more recent ones are the moon landing, JFK's assassination, the idiot Holocaust deniers, the 9/11 conspiracy people, the Death Panel people, the Newtown shooting, and now the Boston Marathon bombing.  Then there are the just bat-shit nuts ones like the Roswell alien cover-up, the "the Masons are running everything" one, the AIDS in vending machines one, the Obama is a Muslim/Kenyan/Communist/Fascist whatever one, and everything that your Grandma forwards to you, among others. 
It's easy to see how these things get started; there's the natural human inclination to see patterns where there aren't actually patterns.  Take Monsanto, for instance.  I have a BURNING hatred for those people and their policies.  It would be oh so easy for me to be all "they're giving us and cute little goats cancer ON PURPOSE" but in reality, the truth is probably much closer to "they just want to make as much money as they can and just flat don't give a shit about who they hurt while doing it" than it is to "they're MURDERING US ALL BECAUSE...UM....BECAUSE...." and that's where the argument breaks down for pretty much all of the conspiracy theories.
The first real problem I see with the majority of these is what I like to call the "why the fuck would this be real" factor.   Why the fuck with the US government (or whomever) fake a moon landing, fake a terrorist attack, fake a school shooting?  To what end?  If the answer to this question sounds paranoid and bat-shit nuts, then you're probably just fucking wrong about the conspiracy.
The next problem I see is that all of these conspiracies would take hundreds if not thousands (and millions, in the Holocaust theory) of fellow conspirators to pull off.  Here's the deal.  If I tell Amyme to please for the love of GOD don't tell anybody that I have a trap door in my uterus that opens into a parallel dimension and it only opens on every other Wednesday for 48 seconds, then NO SHIT she's going to immediately hang up the phone and call either Tammy or Charity or her HUSBAND or somebody and tell them.  Who will then go "well...isn't that something?" and turn around and tell someone else, and before you know it, people are lining up in my yard to see my interdimentional uterus portal.  All because Amyme couldn't keep a secret.  Gee...THANKS, AMYME!
It's a fact that the majority of criminals get busted because they're idiots.  They leave fingerprints, or DNA or witnesses or a note explaining their intent...or if they DO manage to "get away" with a crime, they then brag about how wicked smart they are by ripping off that bank or punching that guy in the face or whatever, and they end up...um...getting caught because they OPENED THEIR MOUTHS.  And this is just for people that like mug somebody or stab someone or steal my Tampons.  Now imagine, if you will, someone rolling up on you and being all "Me and Bob were thinking about planning and executing this plan...we're going to rent some Muslims and get them to fly some planes into the WTC, killing a few thousand civilians and then we're going to make sure to cover our tracks so that we can in turn go to war so that...um.....well....just because me and Bob thought it would be exciting."  What would YOU do in this situation?  Sane people would immediately be all "you and Bob are psychopaths, please leave my office."  Other psychopaths might be all "...go on...?"  But I think the majority of people lean more towards sane and wouldn't stand for that shit.  But imagine I guess that your friend is a big guy or has a gun or something and MAKES you do it.  Fine.  Now you're part of a conspiracy.  What then?  Again, if you're coerced into doing something like this, you're FOREVER a security risk.  Would you not stash information somewhere, start a blog, write a book, tell your husband/wife/dog/stranger at the nail salon, have a deathbed confession?  So all of these people unwillingly involved would have to be watched FOREVER.  and who would watch them?  "Hey Jimmy, I need you to keep an eye on Bill to make sure that he doesn't...uh...publish anything...or talk to anybody...or...um....yeah...but we can't tell you WHY or WHAT you're guarding against, ok?"  That makes even LESS sense, or on the other hand, you'd have to tell the guarders what they're guarding against, and then BOOM there are even MORE people involved in the conspiracy.
Ridiculous.
The last part is mostly for the government-is-evil conspiracies.  Well beyond "why the fuck would they do this" is the idea that your government is DIABOLICAL ENOUGH & SMART ENOUGH TO DO THIS SHIT.  Seriously.  These are the people that tell their office that they're "hiking the Appalachian Trail" and then park their car at the airport and catch a flight to Argentina to cheat on their wife.  These are the people that think Rape Sperm is real.  These are the people that think it's a GREAT idea to fuck an intern, get man-jam all over her dress and then be all "I'm sorry, Monica who....?"  Our elected officials are stupid.  How can people that think that the same fucking moron that thinks that my body "secrets a certain secretion" when raped is capable of carrying out a VAST conspiracy that is...y'know...brilliant?  And before you say that they're just acting like morons so we'll let our guard down, well....NOBODY is that good an actor.   
This last one...the one that had me shouting at my computer earlier is about the Boston bombing.  This Alex Jones douchebag...I'm not even going to paraphrase this asshole.  Here:  http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/false-flag-alex-jones-boston-marathon-bombing-family-231742713.html
Are you done throwing up into your own lap now?  "Off duty" NAVY SEALS were involved in BOMBING AMERICAN CIVILIANS...so that the TSA could feel you up at your next Baseball game.  No shit.  This is this asshat's logic.  And there were people posting this bullshit on FB and going "he has a point."  No people.  No he doesn't have a fucking point.  He's a hack, or he's insane, or he's just a giant douchebag that wants to see how many people will watch his little youtube news channel.  Whatever he is, he does NOT have a point.
A few days ago, 2 women and 1 little boy got blown the fuck up while watching people jog down the street at one of the most famous marathons in the world.  It's a goddamn tragedy.  We need to find whoever did it and set them on fire.  End of story.  A few months ago, a sick fuck wandered into an elementary school and shot 20 little kids.  It was not a "hoax" so that "Obama can take your guns."  It was a goddamn tragedy.  The UN is not coming for your guns either, by the way.  NOBODY WANTS YOUR FUCKING GUNS UNLESS YOU'RE NUTS AND/OR A CRIMINAL.  Obama was born in Hawaii, there are no Death Panels, 11 million people died in the Holocaust, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, and Jews did not poison the fucking wells.
I don't think that we should take everything we see on CNN or FNC seriously.  I think blindly believing every line of horseshit we're fed is ridiculous.  But to go to the opposite extreme and just assume that there's a giant cover-up behind EVERYTHING and that EVERYBODY IS OUT TO GET YOU ALL THE TIME is just as ridiculous.
Carl Sagan said "It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out."  I think that's a good rule of thumb.