America has a problem.  A conspiracy problem.  From the beginning of the country and way into our extended future they will be around.  As I type, GOP members are claiming a secret cabal is out to destroy the FBI.  First off, they are wrong, and second off they are trying to discredit the intelligence agency because it believes in the rule of law.  The claim that a cabal is out to destroy the President is outlandish, out right stupid, and dangerous.  Devin Nunes, head of the House Intelligence Committee and lackey to our president, has gone out of his way to break rules and norms to acquiesce the breaking of laws for this president.  This modern day fiasco starts with Russia.  It will end with Russia.  I get ahead of myself.  

Since the conception of this little experiment called America, conspiracy theories have been woven into the fabric of our society.  Conspiracies are when an uninformed majority or minority believes in falsehoods giving it quasi-credit for everything but not truly wanting to believe the outright truth.  The Founding Fathers were accused of being a secret society of Masons.  People believed that the Freemasons ran the country which was not true.  The Freemasons used their lodges to discuss topics that were considered taboo at the time.  From those lodges gave birth to independent thought throughout the repressed colonies of the British and Spanish crown.  Great liberators such as George Washington and San Martin would frequent these lodges.  As time wore on in American history, the conspiracy “that Freemasons run the country” faded.

The USS MAINE was blown up in the harbor of Havana in 1898, probably due to a magazine catching on fire and eventually exploding.  Conspiracies theories were abound!  On the American side as well as the Cuban/Spanish side.  It eventually led to a major war by the way of “Yellow Journalism”.  Yellow Journalism describes the sensationalism of news in order to drive up circulation and, in this case, fanned the flames of war fever against the Spanish.  A tragedy in the harbor of Cuba involving U.S. servicemen soon gave way to a major push of conspiracies that the Spanish blew up the MAINE.  Wild rumors and conspiracies were rampant thanks in due to William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers ongoing circulation fight with Joseph Pulitzer .  The United States then went to war.  In this case, a far fetched conspiracy led to a land grab war that increased the power of the United States.  

Fast forward to the 1963 and the assassination of Kennedy.  From that spawned many conspiracy theories such as the “magic bullet”  or a second shooter.  The Warren commission which was a bipartisan commission (yes both political parties can work together when rational players are involved) did extensive work and found that their was one shooter in Lee Harvey Oswald.    After 9/11 many wild conspiracies bloomed.  Some suggested that the attacks were an inside job, as George W. Bush came up with a plan to destroy buildings and kill citizens of that magnitude. After September 11th 2001, there was a bipartisan commission and they did great work and produced the 9/11 report.  The country can have Democrats and Republicans work together to pursue the truth.

Why do people look to outlandish ideas that truly make no sense but only to a certain impressionable group within the nation?  The creation of conspiracies is to sow confusion on a topic and rush popular opinion to ignore the answers right in front of them.  Conspiracies are created by people that cannot accept the truth, is just that simple. 

Perhaps, it is easier to believe in something so outlandish as it eases the conscience of the group.  The truth is always harder.  Russia did meddle with our elections and will continue to disrupt our elections.  Russian bots on Facebook and Twitter continue to muddy the waters of perception and warp the truth.  No secret societies, no Illuminati and definitely no secret alien cadre, that last one is a shame, as, I Want To Believe.