• dx1@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Not attacking a strawman, I asked him to clarify and then talked about the context.

    “Conspiracy theorists” often look at an event that’s heavily covered by the media, that serves a perceived state interest, and investigate it further. Particularly if it receives disproportionate emphasis, like the various mass casualty events that were referenced so often they’re just referred to by dates (“9/11”, “7/7”, “Oct. 7”, etc.). Sandy Hook served a perceived state interest (popular disarmament), and people perceived “weird things about it”, so to speak, so interpretations of the event differed. Sometimes people try to explain the formation of these theories in terms of fulfillment of an emotional need (“they can’t accept this would just happen so they need to pretend someone is in control”), which is just inaccurate. They have a mental model, whether accurate in a given case or not, where there’s an antagonistic power structure of some kind orchestrating events or narratives for its own benefit, and are simply applying that lens to understand new events and narratives.

    At the end of the day, it is a fact that the U.S. government does things like this in general. You look at declassified CIA documents from the past, they are very open about overthrowing governments, manipulating public perception, and all sorts of other shady behavior. But they’re not open about them as they’re doing them. So we’re left with the difficulty of figuring it out for ourselves.

    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      This is the straw man:

      Way I see it, you have two competing overarching theories, “spontaneous order” and “orchestrated order”.

      You’re assuming that there is order and working backwards.

      Sometimes people try to explain the formation of these theories in terms of fulfillment of an emotional need (“they can’t accept this would just happen so they need to pretend someone is in control”), which is just inaccurate.

      You didn’t explain how that was inaccurate. You just said they were using a “mental model”. Why are they using that mental model, though? It’s because they need somebody to be in control.

      This has actually been studied. Sociologists have studied conspiracy theorists, and they are often people with control issues.

      • Maeve@kbin.earth
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        1 day ago

        I’d say that depends. Mkultra and Gulf of Tonkin absolutely happened. Pnac/project 2025 have likely been planned since Nixon or before.

        • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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          24 hours ago

          I like how you responded almost 3 months later and the content of your response has nothing to do with what I said.