Conspiracy theorists are often regarded as raving lunatics who don’t know what they are talking about. While this may be true for a large number of cases, there are also quite a few where they were right. Perhaps if the American population (or the world in general) was more educated on confirmed conspiracies committed throughout our history, everyone would be a little more open-minded and willing to hear out other’s beliefs.
An American study was conducted between 1932 and 1972 that later came to be known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. This infamous experiment was conducted with the intent to justify the treatment of syphilis in black people by proving that it doesn't affect them any differently than it does white people. The problem comes in when it was clearly shown that penicillin cured syphilis. Not only did they continue on with the experiments, leaving all of the test subjects untreated, they did not even tell them about penicillin at all. This is only made worse by the fact that the disease spread to the test subject’s wives and children. Eventually it got to a point where they were just studying the progression of the disease just for the hell of it. This racism and breach of scientific ethics, thankfully, led to an overhaul in moral standards regarding human testing. Unfortunately, many more people had to die in a similar experiment that occurred in Guatemala (click the link for more information on that).
Another large-scale conspiracy that most people are fully aware of but choose to ignore is the problem with the Catholic Church. Over the last couple of decades they have had a history of priests molesting children. These incidents are not that rare, and the Church has actually gone to rather enormous lengths to cover up these allegations so their image is not tarnished. Oftentimes, these priests are simply moved to a different district under the jurisdiction of a bishop, where they would molest again. There was even a special kind of priest called a “cleaner” who was sent to take the place of a priest who was caught and transferred. As if that wasn’t enough, the Church has done nothing of use to help stop this situation, mainly because they do not understand the true nature of pedophilia. This counts as a conspiracy but it is one that everyone seems to take lying down.
Another gross example includes Project MKULTRA. It was a covert CIA program in the 50’s and 60’s designed to research mind control through various drugs (especially LSD), using unknowing Americans as test subjects. The drugs eventually caused the people to go crazy, sometimes suicidal. The research has seemingly stopped but much of the documents related to it have been destroyed, causing it to become the basis for other (unconfirmed) sub-theories such as the Unabomber being one of the Project’s test subjects. Some (admittedly credible, if circumstantial) evidence does indeed suggest Ted Kaczynski participated in some kind of MKULTRA experiment during his time at Harvard, but again, we'll never know the full truth.
Interestingly enough, the Watergate scandal (a conspiracy that any decently intelligent American is aware of) actually serves to discredit government-orchestrated conspiracies (that is, conspiracies that are orchestrated by the government, not made up by them). If the federal government was unable to keep a simple scheme to wiretap an office secret, how could they possibly orchestrate something as huge as the 9/11 attacks without anyone finding out and blowing the whistle before it ever went down? Regardless, there have been numerous conspiracies committed throughout human history. Others include: the Business Plot in 1933, the COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), the Iran-Contra affair, and Project 112.
People should keep an open-mind regarding conspiracy theories. With that said, conspiracy theorists should be just as open-minded to the idea that they might be wrong because often times they are.
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Indented paragraphs, Nick. They make things much easier to read.
ReplyDeletethats weird...they were indented the last time i was on here 0.o one sec
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