Anna Merlan's "Republic of Lies" Explores Fixation with Conspiracy Theories

For about ten thousand years now, human societies everywhere had haves and have-nots. Transition from have to have-not could be swift and brutal. The thing that you stopped having could be your wealth, or your liberty, or your life. Transition from have-nots to haves was an arduous process, most times multi-generational, and most times unsuccessful.

In such societies, survival required alliances, sometimes side switching, and most surely secrecy, misdirection and deceit. Conspiracies were the rule, not the exception. Actually there were no exceptions, there were only conspiracies everywhere.

The ability to guess what's going on was then a huge advantage, and you bet evolution has selected for that. Could evolution have erred on the side of being too trigger-happy? Little doubt about that. Innocent until proven guilty, benefit of doubt, right to due process, habeas corpus, etc, were all luxuries that few could afford until very recent times.

The fact that some people believe in conspiracy theories should not puzzle anyone. This is our natural state. Education and culture is how you exit this natural state, but even then, you are never completely immune to believing a good story. At least I know I'm not. Maybe I'm in a minority...

I've never understood why it is controversial to say that some people seek fame, power, and money using dubious methods, and that those people might form social clubs to do it together. They might even not want to publish it because they know most people would think poorly of their methods... And I think that has been going on for a long time, at all sorts of levels.

I guess that would be a "conspiracy", even if it isn't little green aliens body-snatching. I think having a reasonable conversation about it isn't impossible. We just have to avoid both extremes, the "little green aliens" theorists and the "nope, nothing to see here, move along" crowd.

It’s ok to ask questions regardless of how outrageous they seem. When you are met with censorship and physical barriers are put in you way, there is probably something there.

The Illuminati is real, there are many blood oath secret societies and our presidents, most all of them, have been members of one, there is an agenda 21, agenda 2030, Vietnam gulf of Tonkin was fake, the sinking of the lusintania was staged Martin Luther king was killed by the government... these are all real, factual, provable things that are considered at one point to be conspiracy theories.

We have to be vigilant and we have to think for ourselves. We have to be able to ask the difficult questions.