Sorry Michael, understanding takes some powers of logic. If you believe in everything you believe in nothing--and will understand nothing.

A conspiracy theorist builds a house of cards, then challenges everybody else to disprove every card. This makes no sense.   Pardon us if rational people decline to play that game, which is nothing but a black hole of time. The rest of us have a life to live.

Talk of a spectrum of conspiracy theories, including the government's own position, says nothing except that you insist on maintaining maximum paranoia.

Conspiracies obviously do exist--most obvious recent one was the Bush administration's orchestrated propaganda campaign to convince the US public to back the Iraq war it planned.

But some Mudcat posters remind me of what was said of some economists:   they predicted 11 of the last 3 recessions.