This helps a lot, because there are more people out there than you think who’d be willing to accept CTs if only they didn’t feel like they were talking to lone nuts or crashing bores.

I call myself a “conspiracy hobbyist” when talking with people about CT. I encourage questions and counterarguments, and when someone tries to get dirty with me I bring it back to perspective. Most conspiracy theorists are too busy trying to prove their theories to notice that they have totally lost their audience midway.

In short, I invent my own language, particular to my strengths and weaknesses. Calling it “deep politics” would only work for me if someone brought it up to me in those terms– then I’d use it as a halfway point for both sides to meet.

I think everyone who indulges in conspiracy theory is on their own concerning how to represent it.

Deep Politics

A couple people brought up the phrase “deep politics” as a euphemism/u [...]

About “conspiracy theory” Hecht says:

“This phrase is among the tireless workhorses of establishment discourse. Without it, disinformation would be much harder than it is. ‘Conspiracy theory’ is a trigger phrase, saturated with intellectual contempt and deeply anti-intellectual resentment. It makes little sense on its own, and while it’s a priceless tool of propaganda, it is worse than useless as an explanatory category.”

“Deep Politics” is much more palatable — it implies a depth, and hidden activity, without implying an overarching cabal of puppeteers.

Back to what I was saying about Pynchon and cultural narcissism: the receptors of media messages often times read into the messages more things than are really there. I know that I can parse a simple Pepsi ad into many different readings, all of them with conspiratorial/sinister overtones, but ultimately it’s an ad for a beverage.

The pitfall of CT thinking (see how I’m already “reclaiming” the phrase “conspiracy theory” through abbreviation?) that I always come across is how to divorce my own cultural narcissism from what’s being presented to me. In short, how do I know when I am stumbling across conspiracies and when I am merely making free associations based upon my own experience and knowledge?

I mentioned Pynchon’s “Lot 49″ because Oedipa Maas, the novel’s hero, is never sure if there really is a conspiracy against her or not. Pynchon writes the novel in such a way as to leave the ultimate conclusion up to the reader a la “The Lady or The Tiger”.

Your five questions are a good starting point, true to the Socratic Method. When in doubt, ask questions, and never settle for easy answers.