These are some pretty heavy questions. You could brush them off as the neurotic preoccupations of an individual who thinks too much about thinking too much, or you could consider them for yourself. Do they really sound so unreasonable? In order to maintain the facade of a quasi–democratic society, it would be clever for governments to allow partial truths to circulate. It would be clever for governments to occasionally admit to ineptitude and crucify a few useless minion scapegoats along the way. It would be even cleverer to create a whole pop culture surrounding such conspiracy theories, with movies like ’The Manchurian Candidate’, ’Conspiracy Theory’, or ’The Skulls’ that help create a fictitious aura of movie magic. Essentially, the message is: Conspiracy theories have no basis in fact, you witless peasants! They are as real as Freddy Krueger! (Does the concept of such a movie monster become less unreal after one considers the grotesque serial killers that line the annals of American criminal history?)

Casting aside conspiracy theories as ’crazy talk’ is a nice way of discrediting what is uncomfortable to believe, or even to think about. Obviously alternative explanations aren’t one hundred percent factual, but the point is to at least consider the possibility of an alternative. And sadly, without a working knowledge of basic world history, these alternative possibilities begin to seem outlandish. FOX News can get away with absurdity after absurdity, simply because a lot of people have nothing else to reference. Would it have been easier to sell the calamitous war in Iraq if it was common knowledge that Saddam’s Ba’athist Party had been ushered into power by the CIA in the coup of February 1963? Would people have created more of an anti–war ruckus if they had known that the Ba’athists had come into power at the expense of the Iraqi Communist Party? Although it was a political party democratically elected by the Iraqi citizens themselves, it proved too much of a nuisance for the CIA. Would the simplistic war cries of ’Democracy!’ have been received with more skepticism if it was known how ambiguously American foreign policy treated such a concept? Why and how does the media then dare to imply that the Iraqi people have kindergartener–esque issues with the self-government?

As Mark Twain once observed, history doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes. And considering that Jay z is the standard for master lyricism amongst my peers, it sure looks to me like an awful epidemic of tone deafness around these parts. But then again, what do I know? I’m the conspiracy theorist nut–job.

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ANAM MAJEED is a Canadian writer for the Western Muslim Magazine where this was first published.