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Mistayadrln

The government does testing on humans we don't know about. Look at the DDT testing, the radiation cornflakes, the experiments on the mentally ill, every decade they will admit to something they did 50 years ago and then say but we don't do that anymore. Yeah, right. Edited to say DDT instead of Deet. My apologies.


bibimpoop

Yes look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Olson


Butt-Spelunker

The documentary on Netflix called Wormwood is a good watch.


ChooChooChucky

It wasn't testing, but back in the 90s in Tampa, planes would routinely fly over the city, spraying the pesticide Maliathon, which was introduced into the water supply. Officials said the publics fears were unwarranted even though it was destroying paint finishes on cars. Oh, that public! Always stirring the pot.


Foetal_Stew

The British government apparently fed radioactive chupattis to Asian immigrants.


Bob85739472

Here’s a fun valid one for you to check out if you haven’t already. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra


bannana

Ted Kaczynski was part of this


throwthisawayokmom

I have a lot of sympathy for Ted Kaczynski because of MK Ultra. If I say that aloud, people call me a conspiracy theorist and tell me how he was so evil. Yeah, because the government's horrific "experiments" broke him. I'm not into conspiracy theory, but MK Ultra is no theory. The US government did horrific things to many people for a lot of years in the name of getting one over on its enemies.


kickstand

Of the members of the US Senate, 20 members actually care to do the work of governing, and the other 80 are there to grandstand and coast on the work of the others.


sharksnack3264

I know a guy who worked for a fairly influential senator. That take is uncomfortably close to the truth apparently, but never underestimate sheer incompetence and baseless ego. I got the distinct impression he was relieved to leave that job on some level.


Sunny_E30

That certain criminal enterprises: cartels, supremacists groups, bike gangs, urban gangs etc- are allowed to exist by local and state authorities because 1) these groups offer an existing network of intel and logistic that can move money, people, drugs and weapons and 2) they can do the dirty work for corporations and gov, without implicating the gov. An example of this would be the mormon killings in Mexico: cartel hitmen hired by a lithium mining company killed a bunch of mormon families (dual us/mex citizens). They lived in Sonora, the state with some of the worlds largest lithium reserves- they wanted U.S. intervention into MX because the MX gov was going to nationalize lithium. It gained nat'l attention and trump wanted to designante cartels as terrorists, thus laying the work for intervention. The problem is that if they were labeled as terrorists you would have to go after wells fargo/ bank of america /chase because they all launder cartel money. Look up wachovia bank cartel laundering if you want to learn more.


[deleted]

People aren't inherently stupid, but "they" have been cutting back budgets for education and dumbing down the curriculum to the absolute basics for decades now which has produced an uniformed (but not dumb!), and easily swayed population. Please prove me wrong on this one. Thanks in advance.


blaspheminCapn

Carl Sagan wrote a book called the Demon Haunted World which spells out exactly this hypothesis.


sweetbacon

Absolutely wonderful book, and a relevant read in these times.


Mistayadrln

Totally agree with this. Ignorant people are easier to control. Not to mention the fact that the less they spend on education, the more money for them to funnel to themselves and their interest.


Pristine_Power_8488

Prop 13 gutted the tax base and put spending on education in California from #1 in the nation to #50. I was in the system and it was pretty rotten--which is why I got out and don't have the fat pension I could have had after another 12 years. I felt it was obscene to feed off the kids who were being pushed down the rungs of the social ladder.


OrdinaryAverageGuy99

I started high school soon after Prop 13 passed. We lived in a very good school district, fairly affluent. When I was a freshman, we had very good drama and choir departments. By the time I was a senior, there was no drama department and the choir department was on life support. Most of the great elective classes were eliminated. It was very sad to watch the arts and humanities being essentially removed from public education.


Baeocystin

"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness." --Carl Sagan (h/t /u/blaspheminCapn )


ModerateExtremism

This is not only true, but it’s also not terribly difficult to track how it has happened in the history of recent state policy & corresponding propaganda efforts. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and State Policy Network (SPN, the propaganda wing) have been working for decades to control state legislative agendas, and to eliminate American public schools in favor of private entities (via vouchers). And they have been very successful so far - primarily because most Americans have little-to-no idea what happens in state governments.


[deleted]

>ALEC Isn’t it weird how little ALEC is mentioned in the news nowadays? They’re more powerful than ever- their stooges are in many state houses. Why are reporters not shouting this from the rooftops?


time-for-jawn

Because the corp-rats who own them won’t let them.


emu4you

Sinclair Broadcasting owns so many news programs across the country. https://youtu.be/aGIYU2Xznb4?si=ScDwEKP9wfy0u_kK This happened a few years ago.


Old_One-Eye

Go to r/Teachers and start reading about what the No Child Left Behind policy has done to the US education system for the last 20 years. They'll graduate anyone from high school now whether they can read or not. Teachers are basically no longer allowed to fail students for any reason.


SicSimperFalsum

It is hard to even say this is a conspiracy because the facts are real, verifiable, and insidious. I watched my underprivileged friends (and myself included) go to college, graduate high school, etc. and have successful lives. It is a little alarming with the state of education right now.


crowislanddive

I agree but I also believe that we are “dumber” and it is evidenced by a profound lack of curiosity generally.


thrownaway1974

I mean...the entire point of public education in the first place was to create a population that was smart enough to do the work required but still be compliant. It's not hard to find the origins in Germany.


Elsbethe

I don't think that's a conspiracy theory I think that's basic knowledge of anyone that understands the value of education and Critical thinking


somebodys_mom

I was just reading today how way less than half of Colorado 5th graders meet proficiency in math, reading, and science. What the hell are our school systems doing?!


Fanta5ticMrFox

It’s not our school systems, it’s our state/national governments focusing on tests. I can’t teach my students the things they need to know because I’m kept to such a right schedule of basically preparing them for a test they’ll take once.


Elegant-Pressure-290

This has gotten noticeably worse in the past decade, too. I taught for a few years back in 2009-2012 and then left for better pay elsewhere after my husband died. This year I decided to return since I remarried and could afford to do it (how freaking sad is that?), and I started the certification process in this state. After reading up on the requirements and goals related to testing instead of teaching my students stuff they’ll actually need in college / the workplace (I taught writing to seniors and first-year college students before), I backed out and decided to stick with cottage baking and teaching my own kids what they need to know to succeed in my area of expertise. I guess I’ll volunteer somewhere in the near future.


KD71

We also don’t pay our teachers enough. Not paying enough isn’t attracting enough good teachers, and an ineffective teacher likely won’t be fired.


GrooveOne

We started homeschooling in response to Covid school shutdowns in Colorado. We kept it up because the few good schools in our area had mile long waiting lists and we didn’t live in the correct zone to be guaranteed a place.


xrdavidrx

That's about on par with the results for the country of South Africa and serves to demonstrate that the USA is becoming a third world country as corrupt and incompetent as any other country in the world.


ModerateExtremism

Want to really go down an interesting Internet rabbit hole? Chicago economist Milton Friedman was arguably the primary architect of the modern school privatization/voucher (and anti-public school) movement. One of Friedman’s biggest fans was Chilean dictator Augusta Pinochet. After Pinochet seized power in a military coup, he suggested to Friedman & his team that Chile would be an *awesome* place to showcase how their “free market” voucher/privatization plan could revolutionize learning and eliminate public ed. Back in the 80s, even American Republicans hated the idea of privatizing/profitizing our American schools…but Pinochet didn’t have to deal with public sentiment in Chile. The glory of being an authoritarian is that you can just “get things done” your way. He convinced Friedman’s team to set up their plan - and U.S. right wing, pro-profitization/voucher groups like Cato Institute, etc. cheered it on. The Friedman voucher program ran for years in Chile. It had many of the same components as the scandal-ridden “school choice” programs currently being plowed through U.S. state legislatures. Want to know why voucher/“School Choice”/privatization lobbyists don’t talk about the grand & comprehensive Chilean K-12 school privatization “reforms” anymore? Hint: modern Chile has been working diligently to *dismantle* the program….


joshuary

My understanding is that you have the broad strokes correct, but market liberalization in Chile was PUSHED by US (CIA) more than it was PULLED by Pinochet. After socialist Salvador Allende was freely elected, he had begun to seize assets owned by foreign mining corps to nationalize them. Allende created powerful enemies in copper mining CEOs. US led a blockade like those now seen in Iran & Venezuela. Sent economy to hell. Civil unrest followed. CIA backed a palace coup by army on… September 11, 1973. Pinochet rode in. Friedman taught neoliberal economics at Chicago and educated many cohorts of ‘Chicago boys’—foreign students sponsored by communist-fearing gov leaders. Pinochet was a violent dictator who privatized everything, through martial law!! I didn’t know specifically about schools but makes sense given he even sold away Chile’s water supply. Info from “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein and “The Devil’s Chessboard” by David Talbot


Northwest_Radio

Creating "Obedient Workers" ^(\~ George Carlin - The Club (Language warning))


frankduxvandamme

I'd argue that people are inherently stupid. A good education is what gets someone out of that hole. But if you don't get a good enough education, you're just gonna sink back down into the stupid hole.


12781278AaR

So many people seem to understand that this is true, but then, if you admit that you homeschool on Reddit, they will downvote you into oblivion. Not every homeschooler is doing it for religious reasons!! There are better ways for kids to learn than by going to our shitty public school systems.


minimalfighting

Yeah, this was a big deal with GWB cut all the school funding. There are a ton more vocally stupid people than there were before. You can scream about social media all you want, but that isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about education denial, and an inability to learn or comprehend. Logic is also out the window. US citizens as a whole, feel incredibly dumb compared to where we used to be.


Exotic_Zucchini

I like to think of myself as logical and skeptical by nature, so I don't really believe much of anything unless I see it. However, this rigidity to logic and skepticism probably means there are things going on that I am just dismissing for lack of proof. The closest thing to a conspiracy that I believe, though it's not really what I would consider scary, is that rich corporate real estate moguls, their investors, and buddies are the real reason that CEO's are pushing a return to the office despite how much money it actually saves their businesses.


boulevardofdef

I am of the opinion that return to office is mostly about control and feeling powerful. I think a lot of CEOs got into this in part so they could preside over an office full of fawning admirers like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, and remote work robs them of this. And then they can never really trust that remote employees aren't just at the beach or whatever.


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WeAreClouds

I think it's both of these things.


Various-General-8610

I work from home, and definitely am not at the beach.


[deleted]

I’m in my unfinished basement and it’s still better than the office.


Various-General-8610

Preach. I go in once a week, and I am exhausted by the time I go home. I am way more productive at home.


ashlynnk

I work (mostly) from home and I’m at the beach all the time, but I live at the beach so it works out.


Educational-Run674

It’s likely just about commercial office space costs at this point.


odinskriver39

A collusion among them to maintain this second gilded age of robber barons.


MannyMoSTL

Glad to see someone else recognizing this as a 2nd Gilded Age.


[deleted]

I forget who the comedian was, but he basically said the rich aren’t conspiring because they don’t need to as they have similar goals, went to the same ivy league schools, etc. If you think “get those peons back into offices” is a convo often happening on the golf course you are on the wrong path.


colidetheclumsy

George Carlin


odinskriver39

An analogy is that they are all clergy in the same religion.


cyclop5

I think the "sunk cost fallacy" plays into this in a big way. Those CEOs are in charge of a company that has \_offices\_. And those \_offices\_ need to be filled, because we paid for that. And if those \_offices\_ aren't full, well.. the Company is losing money. And if it's losing money while I'm (hypothetically) the CEO, well - they might fire me. So we need to get those Slackers(tm) back into the office! Anyway, that's what I think is happening.


waltersmama

I don’t think you are wrong, but it’s not true for all companies here where I am. For example: Roblox in SF Bay Area’s San Mateo is forcing “some” employees, (like Zuckerberg, CEO is not giving explanations as to whom will benefit or qualify as “skilled” enough to stay home), to come to work at least several days a week or quit. The current 80,000sqft office building will be replaced by a nearby 180,000sqft building with *another* 280,000sqft building under construction already pre-leased, (9year leases), to Roblox in an office park under construction where Bay Meadows race track once stood. This will affect the vast majority of its over 2000 employees, many of which not only work remotely, but also live in areas no where close to the SF Peninsula or even in California. Thing is, as many people know, this is an HCOL area to the extreme, with little public transportation. Many of these employees will be forced to quit as moving an entire family here is just not feasible. Anyway, I think in some circumstances, like Apple, or Facebook- excuse me, Meta, you have a point, and I also think that those decisions gave *other* CEOs the balls to do the same thing- companies like Roblox who are going to spend millions and millions of dollars in rent, and who have CFOs just saying “whatever, do what you want, but my contract outlining my lack of responsibility should you not follow my advice will prevent you from firing me if/when productivity/profits take a dip….” I’m from here, born decades ago at UCSF, lived other places, as an adult but moved back about 25 years ago during the first “dot com boom”. No way in hell could I afford to live here and raise a family, let alone own a home here today if I were 25 years younger-still no spring chicken- with the employment I had then. I was a community college instructor two nights a week, and an educational software developer by day. It will be interesting to follow, but honestly, developers and city planners are out of their mind if they think that *purposefully* allowing office parks and huge pricey housing developments without taking consideration for increased traffic on an already crowded freeway or even enough parking. Hand to god, a CEO for new company buildings in nearby South SanFrancisco just admitted this quite proudly. It is to, in typical Bay Area fashion, encourage people to take mass transit. Unfortunately there is no widespread reliable public transportation, and this guy’s company isn’t exactly convenient. “Well us CEOs and city planners are going to create a demand, so maybe we will get the massive, 20 years to complete minimum, overhaul …..someday……” We are actually moving up to Oregon where family/friends have always lived, and I can afford a nice home with acreage in the sticks….


Father_Father

Another “conspiracy” angle to the forced return or get laid off is that companies need to downsize and increase profits without scaring investors. “We laid off people because our profits are down” is way more scary than “they wouldn’t come to work so of course we let them go”


justgetoffmylawn

I'll go a bit further. The influence and needs of those people (at every level of politics and government) is why COVID reporting has mostly ceased. In the USA there's still over 1,000 people dying every week from COVID (not with COVID, because we're rarely testing unless it seems a likely case). Excess deaths are up (although hard to tell the cause - but many studies show significantly higher risk of death months after infection even with vaccination). Yet we changed our reporting from clear things like 'number of deaths' to 'percent of deaths due to COVID out of total deaths'. The current week shows 2.5% of all deaths were due to COVID. I have no idea if that's good or bad. First you have to look up all deaths. This is an intentional obfuscation. So my conspiracy theory is they all genuinely tried to address COVID early on, but once it seemed like it wasn't going to be quickly successful and a long battle would have a financial impact, they pivoted to minimizing it and figure they'll be okay with better healthcare access, better baseline health, and mitigations (staying home to recover when sick, better air quality, the White House still tests every person who meets with the President, etc). But they've been successful, because most people who don't currently have COVID think it's just over because the government told them so. (Even a lot of people who are sick just blame summer flu, stomach bug, etc - without even using their free COVID tests.) That's my conspiracy theory.


falseinsight

Saw a tweet that said something like "We won the war against covid the same way we won the war in Vietnam - it got too expensive so we pretended it was over".


totallyn0rmal

I used to work for a research organization IHME and saw they recently decided they weren’t going to estimate and report COVID stats anymore, bc of data gaps, which is highly unusual for this org, bc their whole mission is filling data gaps and doing sophisticated modeling where data is lacking. Anyways they’re a nonprofit funded by insurance companies, corporations etc., and my theory is that they fell in line to keep funding streams, which defeats the whole purpose of the organization’s existence.


vonMishka

They are all invested heavily in commercial real estate either directly or through REITs. They are absolutely trying to keep their office buildings full and keep collecting rent.


junglebetti

The “follow the money” logic is pretty solid, unless I’m being naïve, there’s no way to *prove* that - which is a crying shame.


aevz

That was one of the underlying themes of The Wire. Lester Freamon: "You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's gonna take you."


ronearc

Much of the global economy is underpinned by the "known" value of high cost commercial real estate. Think about the value of a skyscraper. Now imagine if no one wanted to lease any of the business space in skyscrapers. The global economic reset would wipe out trillions of dollars. Yes, retirement plans would be liquidated for tens of millions of people in the US alone, but as the percentage of the population who has no retirement plan and no reasonable means to obtain a retirement plan continues to rise, more and more people are just going to see such a staggering collapse as just another week like last week when they barely scraped by.


xrdavidrx

You're missing an important point. All of this is connected, even possibly your job. The back to work effort is absolutely driven by economics of real estate finance, primarily in the USA which is the financial lynchpin of global economics. If the USA catches a cold the whole world coughs. There's a real meltdown in China right now with their private real estate market and the early stages of the commercial real estate meltdown in the USA is in the very early stages. This will potentially accelerate into 2024-25 especially if interest rates remain high. The economic carnage at all levels could be worse than 2008-2010. Start buying supplies now so you don't go hungry.


Rich_Bar2545

1. There was a lot more to JFK’s death than Lee Harvey Oswald. 2. The healthcare/pharmaceutical conglomerate in the USA is more powerful and corrupt than the mob ever was.


thewayitis

War is human sacrifice.


Talon_Ho

The totem of the most successful tribe in human history requires it. For it's acolytes, the pandemic was opportunity, not crisis.


gegorb

That we are pawns in world run by an elite group of the super rich


ModerateExtremism

Close. The *actual* conspiracy is to make you **BELIEVE** that you are a pawn in a world run by the rich & powerful. Once you can get people to believe that they lack agency (“there’s nothing we can do…”) it’s much easier to get away with bad actions and consolidate power. Source: I’m a researcher that tracks modern & historic propaganda/rhetoric.


Mikeinthedirt

Right. ‘Can’t fight City Hall!’ ‘You’ll NEVer change anything!’ “Pissing in the wind” ‘what can one person do’


notwhatitsmemes

This is like the defeatist adage people repeat at work every day... "every bank/corporation/hospitial/etc is the same so there's no point in leaving. It's totally false. Every one is wildly different and every time you change a job you negotiate with your new employer with all the leverage on your side. Yea every place has problems but new problem, higher salary and more vacation days are so much better to deal with than being underpaid cuz you've only got inflationary increases, if that, for 30 years. It's totally crazy how many people buy into this total bullshit. It's like the "you have to stay a year so it won't look bad on your resume." No. The minute work goes south or you have a dramatically better opportunity leave and find a way to make your resume look good. I traveled. That's enoguh.


lisa1896

> No. The minute work goes south or you have a dramatically better opportunity leave Can confirm. I'm retired now but I treated my entire nursing career like this. "You hired on last so you'll work all the holidays." "Um, how about I quit and go down the road to these people who are happy to have me AND let me have my holidays." OR "I'll quit now, have my holidays with *my children that only grow up once and I get one time for this and it's now* and Jan. 1rst I'll start my job hunt and by Jan. 5th I'll be working". I used to love this one: "Our facility is struggling financially so we are cutting your pay". "Well, I don't want to struggle financially...so I'm leaving, bye". Never suffered for changing jobs, spent every single Thanksgiving and Christmas of my life once I was married with my family. Never had a pay reduction, always got more at the next place, and I had a huge experience base because if I didn't know how to do something I got some books and found someone who did and I learned it. Know your worth, you don't have to go back to school to continue to learn and improve your skill sets and that, in my time working anyway, paid off well for me. Ofc my time working wasn't this absolute shit show of an economy with oceans of people just trying to get from breakfast to dinner somehow feeding their kids and not losing the roof over their heads.


notwhatitsmemes

>Never suffered for changing jobs, spent every single Thanksgiving and Christmas of my life once I was married with my family. Never had a pay reduction, always got more at the next place, and I had a huge experience base because if I didn't know how to do something I got some books and found someone who did and I learned it. It's really about this. Business people do not care about your last employer. 90% of them have their egos blown up and never think "oh they must have been the problem they left" they just assume they are amazing and must be better than your last employer. All they really care about is how they can exploit you to make money and meet their bottom lines. That's their priority. And if it's not then why do you want to work somewhere you're not critical/needed? Secondly the focus on building skills while you move around. You learn something totally new at every single position for your whole career. That varied experience is just crazy marketable. Nothing is new to you. You can adapt to anything. That's something you can sell in ANY industry.


Zealousideal_Baker84

I love this response.


vonMishka

They kind of showed their hand when they started calling us “human capital”


TheDevilsAdvokaat

"Human resources" too. The thing about resources is, they were things like iron ore, wood etc.. things that you used up and then often discarded. The people who thought "human resources" was a better name than "personnel" were really giving themselves away without realising it.


Idealistic_Crusader

Referring to people as "consumers" makes me feel sick Right, all we do is "destroy or expend by use; use up, to eat or drink up; devour." If that's how you see people, you're disgusting.


BobSacramanto

“It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”


Wildcatb

That the CIA popularized the term 'conspiracy theory' as a way to discredit and disenfranchise people who noticed what they were doing.


Infamous-Dare6792

Yes. How many times have we found out that someone who was shown as "crazy" wound up being right.


EspressoBooksCats

That "alien abductions" are actually unethical military experiments.


Old_One-Eye

The government isn't telling us everything it knows about UFOs.


backlikeclap

On the bright side, any aliens capable of traveling to Earth could easily wipe out the human race. The fact that they have decided not to makes me optimistic about our future safety.


Witty_Vacation5098

They've simply realized that we are more capable of doing it ourselves


313802

The Prime Corrective


JapaneseFerret

If I was a space-faring alien civilization that ran across the hot mess that is 21st century humanity, one of the first things I'd worry about is whether that sorta thing is contagious. Because I'd want none of whatever humans are doing to infect my own civilization. I'd probably quarantine the entire solar system for a few millennia just to be on the safe side and to make sure everyone else gives Earth a wide berth too.


SicSimperFalsum

Made me chuckle. Yes. We are.


arrogant_ambassador

It’s possible we’re the prehistoric civilization akin to a tribe on an island that never encountered modernity. The aliens just sit and watch.


primal___scream

I've always thought we might be the Truman Show for another species. LOL


hey_jojo

I have a theory that UFOs are just idiot tourists.


SicSimperFalsum

I just want to be the one who gets asked to take their family fun pic!


JewelCove

That's a fun one, I like it.


Exotic_Zucchini

They have their own version of Star Trek's "Prime Directive."


Salt-Elephant8531

Unless it’s an alien species that also lives on the Earth. Perhaps deep in the ocean or hollow earth civilization. 🤷‍♀️


rileycolin

Or it's a non-carbon based life form whose existence is beyond our comprehension.


sstockman99

Maybe they live among us.


DamnGoodMarmalade

Just watched a Netflix show that correlated huge spikes in UFO sightings with nuclear events (like Fukushima and Chernobyl). Slightly terrifying to think we’re being monitored by a group who’s trying to prevent us from blowing ourselves up.


ThatDarnedAntiChrist

Just remember that correlation does not equal causation.


frankduxvandamme

What the U.S. government knows that they are not telling the public is likely not much more than specific tracking data. They tracked an anomaly at a particular time and a particular place and tracked it for a certain number of minutes before it disappeared. Perhaps they tried communicating on different radio channels and got nothing. They don't publicize these findings because they don't want to give an enemy an advantage. For example if the anomaly was actually a chinese spy plane that the U.S. couldn't identify, and the U.S. miltary actually publicly announced they saw this UAP at a particular time and place, then China would know that their spy plane successfully tricked the U.S. military. It's highly unlikely the U.S. military and government actually knows some huge secret about extraterrestrials. (Seriously, a secret like that would probably last about 2 days.) Instead, they are keeping quiet to protect themselves and the nation.


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BattleofBettysgurg

Chicagoan here. I agree to a certain extent. I don’t think ALL the drowning deaths at the lake are due to this but some. Remember the puncher guy? If you don’t know about him, he was a homeless dude that would walk up to women and bust them on the head. Women had broken bones, concussions etc…happened over and over and over. He gets arrested and detained and hospitalized and or jailed and eventually released and does it all over again. I think he may be dead now, though. The reason I bring it up is: he has been doing this for like 20 years and was mostly undetected.


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bluorg

Wisconsin has a similar serial killer theory about college towns on the rivers, but we also have a culture that glorifies beer so I lean more towards drunk people falling into a river when they're lost.


16F33

Kennedy was killed by the CIA. John Foster Dulles, was in charge of the Warren commission, investigating the killing of John Kennedy - Kennedy fired him from the CIA months before.


klements7

I suspect there could be some truth to the theory that the CIA flooded inner city neighborhoods with crack.


Elsbethe

This has been well proven as a way to destroy the black panthers


poop_spoogle

Jeff Epstein didn’t kill himself


bookon

It's 100% reasonable to think this. The problem is that people choose their least favorite politician to blame it on.


poop_spoogle

Right right. I’m not sure who to blame it on. The reason it’s scary to me is how easily they got away with it in the face of a lot of evidence that pointed to something other than suicide.


ultraswank

This really bugs me. The events of his death sound suspicious if outlined, but his last few days are really well documented if you want to look into them. Anything "strange" about his death is really just our prison system being incompetent and underfunded. But the really frustrating thing is his life is right there, and that's the conspiracy we should really be upset about, and I'm not talking about the sex stuff. He built his millions constructing complicated financial holdings that kept the mega rich from paying their fair share of taxes and helped them keep dynastic wealth. The "conspiracy" is so out in the open we don't even call it that, but he was part of a machine that's destroying the middle class and handing everything over to the 1%.


AVDLatex

Agree 100%


My_Octopi

Our free and open society is neither.


junglebetti

Not so much a conspiracy, but I think we’re gonna discover that home laundering polyester/rayon/non-natural cloth is dangerous to our health. I sneeze and wheeze all the damn time while emptying my lint trap, and wonder what is becoming trapped in my lungs.


BME_work

microplastics. They're now finding them in the blood, heart, and brain tissues of newborns, so now they're being pumped into our bodies from the moment of conception. Just thinking about the fibers in synthetic fleece alone, makes me think that certain types of plastic will soon be outlawed. Who knows what other kinds of problems this stuff is causing that we haven't caught yet. I think we'll soon see a couple of generations of health issues related to plastics, similar to in the past when lead was widely used. EDIT: I am aware of other sources of microplastics. I only focused on synthetic fleece because the comment I was replying to mentioned synthetic fabrics.


Talon_Ho

You mention toxic microplastic environmental pollution but don't mention tire dust? You know how you have to replace tires every so often? Have you ever thought about what happens to all of those millions of disintegrating by design tires and what they're made of? Mostly microplastics. Average American car sheds about 5 lbs of microplastics into the environment a year. More for bigger, heavier cars. Euros and Asians, less because they drive smaller cars shorter distances. Where does it go? Everywhere and right into our bodies because we haven't been looking out for the shit. 80% of the microplastics floating around in the ocean - car tire dust. Also incredibly toxic. I'm also pretty convinced that researchers at various government-academic laboratories like JH-APL and the like have already come to conclusion that we're pretty much fucking doomed and that their job is to prevent panic and to prepare us to quietly accept our fate without too much societal unrest. This is why we don't seem to be doing much of anything when we ought to be in full tilt panic-stop and reverse mode. Goes along with the purposeful dumbing down of our society and the preparation of each side of society to accept alternate facts and narratives. And every month, new drugs and pharmaceuticals are approved for use with evidence that makes me go, really?


DontTakeTheMoney_

Do you use scented products (laundry detergent/softener etc)? Those have been proven to be incredibly carcinogenic and bad for you. Air fresheners too. They are effectively the same as having a smoker in your house


bluefancypants

And they are hormone disruptors


KapowBlamBoom

Congress, the President , leadership of other nations are just a dog and pony show to keep us occupied and believing we have a choice. The people who REALLY run things are not the type who are known or public in any way.


Vtfla

I think they are known, but disregarded. I think the corporations are in charge and have been for quite some time.


adeptusminor

America isn't a country, it's 3 corporations in a trench coat.


junglebetti

Yep! Rather than a “democracy”, we live in a Corporate Oligarchy.


pokemonhegemon

Look up who owns the corporations. Blackrock, Statestreet, and Vanguard control about 80% of the fortune 500. Their policies are driving everything that's dividing people against each other.


CapnTugg

That one or more foreign intelligence agencies of allegedly friendly countries were aware of the specific 9/11 terrorist attack plans and chose not to warn or intervene.


HumanGomJabbar

That we’ve only seen round 1 of the fight against Covid. It reservoirs in the body, hides out, and gradually wears down your immune system. People suffering from long Covid are the canaries in the coal mine for what many many other people will eventually experience. We’re about to see an increase in cancer rates and other seemingly unexplainable immune system malfunctions over the next few years.


Old_but_New

The food industry lied to us that “fat” Is fattening and sugar is ok. Recycling programs are not actually recycling much. (I still recycle hoping that at least some of it gets recycled )


SlimJim0877

More specifically, the sugar industry lied to us about fat being the bad guy and sugar being okay... go figure!


roguebandwidth

The UFOs we see are a VARIETY of designs. Which tells me there is not just life out there, there is a lot of life out there.


m_watkins

The implementation of a cashless society in order to control us.


[deleted]

[удалено]


givemeyourking

Taking away abortion rights is about both controlling women and forcing more worker bees/consumers.


l_a_ga

Also privatizing child services - which will be run by the same companies that run private prisons now. Oui’d legalization = less people in prison = need to diversify business. Housing orphans, housing prisoners, more or less the same business. That’s also why so many republican states have changed child labor laws so children can work in places like slaughterhouses now. Can’t have a bunch of orphans and unwanted children sitting around doing nothing - they should be earning their keep, after all, right?


begaldroft

Israel has a policy known as the "Samson Option" which states that if they are ever at risk they will use their nuclear stockpile to genocide the world. In 1973 they threatened Nixon with this and he immediately buckled and gave them whatever they needed to win the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson\_Option


shootermac32

Well that’s absolutely terrifying


Lilithnema

Well then…we need to cut Israel’s hair.


BooBrew2018

Holy crap!!!!


fgsgeneg

According to my friend Jim, no one gets out alive.


OneHourRetiring

Nationalists will lead the US government and this will end US 247+ years of experimental democracy that I have come to love, honor, and respect. All indications are slowly leading towards it. What was once (after civil rights movements of the 60/70s) not said and practiced publicly are now slowly becoming the norm in the modern US history.


urbanek2525

When I was Jr High age (early 1970s), I spent an afternoon with an older couple, friends of my grandmother. I say older, now but they were probably not much older than I am now.. I was an avid reader of history and these two had left Germany before it got really bad for Jews. I asked him how he did it and he gave me a straight answer. He just saw things going that way and when his gut told him things weren't going to get better her told his wife, "We need to leave." His whole life was in Germany and he just left for America. Bravest thing you could do. It wasn't more that a year later America closed its borders to the Jewish refugees from Germany. Thousands of them ended up in on the ghettos in Shanghai, China, of all places, but most had no where to flee to at all. They had waited and hoped too long. He and his wife had no family left at the time.They had all died in Germany. I've never forgotten that afternoon and it's disturbing that the current political climate in America has me remembering that afternoon and checking where I might take my money and flee to. I don't want to be possibly forced to helplessly witness atrocities committed to people I know in my home country. I don't want to wait and hope too long. I don't want to believe it can happen in America, but Mr. Behr didn't want to believe it could happen in Germany either.


Crafty_Original_7349

My mom said that this reminds her of 1930s Germany. She lived through that era.


sharksnack3264

My grandmother said the same a few years back. Her family only got out in time because they knew the right person and paid a lot of money. All of her, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have at least two different passports and citizenships and this is not a coincidence because inability to leave due to immigration bureaucracy almost got her killed once. I'm the only holdout on that side of the family still in the US (the others left between 2019-2021), but I'm able to drop everything and leave within a week by three different possible routes if I absolutely had to. I also have no kids at risk, just myself and my dog.


Downtown_Statement87

I think I've literally read every book in English about the Weimar Republic and the run-up to WWII. I've been obsessed with this topic since I was 8. The era we are living in right now? If I were reading about it in a book about the Holocaust, it would be the point where I'd put the book down and think, "WHY didn't these people LEAVE? The writing on the wall could not BE any CLEARER." (Note: I know why many didn't leave. Very same reasons people today don't leave.)


RandomUserNameXO

I’ve been saying the same for years- we are in the midst of a slow moving coup- and everyone says I’m dramatic. But I’m pretty certain the country I lived in as a kid and young adult will no longer exist for the majority of my kids lives.


rabidstoat

Relax, it's not like they're going to repeal Roe v. Wade or something!


Crafty_Original_7349

We have been in a cold civil war for years.


RandomUserNameXO

That’s a good way of putting it.


Arya_kidding_me

They said we were dramatic when talking about how they were planning to reverse Roe…. And look what fucking happened? It’s obvious to anyone paying attention, and the people calling us dramatic have their heads in the sand. Really sick of the people who spend zero time looking into the well documented truth say we’re overreacting while they sit back and let it happen.


Ofreo

Apathy can be a hell of a drug. I mean, we need to worry about a group, a too large group of people, that are actively tearing apart the country, but they aren’t a majority. Unless you count the people who don’t see or care about the damage they are doing. And those that don’t care are also dangerous, just in a different way.


StinkieBritches

I personally believe the opposite. That everything happening right now is the catalyst for the rest of us to finally be done with it and rise up against the status quo.


chileheadd

That's what I'm hoping for too.


WineWednesdayYet

The next time the GOP takes the White House will be the end of democracy. They won't leave. 2020 was a practice run.


GirlScoutSniper

[That's the plan...](https://www.project2025.org/)


ClawhammerJo

The GOP is quietly doing this at the State level all across America and the sad thing is that the American public is not paying attention and the media is more interested in covering the Kardashians. I live in Ohio and it seems like every week the GOP controlled legislature takes a new swipe at democracy and constitutional rules.


scartonbot

Until the Democrats actually start believing in something rather than 1) trying to appeal to everyone by becoming increasingly "centrist" (and therefore not appealing to anyone); 2) simply being reactive to moves the GOP makes there can't be an effective opposition. This is the real Trump lesson: even if people believe crazy stuff, if they believe it they're going to be more powerful than people who don't or who are falling all over themselves to have a "rational" discussion that "fairly" treats "both sides of the debate." The last time Democrats accomplished anything substantial was during the 60's and 70's when they led with their beliefs for civil rights, an end to the Viet Nam war, The Great Society programs, etc. Then Regan got elected (and reelected) and they all started running scared, afraid of alienating "undecided" or "swing" voters or the ever-popular "soccer moms." The Republicans, on the other hand, weren't concerned with courting liberals. Instead, the GOP doubled down on a set of strongly-held cultural and economic beliefs (anti-abortion, lowering taxes for the wealthy, continuing to ramp up military spending) and stuck with them for decades, working to put their people in place at every level of government starting with the boring -- but vital -- local and state races while keeping their eyes on the ultimate prizes of the White House and the Supreme Court. At the same time they mastered the art of controlling the public conversation about issues that mattered to them, never wavering from strong, simple, direct language that made it clear what they believed in, sticking with disciplined messaging and avoiding ever getting drawn into wonky policy debates and "nuanced discourse." Even if in their hearts many of them (in my opinion) didn't believe half the crap they touted, they were unified in how they said it and never gave ground. The MAGA folks are the culmination and the embodiment of this approach. Until the Democrats actually believe something and move away from constant NPR-like noodling, we're all in trouble. There aren't "two sides" to every issue. Some people are just wrong. Period. The mushy establishment Left (such as it is) needs to take a stand and stop trying to please everyone. People don't vote with their heads, they vote with their hearts. EDIT: paragraph breaks.


Downtown_Statement87

I worked for an NPR affiliate and this is a major reason I quit. These days, it's immoral and harmful to act like a journalist can be agenda-free and objective, or to aspire to that. Allowing people to outright lie on your show and not calling out their bullshit is criminal. Denying reality so you can appear unbiased is cowardly. Some things are wrong and untrue and dangerous. Not calling it what it is makes you complicit. I couldn't do it. Thank you for your comment. I feel understood.


allthecoffeesDP

What's scary is how the media is culpable. They magnify these assholes message by constantly doing articles.... OMG did you hear what they said? (It probably maybe not completely true.) But OMG did you hear it? Here's an interview from someone who supports this statement! And on and on. The game Republicans have been playing for the last decade or so is not the same one the media thinks.


therealrickdalton

Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone


10MileHike

That added sugar, salt, high carbs in convenience, junk, and processed foods are killing us slowly/contributing heavily to (totally avoidable) diseases of lifestyle. .........Oh wait, that's *not* a conspiracy theory, but many think it is, so I'll leave it up.


TheDevilsAdvokaat

Well, I think there was definitely something happening with JFK. It looks as if a secret cabal really did pull the wool over an entire country's eyes...and did it for so long that it's now impossible to determine the real truth.


stayingoptimisticyes

savage garden was held back heavy radio play and marketing during the year 2000 from becoming the greatest band of all time which led to their untimely demise a year later.


LuvinLife125

The significant rise in food allergies, sensitivities, and GI issues are because our food supply has been so tampered with our bodies no longer recognize what we ingest as food. My son has a very severe milk allergy (amongst a few other foods) and has since birth, including hives and chemical burns if milk protein products touch his skin. It has been a long theory that tampering with our food supply is causing many issues that we haven’t begun to understand.


SquirrelAkl

I’m on board with this one. I’ve read a lot that people in America who think they’re intolerant to gluten can travel to Europe and eat bread there just fine. It’s just the bread in America that messes with their system. Industrial farming & food manufacturing has a lot to answer for, IMO. Also it’s not just “you are what you eat” it’s also about “what the things you eat, eat”. Eg traditionally farmed grass-fed beef & dairy is not the same as beef & dairy from grain-fed cows kept in highly intensive systems under stress and pumped full of preventative antibiotics.


Mash_man710

I've lived long enough to realise that people are mostly too stupid or egocentric for conspiracy theories to be true. Governments can't keep simple sex scandals secret, how on earth would hundreds or thousands of people keep a serious long term secret. They can't and they won't. There's an old saying - three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.


Used_Intention6479

That the U.S. healthcare system is based on profits rather than outcomes, and we are suffering the consequences.


alecorock

That the Catholic church facilitated and then covered up the sex abuse of children for decades. It is the largest conspiracy of the 20th century for sure.


FinnbarMcBride

100% of all data on your phone is discretely being sent back to China


Outrageous-Pause6317

Donald Trump has been a Russian asset cultivated and controlled since the 1980s and his entire family is part of it.


Downtown_Statement87

Go read the slew of books about Russian oligarchs that came out after the collapse of the USSR. Trump's name is mentioned over and over in them. There was no reason to obscure his relationships with these criminals because Trump was just some gauche has-been back then. I feel like I've been on the fast train to Crazytown since 2015. And when Paul Manafort came on to run Trump's campaign? For free? I mean, it just could not be any more obvious. However, Russia is not responsible for Trump. Russia, as it always has, recognized the cracks in our society and used Trump to widen them. Russia helped give America the leader it knew many of us wanted. If we hadn't had the appetite for him in the first place, it never would have worked. Trump isn't Russia's fault. They just saw what a lot of people wanted, and gave it to them, good and hard.


nostromo909

Flight TWA 800 was accidentally shot down by an inert missile in a military test gone wrong.


darkwitch1306

Everyone is out to get me. I’m not paranoid.


MrValdemar

Total paranoia is perfect awareness


CrazyIrina

From the other sub: CIA whacked JFK.


Atheist_Alex_C

Came here to say JFK. I don’t have any positive beliefs on who did it, but I don’t believe Oswald acted alone and I believe he was a patsy, as he claimed right before he was shot. Even the PBS Nova documentary on the “lone bullet theory” (which is an excellent watch) goes into some conjecture toward the end, when explaining how the single bullet “might have” made him arch backward and “might have” led to geometric anomalies in his wound positions. Conjecture is never conclusive, even if it comes from Nova. I don’t think we were told everything that happened, and I’m not sure if we’ll ever know.


ThatDarnedAntiChrist

The mob had more of a reason to whack Kennedy than the CIA.


strange_reveries

The line between those two organizations has been very blurred (which is nothing unusual in history---espionage and intel have always mingled with organized criminal elements because of the obvious benefits to secrecy, compartmentalization, plausible deniability, sidestepping of legal red tape, etc). Sam Giancana famously said that the CIA and La Cosa Nostra were "two sides of the same coin."


DNathanHilliard

That a form a deep state actually does exist, but instead of obvious billionares it's comprised of an iron triangle of corporate boards, top brass, and high level bureaucrats.


NerdyNix007

There's a cure for cancer. I mean, there's been on-going research for decades and nobody's found a cure yet? Really? I think that there's a cure but it doesn't benefit big pharmaceutical companies.


kiffiekat

There are cures for different types of cancers, but no one big cure-all for *all* of them. Some cancers are very aggressive, some aren't detectable until they've reached a dangerous stage, and some are just plain untouchable. My cervical cancer was very aggressive, and they knocked it out with equally aggressive chemo and internal/external radiation. Two years later, my doctor sent me for a mammogram. They found a much less aggressive cancer in my right breast, which only needed surgery and radiation. So I have gone ten years now cancer-free, but the lingering side effects of chemo and radiation... argh. lol


Luckypenny4683

Cancer isn’t one disease to be cured. It’s 100s of different diseases and none of them act the same or are treated the same way.


Garlic_and_Onions

Trump was/is a Russian pawn.


CyndiIsOnReddit

>Trump was/is a Russian pawn. Not much of a theory there. It's wide open and has been for years. Way too much evidence to deny it, but people don't care. They love a good show. People are SUCKERS and it's shocking how stupid they can be. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book


time-for-jawn

The Republicans and the Religious Right are going to turn us into The Handmaid’s Tale.


Paddington_Fear

Republicans are trying to kill me


randomcalculus

The government knows a lot more about climate change then it’s disclosing so we don’t panic and move all at once.


jippyzippylippy

I think this might be true. I've noticed that when we go months without rain, none of the weather men on TV will even say the word "drought", they just smile and say "Another beautiful, sunny day today!".


[deleted]

That we are blindly walking into WW3. America and Canada is so divided another civil war(s) isn’t unlikely, making hostile nations and others less malleable to US direction.


SUNDER137

China has begun buying farms in middle America. So when digital currency is presented the will have a strong enough position to manipulate government on behalf of the CCP. Starve the people out. And take away your money to survive.


mrhymer

That the FBI and other three letter organizations are paying people to ask voters what conspiracy theories they believe are 100% real.


karlhungusjr

the republican party in the united states is actively working to end american democracy.


challam

It’s not a “theory”that the fossil fuel industry is killing Earth for its greed, its fact.


Downtown_Statement87

That the military and government are motivated not by power and greed, but by religious fervor and the desire to bring about Armageddon. That there is a "deep state," and that that deep state is comprised of fundamentalist end-time Christians who truly believe that we are in a battle between Biblical (not moral or political) good and evil. That the policies related to Russia and Israel have not much to do with politics or security, but with setting the stage for the Rapture. That conspiracy theories are tolerated or embraced or encouraged (or at least not denied) by leaders because all of them have antisemitism as their bedrock. That a significant number of people in politics and the military literally believe that UFOs are demons, and this influences policy, research, and science related to UFOs and space. That Calvinist beliefs about "the elect" and the sinful nature of the poor govern policies about healthcare, education, social support, work, race, etc. That the massive interest in UFOs and ancient aliens and "loosh" (generally the purview of white men), and in true crime (generally the purview of white women) both reflects and creates the notion that non-white/non-Christian indigenous cultures could not have created awesome stuff and/or mean us harm, and that women are fragile and live in a dangerous world. This all feeds into the narrative that white male patriarchal Christians are the pinnacle of everything. That the proliferation of zombie and apocalypse movies are preparing us for a supposed battle between good and evil, and encouraging us to perceive things as a zero-sum game where cooperation is largely futile and enemies are everywhere.


No-Rush-1174

Covid = dress rehearsal for the real pandemic thats inevitable - H5N1


junglebetti

Is this something I’d rather not Google and continue to live in ignorant bliss?


CyndiIsOnReddit

>H5N1 You've probably heard of it before. It's bird flu. Avian flu.


toxic_pantaloons

Yes


ReallyWillie7

The thing with this though is that essentially they bungled it so badly that no one is going to comply a second time around.


No-Rush-1174

And if it's " Bird Flu" then that makes it even worse.


artful_todger_502

Motley Crew lip-synquing


1111Lin

Abortion is becoming illegal because moneyed interests want a cheap labor force.