dumb bitch

Imagine that there is a factory revealed to have been illegally dumping poisonous substances in the water supply of a nearby community, which is predominantly occupied by racial minorities

(This is a real situation that happens and has happened many times.)

Not in the Conspiracy Zone: "This kind of thing tends to happen in impoverished communities occupied by minorities, because people view the lives of those people as more disposable and don't think as much about the safety of their living conditions. Also, the companies are potentially less likely to face consequences than they would if they were illegally dumping stuff in a densely populated, wealthier community."

The Conspiracy Zone: "Notice that this stuff always happens in impoverished communities occupied by minorities. That's because they don't care about you—they want you to be too sick to protest your own oppression, and ultimately they want to eliminate you."

^This sentiment isn't conspiracy theory itself but the thought pattern is a step in ending up there.

A big factor in these large-scale fuckups is prejudice-driven neglect of problems—things go unchecked because the bad things happen to people that get less media coverage, less sympathy from the general public, and when people are marginalized the System isn't interested in actively asking "Hey, are y'all okay?"

Something I've noticed about conspiracy theorists is that everything is a feature, not a bug.

E.g. birth control doesn't have negative side effects because medicine just...has side effects, but maybe these side effects are ignored too much because birth control is predominantly taken by women—birth control has side effects because They want you to be sterile and depressed and docile all the time

This type of conspiratorial thinking that attributes malice to what are in reality large scale logistical problems and institutional neglect that track onto social prejudices, always, always needs a villain to make sense. It's psychologically attractive, because it gives people whose voices often go unheard a fixed point to target their (completely legitimate) anger at.

It gives them a villain, a motive, and an evil plot. Something people can solve with a silver bullet, or a guillotine, or a pogrom, because that's a hell of a lot easier and more satisfying then going to 900,000 tedious meetings and town halls.

“Some combination of lust and respect and patience. And determination.”