And the story that the CIA deliberately started the crack epidemic struck a national nerve. The past decade has seen the rise of the militias, with their tales of creeping world government and black helicopters. And Oliver Stone is one of our nation's premiere filmmakers. A recent Roper poll suggests that 5 million Americans believe themselves to be involved in a giant alien-abduction conspiracy. Indeed, the Internet is being blamed for a lot of this.
Theories travel fast there, after all, and get juiced up as they go.
But the phenomenon runs a lot deeper than a computer network. Maybe people simply want to believe in these conspiracies. Or maybe these conspiracies are simply the ugly children of Watergate and Vietnam. Or maybe it's simply tempting to blame a lot of our problems on saboteurs and evil manipulators and bogeymen. Of course, there are darker possibilities.