Looking around the world today, it amazes me how the term "conspiracy theorist" is tossed around as an insult. I find it mind-boggling.
Honestly, I yearn for a world where some of the most shocking events in our history were nothing but conspiracy theories, mere fantasies, instead of chilling reality.
Take the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, for example. It's a horrifying truth that African-American men were injected with untreated syphilis without their consent. If only it were a conspiracy theory, an unfounded rumor. Similarly, Operation Paperclip, where we absorbed numerous Nazis into the U.S military - I wish that was a false narrative.
Then there's MK-Ultra, the infamous mind control program developing drugs for manipulation and interrogation. How I wish this was just a work of fiction, a myth. And Operation Chaos - an egregious violation of civil liberties, with the CIA spying on its own citizens, breaching their own charter.
And who can forget the Iran-Contra affair? Selling arms to Iran despite an embargo, and using the proceeds to support rebels in Nicaragua. If only it was an untrue story, a tall tale. I also wish the Vietnam War was a conspiracy, an unjust conflict predicated on lies to the public.
COINTELPRO's intensive surveillance and disruption of civil rights movement groups? I wish it was merely a piece of sensational fiction. I'd love to believe that all the coups we initiated were nothing more than bad dreams.
And it pains me to accept the deep links between the U.S and the Chinese government, like the involvement with Anthony Fauci in creating lab-grown viruses, potentially causing the COVID-19 pandemic. I fervently wish that COVID was just a rumor, a figment of our collective imagination.
I wish we hadn't concocted reasons to invade Iraq, squandering trillions that should've been spent on nurturing our education system and protecting Americans' wellbeing. It's tragic to imagine Boris Johnson blocking a peace treaty for the Ukraine War in 2022.
Wouldn't it be better if our inclination for warfare and our capture by the military-industrial complex, like our capture by the pharmaceutical industrial complex, was just a conspiracy? And I wish it were fiction that Bill Gates maintained a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, a known sexual predator, or that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was a made-up story.
The Twitter Files and the government's cozy relationships with digital platforms? I wish they were rumors. I yearn for a world where the food and agriculture industries haven't bought the FDA, convincing us to consume dairy, carbs, and sugars detrimental to our health. I dream of a world where we haven't been in corporate captivity for decades.
If only all these were conspiracy theories, not the harsh realities we face.
So when people use "conspiracy theorist" as a slur, the new term for racist or sexist, I can't help but think they're missing the point. They've lost sight of the fact that many so-called "conspiracies" have shaped our history. To those quick to label and deride, I say: Learn your history before you cast your slurs. It's not just about respect. It's about acknowledging the truth, however hard it may be.