# I pit the derisive, condenscending, anti-conspiriacy ... \[merged threads\] **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 29, 2012, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653 "2012-06-29T02:19:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 49
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2012, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/961 "2012-07-25T18:26:01Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > reorganize the world’s **baking** system. Bolding mine. So the Pilsbury Dough Boy is the Illuminati? ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2012, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/962 "2012-07-25T18:38:08Z")
> [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > Next time you see your shrink for OCD, mention your Illuminati ideas. “Talk to your doctor about **Illuminati®**. Side effects may include restricted arm movement and involuntary relocation. Your doctor may prescribe additional medications to help you adjust.” ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2012, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/963 "2012-07-25T19:32:50Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Correct, there is no one who could do that. > > _Sigh_ We’re now reduced to arguing about imaginary people with magical powers holding sway over an impossible gathering of world leaders for hypothetical purposes. I feel like I’m trapped in a bad game of Mad Libs. At least we are keeping this discussion based on (1) facts and (2) speculation based on facts. Humans exist, therefore one human must run the world. See, it all makes sense! ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2012, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/964 "2012-07-25T19:59:34Z")
All this talk about whether 192 World Leaders _could_ meet, and whether someone _could_ have power greater, seems to me misses the point. There’s no evidence for the existence of the Illuminati. There’s no evidence for an organization with greater power than any (like the US or the UN) that’s existence is not a secret. It doesn’t matter whether such an organization _could_ exist; there’s no reason to believe that it _does_ exist. ---
**Author:** ![Scholar\_Beardpig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de053/32.png) [@Scholar\_Beardpig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scholar_Beardpig)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2012, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/965 "2012-07-25T21:53:10Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > Sarkozy, of course, the President of France, is centered in Paris. Strauss-Khan, also French, was Managing Director of the IMF, which is based in Washington D.C. and the alleged crime occured in New York City. So there would be, at minimum, Mr. A in Paris and Mr. B in Washington D.C. and Mr. C. in New York City. The heads of government act on orders of the Illuminati. If it wasn’t Strauss-Khan, it would have been Sarkozy. So they would have coerced Sarkozy to assist in, as you put it, the more likely scenario. In New York City, the Illuminati would use their vast connections to influence the crime investigation and the media reporting. Strauss-Khan called the Sofitel New York Hotel and inquired about his missing cell phone. Minutes before take-off of the Paris-bound flight, Strauss-Khan was arrested. There were fabrications by Nafissatou Diallo, the hotel maid, including a story about being gang raped by soldiers in Guinea. Then there was the phone call by Diallo to her boyfriend where she said in her native Fula, “Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing.” The charges were dismissed. Subsequently, Strauss-Khan was released on his own recognizance. So, then, what? How do they instruct these crime investigators and media reporters? Are there people inside the NYPD who, despite seemingly answering to their nominal superiors (police commissioner, mayor, etc), are actually loyal to the Illuminati? Or is it just at the highest level, that elected officials (who have no de facto superior and answer instead to the voters) who answer to them? How does this institution work? Do Mr. A, B, and C have public identities, or are they just invisible people that nobody outside of the Illuminati has heard of, except for their contacts? So far, I’m not seeing any other means of control other than blackmail. Blackmail doesn’t work against people who have armies, private or otherwise. What’s to stop all these media types from reporting on the Illuminati, or the police officers from arresting them? What’s to stop Sarkozy from getting tired of Mr. A in Paris screwing him around, and sending the Foreign Legion to put him before a firing squad? What’s to have stopped Strauss-Kahn from hiring some thugs to bludgeon him to death? And if they tempted Diallo with money, where did they get it? Who is donating their private fortunes to this agency, or who is skimming off of public fortunes? In order for this plan to work, you need people who can fulfill two conditions. First, they need to be aware of the Illuminati, aware of their utility to it, believe in their cause, and wish to serve it willingly. Second, they need some kind of authority or puissance that they received publically, from people who are not aware of the Illuminati and would not work for them - people like police commissioners, banking executives, politicians, generals, and the like. Who are these people? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2012, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/966 "2012-07-25T23:30:52Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > “Talk to your doctor about **Illuminati®**. Side effects may include restricted arm movement and involuntary relocation. Your doctor may prescribe additional medications to help you adjust.” If they stay up for more than 400 years, go to your shrink immediately. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/967 "2012-07-26T01:00:36Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I’m not sure he is seeing a therapist, though. Yeah, it’s possible to be diagnosed by a specialist in some disorder. I was diagnosed in this way with dyspraxia. I doubt the guy doing the tests would have been too impressed if I told him I thought the queen were some sort of lizard - he’d probably refer me back to my GP or a clinical therapist (after looking it up, it appears family therapy is successful in [reducing relapse](http://psychcentral.com/disorders/sx31t.htm#psych) - my initial thoughts were that it’d be likely to induce either socially desirable responses or Capgras syndrome). > [@Kozmik](#): > > Strauss-Khan, also French, was Managing Director of the IMF, which is based in Washington D.C. and the alleged crime occured in New York City. There are any number of possible explanations for this though. Khan could be collaborating with Sarkozy to distract the attention of the populace from more important events. Even better, the IMF are amoral scumbags (trilateral commission connection!) and Khan, being a rapist, thought that sowing dissension by alluding to a possible framing would be a method of arguing plausible deniability. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/968 "2012-07-26T01:50:29Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > The Secret Service is not the President’s babysitter! Actually, it is. The Secret Service does not let the president wander around on his own. > [@Kozmik](#): > > You could get 192 heads of government in a room. \*\*tomndebb \*\*agreed on that much. You could get them to agree to something. \*\*tomndebb \*\*agreed on this point; however, \*\*tomndebb \*\*explained that they probably would do nothing. (It’s not the 192 heads of government that would act.). You could get them to keep it a secret if there is the Illuminati. Of course, once they step out of the room, they have to obey laws. So they really can’t do anything underhanded. Big deal! They can keep a secret. (Maybe they know the exact 7-Eleven in Southwest Michigan where Elvis is working.) They still cannot do anything to run the world by themselves, so the imaginary Illuminati can’t run the world through them. > [@Kozmik](#): > > I pointed out that the President has executive orders, executive privilege, and other things that circumvent Congress. Proving that you are still extremely ignorant of basic civics. The president’s “executive privilege” only allows him (and some people working for him) to decline to answer a limited number of questions from Congress. It does not allow him to do anything. Executive Orders only permit the president to set specific actions for people who have already been authorized by the laws of Congress to perform certain functions. He cannot use an Executive Order to violate any existing laws. Beyond that, all the other 191 heads of state have similar constraints on their actions. You are simply imagining nonsense scenarios to give free rein to your paranoid delusions, (or Alex Jones’s paranoid delusions). To quote someone from earlier in the thread. > [@Kozmik](#): > > :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/969 "2012-07-26T02:20:35Z")
> [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > **Koz,** please, just do a little experiment for us. > > Next time you see your shrink for OCD, mention your Illuminati ideas. See what he (or she) thinks. If he says, “Yes, that makes sense, the Illuminati could very well be ruling the world”, you’re right and you can come back and tell us you told us so. > If your shrink’s reaction is pretty much the same as ours, e.g. that you’re a complete whackaloon, then you are wrong and should be on medication. > > If you’re so sure that your arguments make sense and there is an Illuminati, you shouldn’t be afraid try this. Go on. Ask your doctor. The doctor finishes reading the printed thread. He looks at Kozmik and his eyes are grave and perhaps a little sad. he depresses a barely perceptible switch. Kozmik feels a sharp prick in his spine which quickly goes numb. He cannot move his legs. “You have the truth Kozmik. There are 192 governments in the world and behind them is the Illuminati and behind that is a man we dare not name. Please try to relax. I assure you the poison is quite painless, pleasant even. You will drift into a dreamless sleep…” The next day the doctor is on the phone. “Yes, master, the issue has been resolved. I have forwarded my report and the message board thread in question. Our agents at Google should have furnished you with the identities of the posters on the ‘Straight Dope Message Board.’ Fortunately the subject Kozmik was so cryptic and incoherent he was unable to convince anyone of the truth. If I may be bold sir, my advice is that no further action need be taken, other than ordinary surveillance…Thank you master. Your praise is truly the nourishment of your servants.” ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/970 "2012-07-26T03:30:27Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > The Secret Service does not let the president wander around on his own. The Director of the Secret Service has more power than the President of the United States. :dubious: > [@Scholar\_Beardpig](#): > > So, then, what? How do they instruct these crime investigators and media reporters? Are there people inside the NYPD who, despite seemingly answering to their nominal superiors (police commissioner, mayor, etc), are actually loyal to the Illuminati? Or is it just at the highest level, that elected officials (who have no de facto superior and answer instead to the voters) who answer to them? Your own investigation is heading in the right direction, **Scholar Beardpig**. Now you might understand why I keep mentioning the highest (known) level - the 192 heads of government, elected officials like Barack Obama and François Hollande. The 192 heads of government have no de facto superior and answer instead to the people (of course, not all heads of government are elected and I use the phrase “answer to the people” loosely). > [@Scholar\_Beardpig](#): > > How does this institution work? Do Mr. A, B, and C have public identities, or are they just invisible people that nobody outside of the Illuminati has heard of, except for their contacts? Some have public identities. Some are invisible. Some are semi-public. > [@Scholar\_Beardpig](#): > > So far, I’m not seeing any other means of control other than blackmail. Blackmail doesn’t work against people who have armies, private or otherwise. What’s to stop all these media types from reporting on the Illuminati, or the police officers from arresting them? What’s to stop Sarkozy from getting tired of Mr. A in Paris screwing him around, and sending the Foreign Legion to put him before a firing squad? What’s to have stopped Strauss-Kahn from hiring some thugs to bludgeon him to death? And if they tempted Diallo with money, where did they get it? Who is donating their private fortunes to this agency, or who is skimming off of public fortunes? With Diallo, it would be easy for them to have access to money. With Strauss-Khan, it was easy access to power. Strauss-Khan planned on becoming the next President of France. They knew that. It’s more like, what’s to stop them from hiring some thugs to bludgeon Strauss-Khan to death? As for Sarkozy sending out the Foreign Legion, the question is, what do heads of government fear? The media and the police arrest those in power and report on those in power, Strauss-Khan, Sarkozy. The Iluminati see the NYPD the same way that the US Secret Service see the NYPD, as a necessary nuisance. To them, the Chief of Police is the same as any police officer. > [@Scholar\_Beardpig](#): > > In order for this plan to work, you need people who can fulfill two conditions. First, they need to be aware of the Illuminati, aware of their utility to it, believe in their cause, and wish to serve it willingly. Second, they need some kind of authority or puissance that they received publically, from people who are not aware of the Illuminati and would not work for them - people like police commissioners, banking executives, politicians, generals, and the like. Who are these people? Some of these people are on [this](http://www.wargs.com/essays/succession/2011.html) list. > [@Ravenman](#): > > As a purely factual matter, if there were a G-192 meeting, there would simply be someone appointed (most likely the head of government of the host country) to serve as host/chairman – recognizing speakers, keeping the agenda, etc. – while not having any power to dictate things to people. Correct. > [@Alessan](#): > > That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? \*\*Kozmik \*\*learns that national leaders don’t really control the world, and from that he reaches the conclusion that an even smaller group of people have to control it. What he seems to be ignoring is the infinitely more likely possibility - namely, that \*nobody \*controls the world. And we can only know that the infinitely more likely possibility is right if there were a closed G-192 summit. ---
**Author:** ![LeeshaJoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e8cbc/32.png) [@LeeshaJoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LeeshaJoy)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/971 "2012-07-26T03:36:28Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > The Director of the Secret Service has more power than the President of the United States. :dubious: Scissors beats paper. Rock beats scissors. Paper beats rock. Which one is “above” the other two? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/972 "2012-07-26T05:21:24Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > And we can only know that the infinitely more likely possibility is right if there were a closed G-192 summit. Only if you have a completely different understanding of any of the following words in that sentence: - infinitely - probability - know ---
**Author:** ![Scholar\_Beardpig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de053/32.png) [@Scholar\_Beardpig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scholar_Beardpig)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/973 "2012-07-26T10:32:21Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > Your own investigation is heading in the right direction, **Scholar Beardpig**. I’m not real good at the multiquotes, so I’m-a use this line metonymically to refer to the rest of your post. 1. If I am ‘conducting an investigation,’ it is an investigation into your own mind; at no point do I believe that there is an entity called the Illuminati, or one that could be plausibly referred to as such, or that there is any ‘secret level’ of international correspondence, or that anybody just hands orders to the President. Do not take my casual curiosity into your beliefs as anything but rejection of the entirety of your premise and hypothesis, with prejudice. 2. What is this obsession with the British Monarchy? You may as well accuse the House of Norodom, for all the influence it has in the world. And most of these people are rank nobodies. 3. We have still not reached an answer to my actual question. You yadda-yadda’d the good parts. How does the Illuminati get all this power? Is it one giant spinning plate scheme, a kind of Abilene Paradox where every servant loathes the master and wants to betray him, but is afraid that the other servants will rush to the master’s aid? Or is there someone at the top with actual influence and power, outside of their commission in the Illuminati? 4. Actually, the President of France has complete immunity to all criminal prosecutions during their term of office. It’s funny you should mention France, because their system is almost designed perfectly to foil something like this. Let me walk you through a hypothetical situation… * * * It is a dark and stormy night, as Francoise Hollande, president of France, sits at his desk in the grand study at the Elysee Palace. Across the desk stands the mysterious Mr. A, the top Illuminati man in France. “… and so, at precisely 6:33 PM, you are to flush the toilet in your private lavatory, and exactly 38 seconds later, pull the fire alarm…” But it was all that he could stand! President Hollande put his fingers to his lips, and whistled. “Bertrand! Bertrand, get in here!” It was only moment before the President’s private bodyguard strode into the room. “What can I do for you, mon President?” Francois Hollande gestured furiously towards the mysterious Mr. A. “Beat this man senseless and arrest him. He’s a member of a terrorist organization that’s threatening the security of the Republic, and my own person.” Under ordinary circumstances, this order must be obeyed at once; French justice is such that the word of an eminent magnate - to say nothing of the President of the Republic! - is enough to render anyone guilty. But at this moment… “I am sorry, mon President, but I cannot kill this man. For he is a member of the Illuminati, and I, too, am a member of the Illuminati, and am bound to defend him in service of our glorious (yet hidden) cause.” But Hollande is defiant. “That puts you in a very clever bind, you know. Because if you fire a gun in here, my guards will swarm in and you’ll both swing by sunrise. And you can’t take my word that I’ll do what you want; now that I know you’re in with them, I’ll have you gotten rid of the second you leave this room. And even if you could kill me quietly, with a garrote or something, that doesn’t change the fact that this building is under round-the-clock security camera surveillance. You’d never be able to get out without being seen.” * * * So what happens next? a) If everyone in the Palace is part of the cause, and all of them are willing to disobey their oaths and orders in service of the Illuminati… that’s a staggeringly difficult feat to assemble. How could the Illuminati compel and bind the _hundreds_ of people they’d need to keep a president a prisoner in his own palace, without anyone letting it leak? b) If Mr. A doesn’t have an ace up his sleeve - if he doesn’t have the ability to jail the President at will - then they’d have to rely on other means, like sneaky manipulations and bad press. But at the same time, the President now has Mr. A as his personal prisoner. Unless Mr. A’s got a cyanide tablet hidden up his ass or something, they’re going to put him under the thumbscrews until he tells them more - or perhaps they’ll just parade him on television to tell his story. And if any of these Illuminati assets stick their neck out to defend him, why, now the President knows who to pick up next. Pretty soon, he’ll have enough Illuminati toenails to make a life-sized sculpture of his own penis, testicles included. c) But perhaps Mr. A was never there. Perhaps, instead, Mr. A conversed over the phone. But that just puts it down one level, it doesn’t change anything - if the President really is a prisoner, then somebody’s gotta be there jailing him - somebody who is, as we discussed, a card-carrying member. The problem doesn’t go away. d) And for all this, any system that relies on unknowing or unwilling accomplices is vulnerable to mixed-up communications, false communications, and every sort of misery. If the Illuminati choose to take revenge on Hollande by publishing something in the paper saying that he molested a little girl, well, that means somebody at the newspaper company is a card-carrier. (It’s not enough to use anonymous blogs; you’d need somebody in a major newsroom.) Francois Hollande knows he didn’t do it, he’s going to find the guy who leaked the story and we’re back at Option B, with the toenails. If you think **President touches up little girl** is going to be a big story, wait until you see how well **Reporter coerced into smear campaign** does at the newsstands. **Kozmik** , you should be happy that we’re demonstrating and proving how your fears aren’t true, that the monsters in the closet are really just shadows after all. The world is a better place than you imagine it to be. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/974 "2012-07-26T12:03:28Z")
Bearpig just the opposite is true. For someone with paranoid delusions the idea that nothing is controlled and the world is barely balanced chaos is much more frightening than it being led by a shadowy figure. At least someone is at the rudder. If I may be so bold, the same reason why we have religion. Koz just takes it to a different level. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/975 "2012-07-26T12:26:53Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > The Director of the Secret Service has more power than the President of the United States. :dubious: > Your own investigation is heading in the right direction, **Scholar Beardpig**. > > Now you might understand why I keep mentioning the highest (known) level - the 192 heads of government, elected officials like Barack Obama and François Hollande. The 192 heads of government have no de facto superior and answer instead to the people (of course, not all heads of government are elected and I use the phrase “answer to the people” loosely). > > Some have public identities. Some are invisible. Some are semi-public. > > With Diallo, it would be easy for them to have access to money. With Strauss-Khan, it was easy access to power. Strauss-Khan planned on becoming the next President of France. They knew that. It’s more like, what’s to stop them from hiring some thugs to bludgeon Strauss-Khan to death? As for Sarkozy sending out the Foreign Legion, the question is, what do heads of government fear? The media and the police arrest those in power and report on those in power, Strauss-Khan, Sarkozy. The Iluminati see the NYPD the same way that the US Secret Service see the NYPD, as a necessary nuisance. To them, the Chief of Police is the same as any police officer. > > Some of these people are on [this](http://www.wargs.com/essays/succession/2011.html) list. > Correct. > And we can only know that the infinitely more likely possibility is right if there were a closed G-192 summit. How can one person be so incredibly ignorant about so many things, _including the one thing he mainly obsesses about?_ I know some right-wing truckers that are completely paranoid and delusional when it comes to how this country is run but when it comes to trucks and how they run they know what the fuck they are talking about. Your “knowledge” about your obsession, the Illuminati, is so damn shallow and inaccurate that if you had spent all this time describing them as you have without actually _naming_ them, nobody would know who you were taking about. If you are going to be a nutcase about something, try to learn a bit about it first, o.k.? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/976 "2012-07-26T12:47:05Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > Bearpig just the opposite is true. For someone with paranoid delusions the idea that nothing is controlled and the world is barely balanced chaos is much more frightening than it being led by a shadowy figure. At least someone is at the rudder. If I may be so bold, the same reason why we have religion. Koz just takes it to a different level. I think I said something on these lines about 17 pages ago. It’s fear that drives **Kozmik** , and more than that, it’s \*lack \*of imagination - he can’t visualize complex systems, so he invents simple ones. ---
**Author:** ![42fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/b487fb/32.png) [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/977 "2012-07-26T13:02:40Z")
> [@LeeshaJoy](#): > > Scissors beats paper. Rock beats scissors. Paper beats rock. > > Which one is “above” the other two? Don’t mention the Spock-lizard variant or you’ll break his mind. ---
**Author:** ![HansGrosse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@HansGrosse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HansGrosse)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/978 "2012-07-26T13:47:30Z")
Why the fuck are you guys wasting your time trying to use facts and logic against some asshat who is going to believe whatever the hell he wants? ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/979 "2012-07-26T14:02:39Z")
> [@HansGrosse](#): > > Why the fuck are you guys wasting your time trying to use facts and logic against some asshat who is going to believe whatever the hell he wants? It’s our schtick. You know, all that “fighting ignorance” stuff. and shit. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653/980 "2012-07-26T14:04:43Z")
What happens when an electron meets a positron, Fluffy? Well, I’m glad you asked! Let me write down this equation, and we can work through it together… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653.md?page=48) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-derisive-condenscending-anti-conspiriacy-merged-threads/626653.md?page=50)