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This is not to say that paranoia doesn”€™t have its place. Except for maybe Alex Jones, I”€™d be the first to tell you that the term “€œconspiracy theory”€ is loaded and manipulative. There have been proven conspiracies throughout world history, and if you have the remotest apprehension of human nature, it is childishly naïve to believe that human beings in power won”€™t do everything to maintain that power. To believe that people in very high places have our best interests in mind rather than theirs is to swallow the daffiest conspiracy theory ever concocted. Only a fool would believe that the CIA receives an unspecified black budget to keep itself awash in donuts and coffee. All things considered, it’s better to be paranoid than gullible.

After all, the use of ethnic bioweapons is a matter of historical record. Nepalese rulers purposely kept the Terai forest infected with malaria because the natives there were genetically immune to the disease while potential intruders from the Ganges plains weren”€™t. And if you aren”€™t already sick to death of hearing about the Tuskegee experiment, I”€™m sure that Hollywood will make another dozen or so movies about it in case you forget.

But there’s a crucial difference between real conspiracies and really dumb conspiracy theories. If American authorities really sought to depopulate Africa”€”rather than, say, America”€”with Ebola, it”€™d make no sense for high rollers such as Barack Obama to have such a blasé, it-can”€™t-happen-here, open-door policy that allowed a handful of Ebola cases to start leaking onto these shores in the late summer. If people such as Louis Farrakhan and Cyril Broderick are indeed CIA puppets, it is far less likely that this is some grand conspiracy to annihilate black people than it is to make them look silly.