Source: Bigstcock

The best interpretation that I can give to the above is that the security authorities at the Paris airport (at all airports?) have been bribed consistently not to do their work properly. By whom they have been bribed the author does not venture: perhaps by the terrorists, perhaps by the cartel or cabal of airlines who do not wish their passengers to be further inconvenienced by security measures, about which they already grumble. On the other hand, of course, terrorism can hardly be good for the airline business.

Conspiracy theories are gratifying and popular not because there really are conspiracies sometimes (or is it often?) but because they give overall meaning to events. Perfectibility requires that events should be controllable, and they can only be controlled if they have a larger meaning. We want to live in a perfectible world.

Another advantage of conspiracy theories for commentators such as those who responded to the article”€”whose very title appeals to the paranoid”€”is that they give them the feeling that they have understood what others have not, that they have penetrated an essence of events that less astute or well-informed persons have not been able to divine. They thus confer an imagined superiority on those who hold them. If you listen to any conversation in any bar of any provincial town, you will soon realize that almost everyone involved in it is party to the inner workings of the world, though by day they are all minor functionaries in businesses or organizations whose headquarters are elsewhere.

The third great advantage of conspiracy theories is that they give license and justification for the hatred that those who hold them would otherwise feel ashamed to express. Conspiracy theorists (other than those who are outright mad) are generally dissatisfied with life and full of resentment; it is very rarely that a conspiracy theorist laughs at the state of the world. Acting on their fantasies, conspiracy theorists are responsible for a great deal of harm.

I can”€™t stand them; I hate them; they ruin everything. It must be a conspiracy.