Mike in Michigan

Intentional Duplicity or Staggering Ineptitude?

Revisado: 01-07-16

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Paranoid schizophrenics, people suffering from severe head injuries, anyone who has ever tried to cite a youtube video as a scholarly source,

Has Conspiracy Theory in America turned you off from other books in this genre?

Not universally, though it has made me do more research into the books before buying them

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrator is the least of this book's problems

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Conspiracy Theory in America?

the entirety of the book

Any additional comments?

One of those truly special cases where a viewpoint is presented so poorly that it becomes a strong argument for the antithesis. The only debate it inspires is whether the author was trying his best to support an poorly reasoned opinion or if he is knowingly attempting to mislead others but lacks the rhetorical skills to do so. On many occasions, Mr. deHaven Smith presents examples for one point that contradict his earlier arguments, often within the same chapter or even the same paragraph.

His main gripe seems to be that the very idea of "conspiracy theories" exists only to silence debate on certain subjects regardless of contrary evidence. He then goes on to say that we know these kind of conspiracies are going on because of known conspiracies like Iran/Contra, Watergate and the justification for the War in Iraq. Amazingly, the author does not recognize that those examples are prime examples of the fact that conspiracies supported by the evidence are not silenced by academics, journalists or even law enforcement. He rails against those who ignore proof that doesn't fit the "official story", but goes on to discount any and all evidence that contradicts the conspiracy theory because the investigators must be in on it.

The impetus for this book, according to the author, was frustration that anything tarred with the conspiracy theory label was automatically not taken seriously and that proponents of those theories were thus seen as idiots or psychotics. Unfortunately he then went on to write a book that reinforces all of those stereotypes. I would compare the magnitude of failure to a scenario in which Mein Kampf had been intended as denouncement of anti-Semitism and a defense of Germany's Jews.

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