With all this in mind then, now may be a good time for some slightly 'off piste' theorising about theorising from your humble author.
Once Upon a Paranoid Time (In Mediaeval La Mancha)
In Miguel Cervantes' great literary epic that was The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (aka Don Quixote), when the eponymous hero saw some windmills in his travels remarked to Sancho Panza, his devoted, yet long-suffering squire, the following:
"Those giants that you can see over there Sancho, with long arms: there are giants with arms almost six miles long."
Sancho replied:
"What giants? Those aren't giants, they're windmills, and what look to you like arms are sails -- when the wind turns them they make the millstones go round."
Don Quixote responded:
"It is perfectly clear, that you are but a raw novice in this matter of adventures. They are giants; and if you are frightened, you can take yourself and say your prayers while I engage them in fierce, arduous combat."
With this exchange in mind, the outward adventures and the inner imaginings of Cervantes' iconic and woefully idealistic protagonist provide us a rich reservoir of allusions to, and insights into, the conspiracy-theory construct. We might begin by viewing The 'Don' himself as the novel's conspiracy theorist-in-residence, and Sancho as the conspiracy debunker (or at least skeptic). Either way, key memes and motifs evident in this hugely influential novel are useful to gaining a better understanding of any real or imagined conspiracy itself.
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