Wow! I leave for a week and everything blows up.

Not only did the stock market crash but Jeffery Epstein committed suicide.

I’m sure that no one saw that coming?

Maybe it was a coincidence for the most valuable prisoner in America to kill himself, or maybe he was murdered to halt an investigation into some of the most wealthy and powerful people on earth. Decide for yourself.

What’s been bizarre is the reaction of the corporate media to any suggestion that there might have been foul play in Epstein’s death. They immediately labeled anyone who doubted the official storyline a conspiracy theorist.

“Jeffrey Epstein: How conspiracy theories spread after financier’s death” reads a BBC headline. “Epstein Suicide Conspiracies Show How Our Information System Is Poisoned” reads one from the New York Times. “Conspiracy Theories Fly Online in Wake of Epstein Death” warns The Wall Street Journal. “Financier Epstein’s Death Disappoints Victims, Launches Conspiracy Theories” reads the headline from US government-funded Voice of America.

What’s infuriating is that this term–conspiracy theorist–is reserved for those of us who question the official narrative as promulgated by the corporate media. It seems that conspiracy theory is how they characterizes any narrative that differs from their reporting of the establishment storyline.

But the Epstein story is so sick and twisted that it defies all attempts at narrative control. For instance, for almost two decades, for some unknown reason, whether to do with ties to foreign intelligence, his billions of dollars, or his social connections, Epstein’s alleged sexual perversion and horrific assaults on young girls was an open secret. For instance, Bill Clinton flew dozens of times on Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed the Lolita Express. Yet Epstein remained untouchable.

Historically, all regimes, even so-called democratic/republics have a limited spectrum of authorized opinion, a limited spectrum of what can and cannot be discussed, criticized, or politically represented. And Epstein supposedly was untouchable because he has an intelligence connection to Mossad. Or perhaps Epstein is just the current manifestation of the sordid history of the connection between various factions of the American ruling elites, whose business of sexual exploitation is a fringe benefit of being willing members of the economic and military exploitation of the world.

Yet somehow it’s a conspiracy theory to point any of this out.

Meanwhile, the corporate media has spent the last 3 years flogging the most unbelievable conspiracy theory ever–Russia-gate. Of course, they react with sanctimonious outrage whenever anyone points out that the political and media operatives are engaged in the ultimate conspiracy theory, despite the self-evident fact that that’s exactly what it is: a theory about a band of powerful Russian conspirators conspiring with the highest levels of the US government to elect a Manchurian Candidate as president.

Apparently, to paraphrase Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s Manufacturing Consent, some conspiracy theories are worthy while others are unworthy. The worthy conspiracy theories appear to advance the cause of the deep-state establishment that maintains America’s far flung empire, while the unworthy ones threaten to shine a light on these nefarious workings.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines conspiracy theory as “the theory that an event or phenomenon occurs as a result of a conspiracy between interested parties; spec. a belief that some covert but influential agency (typically political in motivation and oppressive in intent) is responsible for an unexplained event”.

In the past, conspiracy theories were popular mostly amongst fringe circles but they are now becoming commonplace in alternative media and social media. I personally believe that the rapid rise in popularity of alternative explanatory theories is an indication of a growing mistrust of the current feral elite with their policies of austerity and endless war.

The essence of the conspiratorial mindset is that powerful shadowy forces are, first, capable of and engaged in the most dastardly skullduggery imaginable, and, second, collaborating with each other across all levels of power. The Epstein case seems to affirm both of these. Going further, the whole sordid affair makes our elites seem like aliens, of a different culture, a different moral code, a different species. How else could they have allowed this to go on for so long?

A little history of the term conspiracy theory would probably be helpful.

Based on an FOIA disclosure, it turns out that it was that the CIA was very likely responsible for the widespread introduction of “conspiracy theory” as a term of political abuse, having orchestrated that development as a deliberate means of influencing public opinion. During the mid-1960s there had been increasing public skepticism about the Warren Commission findings that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been solely responsible for President Kennedy’s assassination, and growing suspicions that top-ranking American leaders had also been involved. So as a means of damage control, the CIA distributed a secret memo to all its field offices requesting that they enlist their media assets in efforts to ridicule and attack such critics as irrational supporters of “conspiracy theories.”

And it worked too. For awhile.

But when you really think about it, our entire narrative is composed of conspiracy theories. What was 9/11, where supposedly al Qaeda terrorists armed with boxcutters managed to highjack jetliners then fly them through the most heavily guarded airspace on the planet and into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, except an elaborate conspiracy theory?

What I’ve been able to gather from the whole Epstein affair is that you can learn quite a bit about the powerful forces operating behind the scenes in America by noting which conspiracy theories are accepted as worthy and which ones are rejected as unworthy.