Lately, everywhere I look, I seem to see people talking about conspiracies. "A" happens and then "B" happens and though there's no obvious connection between the two, someone finds a way to link them and to suggest that they're all a plot by Master Planner "C."
It's possible…but possible does not mean certain or even probable. It's possible that that lottery ticket you purchased will win you $50 million but it's not probable and certainly more than a bit far from certain. Things do happen all on their own. There are coincidences. And there's another factor that has a lot to do with what happens in this world…
That factor is incompetence. There's a lot of it on this planet, sometimes even from people who give every appearance of knowing what they're doing. I am a big believer in the aphorism, "Never attribute to deviousness that which can be explained by incompetence," though I more often modify it to "Don't rush to attribute to deviousness that which can be explained by incompetence."
Back in the seventies, I took a course in criminology just for the heck of it. Our instructor, a former F.B.I. official I believe, spent a lot of time telling us why Real Life was not like an Erle Stanley Gardner novel…or like the way we saw crimes in the movies or on TV. One of his main points was that you can't solve a mystery by assuming that all parties did the logical thing. Even relatively-sane people do not follow obvious rules of logic…and criminals are often far from sane.
Sometimes, you can figure out what they're thinking. Often, you can't. And often, they're not thinking at all.
Lately, I've received a lot of questions about comic book history with folks asking me why some publisher did something that now seems totally illogical. Well, maybe it didn't then. Or maybe there were other factors in play about which we know nothing…
Or maybe the person making the decision was totally illogical. And/or incompetent.
I saw someone on the web the other day trying to figure out Mike Lindell's "endgame." I wouldn't assume The Pillow Guy has one. It strikes me that when he starts a sentence, he doesn't know where he's going en route to the period. You cannot have a Master Plan if you're not to some degree a Master Planner.
And there are Master Planners in the world. I'm not saying there aren't. But there are also incompetents and I think they outnumber the Master Planners…by far.