On Conspiracies and Confederacies

Posted on August 22, 2007 in Reflections

Real conspiracies happen, but I believe that they are rare. Confederacies look like conspiracies on the surface and they are quite common. In the article about crackpot, one flamer (who got deleted in the moderation queue) attempted to trump me by calling me a conspiracy theorist. It’s an old trick that people who don’t have anything substantive to say in rebuttal use.

I believe that somewhere, for some reason, one of the dictionary usage boards decided to remove the lunacy insinuations from the definition. Other dictionaries (have you noticed how their definitions often seem to sound nearly exactly alike?) looked over their shoulders and followed suit. “Well, the Zounders Dictionary changed the definition, so should we” is how the thinking must have gone. There was a general movement and that resulted in everyone doing it. Conspiracy? Did they all get together and agree to change the word? No, confederacy in that all the dogs began running in the same direction for pretty much the same reason.

It’s sad that some netizens don’t appear to want to put the work into understanding and making the distinction. But I guess I’ll chalk that up to insecurity.