The paranoid style in American headwear*

(click for larger image)

Lord Bassington-Bassington has long held the opinion that a worldview or religion shouldn’t just be selected on the basis of how accurately it describes the world. It is, of course, a great bonus if what you believe bears some similarity to the truth, but an equally important test of a worldview or religion is what it does to your own life – and your sense of style.

Following this logic, a good argument for dismissing conspiracy theories is not just that they’re false. Another weighty argument is that conspiracy theories make your life unnecessarily complicated by causing you to worry about things that don’t exist, and can also make your life worse by making you ignore things you should be concerned about – such as the plight of your fellows.

Worst of all, though, is that conspiracy theories surprisingly often make you wear very unstylish headgear.

No, we’re not just talking about tin foil hats. The baseball caps worn by fundamentalist militias aren’t much better, as demonstrated in the excellent comic above (shamelessly stolen from sinfest.net). Baseball caps look great on baseball players, but not on people who try to start civil wars because they believe Obama is the Antichrist (after all, every sensible person knows that Obama really is Nyarlathotep...)

Whether a garment or some piece of headwear looks good on someone depends on context. While white pointed hoods look marvellous on ceremonial processions of Spanish priests, they look quite idiotic on members of the Ku Klux Klan who pretend to fight the Zionist Occupational Government. Just like dog collars look superb when you’re a properly schooled and trained clergyman with 2000 years of tradition behind you, but look sort of silly when you’re ordained by your own little cult.

So here we see how to wear white hoods... (picture stolen from this blog, by the way)



...and how not to wear white hoods.



And let’s not even start to think about David Icke’s turqoise tracksuits, the height of conspiratorial style.



We also heartily recommend Cracked Magazine's summary of conspiracy theories.

(*: Apologies to Richard Hofstadter for the title…)