The most famous conspiracy theorist in my mind was Sen. Hillary Clinton, who, while as First Lady, said that that her husband President Bill Clinton faced an intricate right-wing conspiracy.

If you don't already know, there are a lot of dark, back rooms where people much more powerful than you or I are making decisions that will impact our world.

A good friend I met up with at Netroots Nation this past weekend named Ned Resnikoff is a young blogger from New York. Along with his friend Peter, Ned wrote an article about government conspiracies that actually happened. They're not all tin-foil hat wearing conspiracies!

According to Ned and Peter's piece, there was an actual attempt at a military coup in the United States in the 1930's where allegedly the heads of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, the DuPont family and Senator Prescott Bush were hoping to take over the country. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler was the one who spilled the beans in a Congressional hearing and everyone laughed him out of the room and denied the idea.

Still, the House McCormack-Dickstein Committee did at least acknowledge the existence of the conspiracy, which ended up never getting past the initial planning stages.

Ned and Peter say you should never trust people named Smedley.

Remember, remember the 5th of November, the gunpowder treason and plot... If you've seen the movie V for Vendetta then you know all about Guy Fawkes and his plot to blow up the British House of Parliament. Each year the British celebrate Guy Fawkes Day in remembrance of the day Britain was saved from Fawkes' plot. It's kinda like their 4th of July. They do fireworks and have homemade ice cream and make up fake Guy Fawkeses and burn them or beat them or blow them up with fireworks. Good clean family fun!

One of the conspirators sent a letter to Lord Monteagle, a high ranking Catholic, which basically said, "Hypothetically, we could blow up Parliament on the day it opens this year. So don't go, hypothetically speaking." This proved to be their undoing, as Lord Monteagle immediately passed the news on to the Secretary of State. The House of Lords was searched, and Guy Fawkes, the man left in charge of watching the explosives, was found and arrested.

New conspiracies are being developed every day, some by the government and some by Ben and Jerry's who retired my favorite ice cream flavors or the Panera Bread Company who no longer offer more than 30 minutes of free wifi during lunch hours.

The key component to a real conspiracy is when someone of power does something to someone who has no power as part of a secret plan to create fraud, commit a crime, or a wrongful act. Which ... well, is just plain wrong.

Many activists who work on causes are people who believe there was some wrongful act committed and those who committed it must be held accountable.

We're seeing this now with the recent arrest of Radovan Karadzic. If you saw the movie The Hunting Party which was based on an article by Scott Anderson that appeared in Esquire Magazine in 2000, then you know the conspiracy theory: no one was really looking for Karadzic to bring him to justice.

Similarly, the International Criminal Court just issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes committed in Darfur over many years of fighting, genocide, and international inaction.

In the spirit of the X-Files, this election season I urge you to keep your eyes open, your ear to the ground and understand issues from all points of view. There might just be a conspiracy afoot!

(Crossposted from Rock the Trail)