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Yesterday, my dad and I had a conversation. We started talking about wrongful journalism, politics, and the ethics of abortion (or lack thereof!), but soon the conversation turned to Bacon/Shakespeare. My dad had known that I was a Baconian for some time, and had previously only hinted at my success in swaying him to a Baconian perspective. (I knew that he'd been reading Is Shakespeare Dead?, and when he gave me a first edition copy of Bacon is Shakespeare [1911, I think] my suspicions were confirmed.) However, I had never yet talked in depth with him on the subject. I won't lie and say I remember the conversation perfectly, but I know that at some point the topic of "conspiracy theories" came up. I told my dad that people have repeatedly called me a conspiracy theorist when I mention my Baconian beliefs. He then said something utterly unexpected. Dad said, "Maybe you are a conspiracy theorist. Maybe I'm a conspiracy theorist!" I was at first offended, but then he continued. "There's nothing wrong with conspiracy theories - at least the way I see them. If everyone believed what they were told, we'd all be living in Nineteen-Eighty-Four!" I thought about this. I thought incredibly hard, and when I was finished thinking, I said, "I think we have different ideas of what that term means." Then I remembered a line that I had actually cut from my novel months ago (and I see now how important it is that I integrate this line back into the story). The line reads: "Arti, you've got to understand this. Sometimes we need conspiracy theories. Without them, we would be slaves to the conspirators."