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- This essay series has been arguing that one reason the American psyche is no longer in the grip of a single consensus narrative is that no single story can contain the massive number of facts that are generated and shared by automatic digital systems today. In this deluge, secrets have a special place. Trust in institutions can be drowned when corruption, incompetence, and malfeasance that were once hidden out of view inevitably become known. The most direct cause of the massive growth in American conspiracy thinking is the massive growth of bureaucratic secrecy since the start of the Cold War, together with the increasing impossibility of keeping secrets in a digital age.