Anything sufficiently challenging and plain-spoken will experience external forces that attempt to dismiss, discredit or co-opt it - starting with one's own self.<p>As well, ideas that are serious and challenging require the reader to make a great, intentional effort to understand them. Rationalization mechanisms will always find ways to avoid understanding otherwise. A narrow band of "interesting" is allowed, but not something which triggers defensiveness.<p>Thus, the optimal way to teach the reader is to find a way for them to engage in play with the idea and solve a mystery that unlocks the real information, creating the intentional effort without waking up the rationalization guards.<p>Conspiracy theories act as the foil to "mainstream" propaganda by presenting a story which is just fractionally harder to follow, but not tremendously so; the initial reader effort is basically one of "what if They are lying to me?" Subsequently the reader is showered with evidence that yes, they are being lied to. This point and counter-point effort allows people to remain anchored in a binary, yes-or-no, right-or-wrong framing of events and actions, where their identity and opinions can remain stable and confident.<p>There is an inevitability that a popular medium will hew close to surface dualism. Anything that achieves more in that realm hides something of itself.<p>Another way to think about it is that understanding is concentric - the group in the innermost circle can't directly speak to the folks far in the outside. They have to teach the people they're adjacent to, first. In the process the understanding may become a little more basic and limited, but still more "correct" to the expert's understanding.