Reality has an irritating habit of refusing to fit in one sentence.
Institutions can be competent and incompetent at the same time. People can have mixed motives. Systems produce outcomes nobody explicitly intended. Evidence changes. Experts disagree. Sometimes the answer is simply that nobody knows yet.
That is emotionally expensive.
A totalising explanation is cheaper. It tells you who did it, why they did it, why people disagree with you and why contrary evidence exists. Better still, disagreement can become proof of the theory.
I think that is part of what makes conspiratorial thinking so psychologically comfortable. Not stupidity. Compression.
The defence is not to mock people for wanting coherence. We all want it.
The defence is learning to tolerate the sentence: “I do not know yet.”