Yes and no. We aren't all superstitious, paranoid conspirists with tin foil hats. What we are is informed about historical events.

As an example, one could look at Purdue Pharma. During the 80s and 90s opioid crisis, it eventually came to light that Purdue was not just influencing doctors to prescribe their products, but sending either intimidating salesmen to bully their point or incredibly attractive sales people to sort of pillow talk their way into sales.

Pill mills became...not encouraged, but definitely not discouraged since it meant wads of money coming in. Even some local police might stand outside of the pill mill clinics because they were being paid under the table as pseudo body guards.

It would always wind all the way up to politicians' pockets. Purdue would dump money into campaigns and gifts like a sugar daddy, wooing a range of politicians with voting influence.

On this particular item, I highly recommend the Netflix documentary "The Pharmacist." A man's son loses his life over a drug deal from getting hooked on opioids, and he goes out of his way to uncover a pill mill, and then the reasons behind it. He can't understand why the government isn't doing anything about it. Come to find out, the FBI had an undercover operation going on and it took them years to get sufficient evidence.

I bring this story up because it's one of the more recent, and more publicly accessible examples. Though we're no longer in the opioid crisis as a proper noun, we are still fighting addictions caused by those actions today in a rippling effect.

Our issue isn't that we so much believe in secret organizations, so much as secret dealings of seemingly public organizations. Political representatives have been proven to have taken bribes many times over. Oil companies, social media companies, pharmaceuticals, outside governments, etc. Each of those I listed, there's at least one in the public zeitgeist that's just well known for their "influence" even when nothing is publicly proven.

This devolved into a bit of a rant. But you see my point. It's heavily based in reality. MKUltra, Holmesburg Prison, the Watergate scandal are all examples of what our government is willing to do to and against us. We are just statistics to them. So it goes without saying that if our own government encourages deception and manipulation of the American people, why wouldn't they allow large corporate entities to do the same?