Conspiracy Theory

I’ve been reading about conspiracy theories, and I find it’s a very hard subject to figure out.  The reason is because of the vast amount of misinformation that floods the Internet.  How can you tell what’s true, anymore?

Fox News Channel represents the Right, and MSNBC represents the Left.  So, you’re not going to get the straight truth from either of them.  I haven’t figured out who, if anybody, accurately represents the middle yet.  So, I look elsewhere for the truth, but I can’t find it.

Social media is definitely not the place to find the truth.  The posts on Facebook, seem to represent only far right or far left ideas.  There’s very little middle ground.  Yes, there are a few people who still post recipes and pictures of their cats, but most of the posts are political, and they are mostly extreme viewpoints.  Full disclosure – My own opinion almost always sides with the left.  So, when I hear the things that the far right Q Anon people believe, the first thought that comes to my head is that these people must be very stupid to believe such bullshit.

The second thought that comes to my head is that I know some of these people.  They are friends of mine, and they’re not stupid people.  So, why do they believe such utter nonsense, like stories about the Clintons and Obamas drinking baby’s blood in the back of a Washington D.C. pizzeria to keep them from aging.  Maybe Michelle Obama doesn’t look like she’s aging, but that’s because she’s into vegetables and exercise.  Have you seen the Clintons and Barrack Obama lately?  They’re aging.  The mysterious Q is just making stuff up and telling it to some very gullible people who believe it.  That’s it.  The people who believe these conspiracies aren’t necessarily stupid.  They are just gullible.  Actually, they might be both stupid and gullible, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, but my question is why are the rest so gullible?

I think that the answer is conditioning.  Americans have been programmed to be gullible since they were little, tiny children.  We all were told that if you’re a good child, Santa Claus will bring you presents for Christmas.  And you can’t fool Santa Claus.  He sees you when you’re sleeping.  He knows when you’re awake.  He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.  If you’re a good child, the Easter Bunny will bring you colored eggs and candy for Easter.  We found out quickly that you can fool him though.  He’s just a rabbit.  He brings eggs and candy treats to everyone, good or bad, unlike Santa who will bring you only coal if you are bad.

The gullibility conditioning goes on and on throughout childhood.  If you get out of bed at night, the boogieman will get you.  If you lose a tooth, you can put it under your pillow, and the Tooth Fairy will give you money for the tooth.  And when you’re too old to believe in Santa, or the Easter Bunny, or the Boogie Man, or the Tooth Fairy, parents play the ace they’ve had hidden up their sleeve.  They play the God card.  There is an invisible man in the sky who is so powerful that He made the entire universe in 6 days.  He’s keeping an eye on you, and you can’t hide from Him, because He sees everything.  He can even see through lead, something that even Superman can’t do.  If you’re good, He’ll take you to a magic place full of angels called Heaven.  If you’re bad, He’ll send you to an awful place full of devils called Hell.  And you can never grow out of that conditioning, like you grew out of believing in Santa.  God is a forever fantasy.  Even your parents still believe in Him.  He’s supposedly been around for eternity, and He’s supposedly everywhere, yet nobody’s ever seen Him.  He’s the gullibility jackpot, with an approval rating of about 85% in America.

So, we’re taught from childhood to have blind Faith, and to believe in things that don’t make any sense at all.  Santa drives flying reindeer and can visit every house on the planet in one single night.  A bunny knows how to weave baskets, dye eggs, and make delicious marshmallow peeps.  Boogie men are invisible, but they can still bite.  The Tooth Fairy know when every single kid on the planet loses a tooth, and can be at his house that night.  God created everyone and He loves everyone, but He also created things like cancer and Covid 19 to kill us, so don’t even try to figure Him out.  It’s all part of His glorious plan, which we can never understand, but we can make Him change the glorious plan for the Universe if we pray hard enough.

We’ve been brought up to believe a lot of utterly ridiculous nonsense.  So, it’s no wonder that 2% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 believe that the Earth is flat, not round.  When somebody with the penname Q says he saw the Clintons and the Obamas slurping down baby blood smoothies in a pizzeria in D.C., it’s no wonder that some people actually believe it.

This isn’t new.  My generation was sure that Paul McCartney died decades ago in a car crash, because he was the only one who was barefoot on the Abbey Road album cover.  We found our absolutely 100% convincing evidence by playing Beatles records backwards.  None of us were considered stupid, but we sure were very gullible, despite the fact that back then we did have a news source we could trust.  We had Walter Cronkite.

Be kind to the gullible, especially the young ones.  Just “pray” that they grow out of it.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl