The Grand Illusion
The ultra-conservatives and many in the right wing of Republican party tout all sorts of conspiracies, including 9/11 being a clandestine government operation, the “liberal” deep state (with various acts purportedly associated), the “stealing” of the 2020 election,” that the January 6th insurrection was an antifa operation, that liberals, including Hillary Clinton, ran a child porn operation, and that Joe Biden is the head of a family crime ring.
There are, however, significant problems with all these purported conspiracies, principally that not a shred of hard provable evidence exists to back up any of them, despite years and years of trying to find any hard evidence — and this is in a country that can’t keep anything secret for long and where cellphone photos are everywhere.,
Yet, despite the lack of hard evidence beyond unprovable rumors and repeated lies, the true believers in all these “conspiracies” persevere in their beliefs.
What’s so amazing about all of them is that they ignore the biggest conspiracy of all – that Donald Trump conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election. So far, Trump has been indicted and arrested on ninety-one criminal counts in four separate jurisdictions so far, on both state and federal charges. He’s currently out on bail, awaiting all those trials.
And there’s plenty of evidence, unlike in all the Republican conspiracy theories. We have Trump being recorded asking an election official to find him over 11,800 votes, and his attorneys documented as fabricating false slates of electors. There’s video and documentary of him retaining classified information, as well as paying hush money to a porn star not to reveal their sexual encounters.
And, oh yes, Trump’s even lost a civil case involving his sexual assault on a woman.
None of this is speculation. There are thousands of pages of documentation, as well as hundreds of video images.
Yet the right-wing conspiracy types not only insist that Trump didn’t nothing wrong, but they’ve gone so far as buying mug-shot mugs and donating even more millions of dollars to Trump.
All the evidence in the world won’t change their support of Trump, not surprisingly, since, where Trump’s concerned, those who actually have minds lost them long ago.
Goodness, how does an author approach writing a work of fiction nowadays considering the warping of reality all around us?
Charles Stross has literally given up on near future SF – Brexit and the sheer incompetence of the political class basically kept going more insane than any plot line he could come up with, including selling the country to Nyarlathotep!
“… buying mug-shot mugs and donating even more millions of dollars to Trump.”
Brings to mind the old saw; “There’s one born every minute”.
This is not new: but the communication is greater now than it was and so the numbers involved are larger and more of a problem for society.
“where Trump’s concerned, those who actually have minds lost them long ago”
Nicely put.
It does illustrate how faith isn’t a bad thing, but blind faith is.
Because they believe that liberals as a group are evil connivers, that justifies all of the worst inclinations of the Republican tribe. It’s the “get out of jail free” card for bigots.
It’s the logical progression of the republican party since the 1990s. With the Soviet union dissolved, corporate and top end taxes lower than ever, and union membership basically destroyed, all of their key policy goals have been accomplished, and there was a little other than abortion to bring the voters to the polls.
The embarked on a strategy of throwing raw red meat on their voters. I feel like we have forgotten that this legacy of loony lies and exaggeration started with the dozens of people that the Clintons were supposed to have killed. 30 years of steady nonsense have created an electorate where 30% are complete ding-dong‘s that will believe anything directed at Democrats.
Contrary facts are just evidence of how deep the conspiracy goes. And if something ever becomes too much for one of them? Well, it’s an easy mental shift into them “being in on the joke.” It’s a nice set up and that’s how we got here.