Tag: Conspiracy Theories

More Proof That It’s A Cult

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Todd, NC – January 2024 photo by Starr Henderson

Wrongo had no intention of writing about the Right-wing’s meltdown on the internet about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. You know, the mega pop star and the star NFL football player? They’ve become a couple right before America’s eyes over the past few months. David Letterman called it:

“…a lovely thing.” He said Swift is “…a glowing, bright light of goodness in the world…”

The couple’s deepening friendship seems to be just fine if you ask mainstream America, but the Right hate the idea. They say the couple’s relationship has been fabricated for ratings and political advantage.

Their latest conspiracy is that NFL games were fixed to ensure that the Kansas City Chiefs (Kelce’s team) would appear in the Super Bowl. Their reasoning is that Swift supports the reelection of Joe Biden (she endorsed him in 2020). And since she has been conspicuously attending many of the Chiefs’ games this year, she will have a huge platform for endorsing Biden, perhaps at halftime in the Super Bowl.

Conservatives are afraid of her influence, because Swift represents a constituency that the GOP is losing big time: Young women. Scott Shapiro of Yale Law School said it succinctly:

A few bullet points about Taylor Swift’s influence:

  • A survey by Morning Consult said 53% of American adults are Swift devotees. There are almost as many men as women, almost as many Republicans as Democrats. And they include baby boomers, millennials, Gen Xers and young adults from Gen Z.
  • An analysis of Google Trends data for 2023 found that Swift had dominated Google searches more than anyone (including Trump).
  • She was Newsweek magazine’s “Person of the Year.” She has more than 500 million social media followers worldwide, 279 million on Instagram alone.
  • Last year, in a single Instagram post, Swift suggested that her fans register to vote and directed them to the nonpartisan nonprofit Vote.org. According to the organization, that single post brought in more than 35,000 registrations.

Trump sources, meanwhile, told Rolling Stone that they intend to declare a “holy war” on Swift to undercut her influence. The idea that Taylor Swift, Joe Biden, Travis Kelce, and the NFL, (whose teams are mostly owned by Trump supporters), rigged the Super Bowl to defeat Trump is absurd. From Dan Pfeiffer:

“…there is something notable about the Right Wing picking a fight with America’s most popular singer, one of its most popular athletes, and the most popular sport by far on the occasion of what will be the most watched television event of the year.”

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“At their core, most political campaigns boil down to trying to label the other side as outside of the American mainstream…..Typically, Republicans have been more aggressive in these efforts. When you are on the wrong side of the most important issues, the only option is to “otherize” your opponent…..But those days are no longer. Republicans are on the wrong side of public opinion and backing themselves into a corner by picking some truly bizarre fights.”

Still more: (brackets by Wrongo)

“What ties baseball, football, Bud Light, [and] Taylor Swift…together is that they are all things that appeal to a majority of Americans. They are…well-respected brands, and beloved by millions. They are quintessentially a part of the fabric of American life.”

Swift is by far the world’s most popular and successful entertainer. Travis Kelce is well-known to football fans, and the NFL is the most dominant source of entertainment in America. According to the Sports Business Journal, 93 of the 100 most watched television programs of 2023 were NFL games.

More from Pfeiffer:

“To put this in perspective, 56 million people watched the San Francisco 49ers beat the Detroit Lions on Sunday night and a little more than 2 million people watch Sean Hannity on a nightly basis.”

When the history of the MAGA cult is written, it will note that despite Trump, it was a decentralized movement. Instead of centralized leadership, theirs was distributed among various wingnut social media influencers, all of which orbit around Trump.

There is nothing new about this, we’ve always had political conspiracy theories. Wrongologist reader Terry McK reminded us that his dad received pamphlets from the John Birch Society, who are described as ultraconservative, far-right, extremist, and fringe by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Birchers are still around, enjoying a resurgence since the 2010s.

One difference is how frictionless communication is today. It used to be that the Klan, the Birchers and Ufologists had to pass around dogeared mimeographed manifestos in person or by mail, and they looked as crazy as their pamphlet’s contents. But today, any whack job can spew their bigfoot, contrails (or Taylor) information via social media and it will look legit.

And that includes social media pros who are members of the Republican Party.

Wrongo has heard friends and family members complain about how much time television devotes to Swift when she attends Chief games. An analysis of the Chiefs playoff game last Sunday showed Taylor Swift was on screen for 24 seconds out of a 3 hour and 45 minute broadcast. It’s doubtful that constitutes over exposure or “ruining the NFL“.

It’s possible to laugh at the Republicans about the Taylor Swift thing. But, it’s also symptomatic of a dangerous, growing instability that holds a huge chunk of America. For these people, the entire world has become some enormous, fantastically complex conspiracy aimed at them and EVERYTHING is evidence of it. Nothing is fringe and nothing, no matter how bizarre, is taken at face value.

This is what they hate:

The Swift/Kelce relationship contrasts the couple’s “bright light of goodness” and the ugliness of what Trump’s MAGA movement represents to the US. The difference couldn’t be more stark. The right sees it through their lens and recoils. Swift’s good-girl image and her new and seemingly committed relationship is damaging the Right in America.

Here’s the last word from Pfeiffer:

“…having a bizarre meltdown over Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, and the Super Bowl is fucking weird and Americans don’t elect fucking weirdos….The Right picking fights with Bud Light is weird. Their opposition to vaccines (which is why they hate Kelce) is weird….The fact that the Right focuses on all of the wrong and weirdest things makes them unrelatable to most people.”

Wrongo doesn’t have many Taylor Swift songs on his many playlists. He isn’t a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs. But the Right’s obsession with tearing them down has made him like both.

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There Are No Partisan Facts

The Daily Escape:

Roaring Mountain, Yellowstone NP – January 2023 photo via Yellowstone NP. The steam vents are called fumaroles. With a limited water supply, the water in steam vents turns to steam and makes noise before reaching the surface.

Today let’s delve into the right-wing mind. Sadly we can’t go in too deep, because you know. Wrongo will try to connect the dots on a few ideas that three interesting people wrote about last week, First, the headline in Phillip Bump’s piece in the WaPo:

“There’s actually only one conspiracy theory: Democrats are evil.”

He’s writing about all of the online conspiracy theories surrounding the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, and then generalizes from the specific:

“Last year, Pew Research Center found that 1 in 8 Republicans (12.5%) liked it a lot when their leaders called Democratic leaders “evil.” Another 16% said they liked it a little.”

So, 28.5% of Republicans think Dems are mostly evil. Bump offers the long laundry list of Democrat conspiracies propounded by Republicans.

  • For example, the 2020 stolen election shows that Democrats are dishonest and will do anything to retain power.
  • The “deep state” is out to get Trump and the Republicans. This leads to demonizing the FBI and CIA as liberals out to get Trump. This year, we can add the National Archives who just wanted their secret documents back.
  • These conspiracies have led the new Republican House majority to create a committee to look at weaponization of the FBI, DOJ and other agencies against Republicans.

Next, let’s look at recent polling on the economy. Matt Yglesias provides two charts that show the US partisan divide on the economy. First is how Democrats view their family’s economic situation over the past 8 years:

On Election Day (ED) 2016, 50% of Democrats said their family’s situation was about the same. On ED 2020, 50% said it was the same. After two years under Biden, it was 52%, so no change. On ED in 2016, about 32% of Dems said their financial situation had gotten better. That fell to about 10% by ED 2020 and is now about 23%.

Contrast that with what Republicans think now and what they thought on Election Day 2016:

From ED in 2016 when Trump won the White House until ED 2020 when he lost it, the percentage of Republicans who thought their financial situation was about the same went from 45% in 2016 to 55% on ED 2020, meaning that they were pretty satisfied with the state of the overall economy. But with Biden, that dropped precipitously to 21% in just two years.

Republicans who thought their personal financial situation had gotten worse stood at 47% in 2016, and just 10% in 2020. But in January of 2023, after two years of Biden, 74% say their financial situation has gotten worse!

But what really happened with the economy? Paul Krugman has thoughts about what we learn from watching only cable news: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Would you know that real gross domestic product has risen 6.7% under President Biden, that America gained 4.5 million jobs in 2022 and that inflation over the past six months, which was indeed very high last winter, was [growing at] less than 2% at an annual rate?”

How does Krugman explain the disconnect between actual economic data and perceptions? More:

“Partisanship is clearly part of the story….. 90% of Republicans said the national economy was poor. A longer view, from the Michigan Survey of Consumers, finds Republicans rating the current economy worse than they did in June 1980, when unemployment was above 7% percent and inflation was 14%.”

Welcome to the United States of Cognitive Dissonance.

There always has been cognitive dissonance in the world. It’s part of being human. But today, people sincerely love to complain and persist in wanting to see the bad side of everything. Egg prices are up? This economy sucks. All that Americans seem to be capable of seeing is the downside.

The country Wrongo grew up in is still here, but its culture has changed. As a member of the Silent Generation, Wrongo and most others wouldn’t have bet against the USA, or its people. But today, we can’t be certain. This dumbing down of American citizens has happened in rapid and spectacular fashion, and the fact-free perception divide is weakening our institutions. This will be extraordinarily difficult to bridge.

Wrongo has no silver bullet for fixing this, but a very basic way to start is to read up on the big problems. Speak up whenever you hear bullshit spewing. That takes courage, but it can’t go uncontested.

Attend your town meetings. Join groups that sponsor educational exchanges on issues. And vote. Vote in every election no matter how trivial.

Wrongo lives in a semi-rural town. When he overhears political talk, it can be staggering to learn what some otherwise smart people believe.

We don’t have to convert all of them, maybe getting 10% to land on the side of the actual data would create a permanent change in our politics.

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Trump’s Mass Radicalization of the Right

The Daily Escape:

Bentonite Hills, Cathedral Valley, Capitol Reef NP, UT – photo by BonsailLXIV

Donald Trump exits the presidential stage today, and not a minute too soon. In a sense, we’re very lucky that he was limited to one term. His mass radicalization of the far right of the Republican Party took just four years to become the Party’s mainstream, and to start an armed insurrection.

Throughout his term, he behaved as if Democrats, immigrants, Black Lives Matter protesters, Blue state residents, and the press had seized the country from Real Americans, the Trump voters. Since the election in November, he’s blanketed the nation with the Big Lie that the election was stolen.

Trump used mass radicalization to build a huge group of followers. The feedback loop was clear: Trump projects omnipotence, while the followers yearn for someone who has all the answers. Some would call it a “lock and key” relationship.

On January 6th, his followers stormed the US Capitol believing they were supposed to seize it for Trump. What is striking are two characteristics his followers seem to show. First, they display global grievance: They are angry at nearly everything outside of a fixed group of ideas and concepts like “freedom”, the Constitution, gun ownership and hatred of “socialism”.

Second, they have an overwhelming sense of entitlement: They alone are the arbiters of right and wrong. They have the right to be the judge and jury if something needs redress. If they commit a violent act, it’s the other side that’s responsible for inciting them.

Domestic terrorism analysts are concerned about the security implications of millions of right-wing Americans buying into baseless claims. The line between mainstream and fringe is vanishing, with conspiracy-minded Republicans now sitting in Congress and marching alongside armed extremists in their spare time.

These self-proclaimed “real Americans” are cocooned in their own news outlets, their own social media networks and, ultimately, their own “truth.” They support bogus claims like the November election was rigged, the coronavirus is a hoax, and liberals are hatching a socialist takeover.

Jason Dempsey, a military analyst notes that too many people are turning to force as a response to fears about political divisions:

“…they’re carrying guns and wearing body armor…We’ve got to get past that and be wary of the idea of militarism that doesn’t lead to a common conception of service, but leads to the kind of tribalism where we have to protect ourselves and our families by force against those we disagree with.”

Nobody expects this mass radicalization to go away when Trump’s out of office. As Arie Kruglanski, a University of Maryland professor who’s written extensively about radicalization says:

“We don’t trust the government. We don’t trust the Congress. We don’t trust the Supreme Court. We don’t trust now the science. We don’t trust medicine. We don’t trust the media for sure….So who do we trust? Well, we trust our tribe. We trust conspiracy theories that tell us what we want to hear.”

The danger of insurrection is here, and probably, thanks to Trump, will stay here for a long time.

QAnon, proliferated last year. The Q followers insist that Trump was all that stood between us and a “deep state” cabal that was running a global sex trafficking ring and harvesting a chemical from children’s blood.

The cherry on the top was the myth that the presidential election had been stolen: 33% of Republicans say they believe that the QAnon theory about a conspiracy among deep state elites is “mostly true.” And 36% of registered voters think voter fraud has occurred to a large enough extent to affect the election outcome.

The QAnon conversation online pivoted from taking down the global cabal to “Stop the Steal.” So when Trump invited supporters to Washington for mass demonstrations on Jan. 6, pro-Trump agitators and QAnon believers saw it as a demand for action.

Who believes in conspiracy theories? Those who have negative attitudes to authority, who feel alienated from politics, and who see the modern world as unintelligible. Conspiracy theory believers are often suspicious and distrustful, and see others as plotting against them. They struggle with anger, resentment, and other hostile feelings as well as with fear. They have lower self-esteem than nonbelievers, and need external validation to maintain their self-esteem. Belief in conspiracy theories often also goes along with belief in paranormal phenomena, and weaknesses in analytic thinking.

Trump, has created what James Meek calls “a self-contained alternative political thought space.” Loyalty to Trump is now a social identity for many people. So if Trump says that the 2020 election was rigged, why would a Trump loyalist disagree?

At the same time, Trump both sows and leverages a growing mistrust of institutions. Only 35% of Americans feel “a lot of trust” that what scientists say is accurate and reliable. Educators and media who try to tell the truth, aren’t useful weapons against conspiracy theories, because they simply become targets of the conspiracy theorists.

Let’s give the last word to Paul Krugman:

“Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left—which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe—the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences.”

When Richard Nixon resigned and Al Gore conceded, pundits and politicians smugly reassured us that things were fine because there were no tanks or soldiers in the streets, proving that the system worked.

How’s that working out for us this time?

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Saturday Soother – May 23, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Sand Dunes NP, Colorado – NPS photo by Patrick Myers. The animals are elk.

Happy Saturday, fellow disease vectors! And welcome to Memorial Day Weekend.

Trump isn’t alone in peddling conspiracy theories. The WaPo reports that conspiracy theories and political smear campaigns are as old as American politics. From the WaPo:

“As far back as the campaign of 1800 — the first contested presidential race in US history — pamphlets circulated that accused John Adams of possessing “a hideous hermaphroditical character,” which was a suggestion that he had the sex organs of both a man and a woman.”

WaPo lists some others:

  • In 1828, a newspaper reported that Andrew Jackson’s mother was “a common prostitute” brought to this country by British soldiers, who married a mulatto man with whom she had several children. Actually, Elizabeth and Andrew Jackson Sr. married in Ireland, and then came to America to escape religious persecution.
  • In 2004, a right-wing group, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made up lies about Democratic nominee John F. Kerry’s military service in Vietnam. Kerry had piloted a swift boat, and the group’s tarnishing of Kerry’s war service came to be known as “swiftboating”. A shorthand for an outrageous kind of smear.
  • Bill Clinton’s presidency brought many crazy stories, including claims that Bill and Hillary Clinton had been involved in drug-running and murder in Arkansas. Or, accusing them of murdering Vince Foster, an aide who committed suicide. Or, the convoluted theme of the “Clinton Body Count” conspiracy theory, promulgated by Newsmax publisher Christopher Ruddy among others, which says the Clintons are responsible for as many as 50 deaths.

While these tactics aren’t new, social media amplifies and spreads disinformation more efficiently than ever before. In 2020, the real force behind it is Trump, who has both a knack for branding along with zero capacity for shame.

Trump’s constant hammering on birthergate, accusing Obama of being foreign-born, built Trump a big following among people with “white grievance” by trafficking in lies about Obama’s birthplace.

With the 2020 presidential campaign about to get active, Trump has now come up with Obamagate! Something he calls “the biggest political crime in American history, by far!” It’s a hazy set of accusations that Trump and the GOP are trying to plant in the public consciousness.

The gist is this: After Trump was elected in 2016, senior Obama administration officials, including Obama and Joe Biden, tried to entrap his incoming National Security Adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, in the then-emerging scandal about Russian election interference. There will be Benghazi-style Obamagate hearings by the GOP-controlled Senate. It must be true, since the term contains the word “gate”.

But can Obama be guilty of something he did as POTUS, when Trump claims that POTUS has ‘absolute immunity’ for everything?

He clearly hasn’t thought that one through.

It’s time for our Saturday Soother, and we need to move past these petty conspiracies and talk about a real conspiracy. The trees on the fields of Wrong are attempting to have sex. All. The. Time.

That means tree pollen is covering everything, including those of us of the non-tree persuasion.

But much yard work still needs to be completed, so this beautiful weekend in Connecticut must include a sinus spray. Yard work is a form of Saturday Soother, it lets you escape from all of the problems and issues of the day, and focus on the great weed conspiracy that our main stream media refuses to cover.

But before grabbing your work gloves, take a moment in a comfortable and socially distant space to listen to “The President’s Own” US Marine Band play Gustav Holst’s “Chaconne” from his Suite No. 1 in E-flat, Opus 28, No. 1. Here it is played by 34 US Marine Band Musicians, all social distancing:

Holst apparently wrote it as the “1st Suite for Military Band Op. 28A” in 1909, but there is no record of a performance until 1920. Holst was one of England’s most prominent twentieth-century composers. He composed hundreds of works, the most famous of which was his orchestral suite, “The Planets” (1922).

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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