Some people turn to conspiracy theories to avoid the pain of real emotions that come up when they're confronted with difficult facts.
In the wake of a plane crash yesterday that occurred about an hour’s drive from where I’m sitting (and my prayers go out to the families of the nine people who died), it didn’t take long for the conspiracies to spread. Some said there was no plane. It was a bomb or a missile. It was an attack on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago that missed. One of the pilots was a woman and therefore must have been unqualified.
Most of what I’ve seen is on Twitter, which has become the worst place in the world. And it’s not just a few fringe players; some very large accounts make a living spreading these lies. The crowd that eats it up is the same crowd that says 9/11 was an inside job, that the Pentagon wasn’t hit by a plane, that the 2020 election was stolen, or that non-citizen voting is running roughshod across the country,
Make no mistake, the tech oligarchs love these people, because they sow chaos and conspiracy and get outsized attention in a world where facts don’t matter. It’s an endless sea of opportunity for the ultra-wealthy. It’s why we see them clawing and scratching to own as many platforms as they can, and to make them as addictive as they can.
It’s also why politicians who either can’t or don’t want to handle the pain of making policy changes —or just talking about helping everyday citizens as they campaign — instead rely on conspiracy without evidence.
In Texas, they said James Talarico checked into a psychiatric hospital in Ohio. Elon Musk, who owns Twitter, shared the lie himself. In fact, Talarico was home in Austin with the flu. A Trump-aligned megachurch pastor said he’s not a real Christian. Talarico is studying to be a Presbyterian minister, and his inclusivity reflects Jesus’ teaching better than most.
In Michigan, the president called Abdul El-Sayed a “jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member.” His opponent, Mike Rogers, went after his mother, a nurse at an orphanage in Kenya. All El-Sayed wants is for you to afford your health care and to get money out of politics.
In Florida, they say Angie Nixon is too radical, too extreme, too … urban? The vice president said she doesn’t belong in America. Her grandparents were sharecroppers in Georgia. She’s focused on fully funding schools and fighting the property insurance and housing costs that are crushing Floridians.
Right now, we could be having substantive debates on the real issues affecting Americans. But instead, the morally weak and deeply corrupt forces in this election cycle are pushing tropes like “Talafreak-o,” “jihadist,” or “ghetto Black communist bitch.”
It’s deplorable.
But I’m going to remind you now that the people who eat this stuff up also do something else … they vote. They are the low-information, high-motivation voters who gave us the margins that got us here.
So if you haven’t voted yet, please do so tomorrow, Election Day, if only to cancel out some conspiracy craziness. Deal?
Be kind, feed your mind, and let’s make the margins too big to rig.
Slade Wentworth | The Dad Briefs covers the civic, political, and quietly human stories that shape family life in America, with recipes along the way.