Conspiracy Stuff

In the words of Neil Degrasse Tyson, “A conspiracy theorist is a person with insufficient data.” Well put, Mr. Tyson. That is my feeling exactly. When someone tries to feed me a conspiracy theory, I want to tell them, “Come back to me when you know something.”

If you want me to believe your pet conspiracy theory, then present me with evidence to support your claim. Your belief isn’t enough. The fact that you can arrange random events in a particular combination to support your theory isn’t enough. If you believe the earth is flat, that doesn’t make it so. Reality doesn’t care what you or I believe. Reality is what it is, regardless how inconvenient or disruptive that may be to your world-view.

I’m tired of all the right-wing conspiracy theories I see online. (And they always seem to be right-wing: why is that?) Some of these conspiracy theories are so absurd only an idiot could believe them. No – I take that back because some of these conspiracy theories would be an insult to idiots.

Still, there are people who swallow this conspiracy nonsense, and even if they don’t believe in them 100 percent, the stories can cause doubt in people’s minds. Imagine if someone in your neighborhood began spreading gossip claiming you were a pedophile. Even though there was absolutely zero evidence to support that claim, people would begin seeing you differently, and they would start treating you differently. There doesn’t have to be proof. Just making a claim about someone can sully a person’s reputation.

One of the more absurd conspiracy theories of recent months claimed Hillary Clinton was running a child-prostitution ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant. I can picture a Russian agent (probably named Igor) typing that bit of nonsense into an online article while a bemused fellow Russian looks on and tries to give him advice.

“Igor, don’t invent such bizarre story. Americans may be stupid and gullible, but not this stupid and gullible. You have candidate for president of USA in public spotlight, traveling with reporters, speaking at rallies – who would believe such person would have time to run prostitution ring, much less have moral depravity to make story possible? You are wasting time.” But sure enough, some bonehead took a gun into said pizza restaurant and demanded to be taken to the children. Igor must have laughed his butt off. Quite possibly (this is my theory, which I admit I cannot prove), the thousands of Russian agents tasked with smearing Hillary Clinton’s reputation got bored and began competing to see who could write the most far-out, most unbelievable story possible. Igor won.