The Dangerous American Love of Conspiracy Theories

For a political party that once upon a time largely valued knowledge, science, education and purportedly personal responsibility, the GOP has morphed into something very ugly.  Now, ignorance, victim-hood, open bigotry are all the norm for the majority of the GOP base.  Worse yet, much of the base seems only to ready to embrace whatever conspiracy theory that fringe elements of the far right might float.  In response, some Democrats have shot back with their own conspiracy theories, although most have a least a shred of reality to support them.  A piece in Politico looks at the conspiracy theories plaguing the 2016 elections.  Here are highlights:

This weekend, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News Sunday viewers that Hillary Clinton was seriously ill. The media, he said, “fails to point out several signs of illness by her. … Go online. Search for ‘Hillary Clinton illness.’ Take a look at those videos for yourself.” The idea that Clinton is secretly wrestling with some unknown illness is just the latest conspiracy theory to go mainstream in an election season chock full of them. Conspiracy theories, which I’ve studied for the past seven years, have always been part of American politics, but they’ve tended to pop up in the dark corners of our political discourse, serving mainly as sideshows to more important political disputes. Not so this year; I’ve never seen a time when they so dominated the mainstream debate—and when they had the potential to do so much harm.

Whether it was witches colluding with Satan during colonial times, Freemasons nefariously controlling the government in the 1800s or communists coopting the State Department during the Red Scare, Americans have always been drawn to the idea that certain people or organizations are working in secret for their own benefit against the public good.

Despite this, the United States has not gone off the conspiracy theory cliff because our elite politicians and mainstream news sources generally eschew this type of heady theorizing. A few politicians or news sources might allege a plot from time to time (think Sarah Palin and her Obamacare death panels), but these are usually a result of overheated partisan rhetoric and they tend to receive intense backlash. That was, until now. Donald Trump, one of two people likely to be president next year, has been propagating, and now creating, conspiracy theories as a major theme of his campaign. There’s an obvious reason for this: Donald Trump has branded himself an “outsider.” In my research, I have found that conspiracy theories tend to work best when they are employed by outsiders, electoral losers and statistical minorities. These “losers” have to use conspiracy theories to justify their outsider status, explain away losses and call accepted practices into question.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with conspiracy theories. They have their positive attributes: Sometimes they turn out to be true (think Watergate, for example), and sometimes they bring new information to light (such as securing the release of many documents pertaining to the Kennedy assassination). But too many can distort ourperception of reality, squander precious government time and resources and endanger lives—especially when they move out of the fringes of political life and become the currency of the truly powerful.

Here are the five most dangerous conspiracy theories of 2016 . . . . . 1. Mexicans and refugees are murderers, rapists and terrorists  Danger: Violence - Donald Trump has accused Mexican immigrants of being pawns in a Mexican conspiracy to send murderers and rapists to America. He also has accused refugees, fleeing their tattered homeland and shattered lives, of working against the government as ISIL agents.

In this case, however, the typical model is reversed: The strong (a man running for U.S. president with the backing of a major political party) is accusing the weak (refugees and minorities). This is a more dangerous type of conspiracy theory because those in power can actually act on their wild hunches, sometimes with deadly consequences.

2. “There’s something going on” Danger: Mass paranoia - A favorite go-to conspiracy theory of Trump’s, used in different circumstances at different points during the campaign, these four words suggest that our governmental institutions and our institutions for disseminating information are not only malevolent, but also engaged in a cover-up of epic proportions.

This conspiracy theory is useful for Trump because it lets him avoid specifics; it’s also dangerous because it’s open-ended, leaving Trump supporters plenty of room to connect their own dots. What is, in fact, “going on”? . . . these four words suggest that everyone is in on it, we need to watch our neighbors, keep an eye on the government and watch the president’s body language like a hawk.
This style of conspiracy theorizing—leaving the details for people to figure out on their own—is advantageous because it gives people less to disagree with.

3. Trump/Clinton is a Manchurian Candidate Danger: Institutional distrust, political polarization - Criticizing Clinton for her mishandling of classified emails, Trump suggested that the Democratic nominee is now beholden to the Obama administration, which decided not to prosecute her. Trump also suggested that other countries now have evidence to blackmail or control Clinton, given that they have been able to hack her private email server. Shooting back, the Clinton campaign put out an ad suggesting that Trump is an agent of powerful Russian interests. Americans of all political persuasions should be able to trust that the two candidates who could lead the national government aren’t pawns to other interests. When they start to doubt their leaders’ loyalty to the country, institutional distrust can skyrocket.

4. Vast right-wing conspiracy Danger: Lack of accountability - There are conspiracy theories; and then there are conspiracy theories about conspiracy theories. This particular one was born during the height of the investigations into then-President Bill Clinton’s business practices and personal life. During a Today Show interview, then-first lady Hillary Clinton dismissed the burgeoning Monica Lewinsky scandal: “The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it,” she said, “is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.” Conspiracy theories aren’t reserved for Republicans. Hillary Clinton has held on to her conspiracy theory that the right wing is in league against her and her family to this day; in fact, she claimed this election cycle that the conspiracy is “even better-funded” now.

5. Everything is “rigged” Danger: Disenfranchisement and alienation - The campaigns of Trump and Sanders repeatedly alleged during the primaries that the nomination process is rigged. Earlier this month, Trump claimed that in states without voter ID laws in place, fraud will be rampant and people will be voting “15 times.” And he asserted that the only way the Clinton campaign can win Pennsylvania is if “they cheat.”

We’ve seen what can happen when people seize on conspiracy theories about fraudulent and rigged elections—despite there being no evidence of mass voter fraud. Over the past few years, similar beliefs have led state legislatures across the country to enact restrictive voter ID laws. But rather than fix a system that wasn’t broken to begin with, these efforts have been shown to disenfranchise minority voters. This year, if Trump deploys supporters to polling stations across America to monitor for fraud and challenge voters’ legitimacy as he is promising to do, the results could be similar.

But such claims about election fraud pale in comparison to the larger allegations that the entire system is rigged.

Far from being helpful, this sort of rhetoric is dangerous. First, it allows for scapegoating (“my lot in life is the fault of the 1 percent”) and indictment (“the rich and powerful have gotten that way only through illicit means”). It also brings about hopelessness and alienation—the feeling that we have been locked into an unfair and degrading system by a few people who wish to abuse us. These sorts of conspiracy theories also serve to depress the vote, as those who believe that elections and governmental processes are rigged will most likely stay home; this weakens our democracy.

Hillary Clinton Links Donald Trumps Racism to the Larger GOP

During her interview with CNN, Hillary Clinton - correctly, in my view - linked Donald Trump's open racism to the racism that pervades the larger GOP and the GOP base in particular.   Watching Hard Ball this evening, Rudy Giuliani dodged and weaved trying to do damage control for Trump's bigoted verbal diarrhea, but none of it really negated the fact that the GOP base has been taken over by a bunch of white supremacists and religious extremists, most of whom are racist to boot.   Politicususa.com looks at Clinton's remarks.  Here are excerpts:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took Republican Party’s Donald Trump led implosion to a whole new level by linking Trump’s racism to the GOP during her interview on CNN.

During her interview on CNN, former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton was asked about Donald Trump, and her answer linked Trump’s racism to the Republican Party.

Clinton said, “I am very disappointed in those comments, and I feel very bad and very disappointed with him and the Republican Party for not saying enough, stop it. But they are all in the same general area on immigration. They don’t want to provide a path to citizenship. They range across a spectrum of being grudgingly welcome to openly hostile to immigrants.”

Clinton was asked about Jeb Bush, who CNN claimed was not like Trump. Former Sec. Clinton knocked that down, “He doesn’t believe in a path to citizenship. If he did at one time, he no longer does. And so pretty much as I said, they’re on a spectrum of hostility which is regrettable in a nation of immigrants like ours all the way to grudging acceptance with refusal to go with a pathway to citizenship.”

She buried Republicans deeper by explaining why a path to citizenship is good, “I think that’s a mistake. We know we’re not going to deport 11 or 12 million people. We shouldn’t be breaking up families. We shouldn’t be stopping people from having the opportunity to be fully integrated legally within our country, It’s good for us. It’s good economically. It’s good for the taxes that will be legally collected. It’s good for the children so that they can go as far as their hard work and talent can take them, so I am 100% behind a comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship.”

Hillary Clinton’s answer to the Trump question is a big part of the reason Democrats are favored to keep the White House in 2016. In fact, Clinton’s answer made things even worse for Republicans because now every Republican presidential candidate will be asked if they believe that immigration reform is a good thing.

Trump’s problem was that he said in public what the Republicans all campaign on with lots of thinly veiled rhetoric. 

Republicans are to blame because they invited the Trump circus into their tent of crazy. Republicans treated Donald Trump like a legitimate voice and gave him attention while he was launching the birther attacks on President Obama, and they can’t distance themselves from his racist bigotry now.

Huckabee Stands By AIDS Statement

I posted yesterday about Mike Huckabee's past stand on AIDS and his desire to quarantine AIDS patients. Today, as reported by 365gay.com (,http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/12/120907huck.htm) Huckabee affirmed his past views. Who cares that medical science has made advances and confirms that the HIV infection is not passed by casual contact. Certainly not Huckabee, a brain dead, non-thinking Chritianist described by one blogger as "Christian extremist's wet dream." God help this country were he to be elected Presidnet. I can only hope Huckabee does not advance far in the GOP presidential race. Much of the world must be laughing that such an extreme nut case is even in the running for the presidential nomination. Here are some story highlights:

(Washington) GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said Sunday he won't run from his statement 15 years ago that AIDS patients should have been isolated. Huckabee acknowledged the prevailing scientific view then, and since, that the virus that causes AIDS is not spread through casual contact, but said that was not certain. He cited revelations in 1991 that a dentist had infected a patient in an extraordinary case that highlighted the risk of infection through contact with blood or bodily fluids.

"I still believe this today," he said in a broadcast interview, that "we were acting more out of political correctness" in responding to the AIDS crisis. "I don't run from it, I don't recant it," he said of his position in 1992. Yet he said he would state his view differently in retrospect. In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," the former Arkansas governor denied those words were a call to quarantine the AIDS population, although he did not explain how else isolation would be achieved. "I didn't say we should quarantine," he said. The idea was not to "lock people up." Huckabee stated his 1992 positions in an AP questionnaire in which he also called homosexuality "an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle."

Meanwhile, we have multiple times married Rudy Giuliani trying to now take the Roman Catholic Church position on gays (how does he explain away the Church's ban on divorce?):

Giuliani, who appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," said he did not believe homosexuality was aberrant. What is sinful are "the acts, not the orientation."