Conspiracy Theorists Surround Us

Quite a few of the people I grew up with in the suburbs of Philadelphia have turned out to be Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists; the meme here came from one of them.

I understand that there are distortions in the news we encounter, but I’m fairly certain that most of the central concepts are factual.  The world’s population faces existential threats in terms of viral pandemics and climate change.  There are ongoing areas of conflict between the Jewish and Muslim populations in the Middle East, which right now are causing grave human rights violations.  Donald Trump is facing 91 felony changes stemming from four criminal indictments, yet he’s leading in the polling to become the Republican nominee in the 2024 U.S. presidential race.

To believe otherwise is untenable, if only because of the incredible layers of improbabilities that would have to all come together.

Take the idea that COVID was planned by the U.S. government.  What about the other 200+ sovereign nations on Earth, each of which had its own COVID-related challenges to overcome?  Did South Korea and Australia and Norway say, “Let’s not respond to the pandemic, because of some folks in the United States with no scientific training are saying that the vaccinations are lethal and the case numbers are exaggerated by several orders of magnitude?”

No, they did not.

These folks can believe whatever they want, but they should not expect the population of intelligent and reasonable people to jump onboard with utter nonsense.