They do what with babies?
By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, Dec. 18, 2024 – Nothing helps the powerful remain in power more than the dispersion of conspiracy theories among the population they mean to control. People embrace conspiracy theories because they feel an urge to have some explanation for the extraordinary calamities of everyday life.
Onto the blank slate of the unknowing public, it is easy as pie to sketch several concepts, or theories, that seem to explain current and historical events. The less a person knows from direct experience, empirical evidence, and the application of reason, the more susceptible they are both to fairy tales and to conspiracy theories.
Our susceptibility to conspiracy theories begins in childhood, when parents use fairy tales to help get us to sleep, and later spin other yarns populated by casts of characters that range from the tooth fairy to the Easter bunny, depending on which of many theories of creation the parents subscribe to.
Such fibs and white lies allow parents to assemble the bridges their children will need to cross to escape the innocence of childhood and arrive at adolescence. Adolescence is when the fantasy world of birds and bees either becomes the truth of sperm and eggs, or the adolescent becomes prey both for conspiracy theorists and all manner of con artist.
All that is required for the success of a conspiracy theory is a mind free of the knowledge that would contradict it. The degree to which a person doesn’t understand human nature is the measure of the outlandishness of behavior they will give credence to.
QAnon only works for people profoundly in the dark about human nature. For someone to believe that people take pleasure in the exsanguination of infants and ritual drinking of their blood, while also being well-integrated members of society, requires a profound ignorance of human nature, of what makes people tick, and what keeps the world spinning on its axis.
When such people are elected and re-elected to Congress, the end of civilization is at hand. Have a nice day.