When I was a kid I believed a lot of conspiracy theories. I Loved my UFOs and the Loch Ness Monster MUST be there, right? And then I grew up and I realized how well-documented our skies were and how hard it was to keep a secret and how those most treasured tales of MiBs were written by people with grade school comprehension levels and Bigfoot Feet were sold by people who made good money selling them. The internet gave these fraudsters and fools credibility with platforms and spellcheck and later YouTube gave even better financial incentives for lying to the credulous than self-publishing ever had and now rather than fighting crime, cops get called because the Haitians are eating pets, and we have Congress giving credence to Q-Anon and conducting interviews with evidence-free UFO-enthusiasts, while spewing Russian talking points and simply making up lies about voter fraud rather than trusting American intelligence reports.
Jade Helm never came for your guns, Obama was born in Hawaii, we totally landed on the Moon and vaccines really, really don’t cause autism.
The Earth. Is not. Flat.
But masked men did grab a Tufts University student off the streets of Boston. We know because we’ve got good, not-fuzzy, traceable, security video of it happening and legacy media has documented it. Trump’s national security officials are using Signal in clear violation of federal laws regarding the preservation and retention of government communications and records. We know because they accidentally added a legacy media reporter to their chat group. I’m not going to argue whether or not we should be bombing Yemen. I don’t think using emojis to express excitement over destroying a terrorist’s girlfriend’s apartment building is appropriate, but I’m old and detached. But time and time again the Trump Ascendency simply states things other than they are. They’ve declared that the Signal incident is a “hoax”. DOGE’s financial claims are undermined by simple math and I haven’t seen any documented “fraud” that they’ve found yet! In the executive order “preserving and protecting the integrity of American elections” posted Tuesday morning Trump literally gave the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security access to all “election equipment, ballots, or any other relevant materials used in the conduct of any Federal election”. He’s claimed war powers by calling illegal immigration an “invasion”.
A metaphor shouldn’t have legal force.
I don’t know where we go from here. We’ve lost the information battle. And by “we” I mean people who simply want an actual fact. And we didn’t lose to the Republicans. We lost to YouTube, Facebook and TikTok. I don’t even think we lost it to China and Russia, though they’re clear beneficiaries. I think we lost it to capitalism, and that’s just crass.
At least we could’ve lost America to an *ideology*. THAT I could almost respect.
