Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Inoculated against reality

       In a not too scientific poll of voters in Wisconsin and Michigan, a reporter for Time magazine estimated that approximately one in five of the potential voters she spoke with believed there is a system of tunnels under the US that are used by cannibalistic pedophiles to trap, torture and eat children!    She also said they were totally impervious to facts, as if being "inoculated against reality".

       When this abandonment of truth in favor of wild conspiracy theories began, sober people believed these latter day "truthers" were uneducated, unemployed lower middle class whites who had basically dropped out of the system and filled their days with social media.   As we all know, Facebook, instagram, etc. are notorious timesucks which can easily waste a couple of hours per day even among those who are employed.   Imagine someone with 24/7 availability.

       It turns out that plenty of Q anon adherents are also well educated and middle class.   What does this say about America in 2020?   I'm guessing many of these idiots are looking for an overarching narrative which blots out the reality of wealth inequality, climate change, racial strife and a hundred other realities they can't control.  Q and some even wilder conspiracies allows them to believe that there are horrible people out there doing horrible things, but our leader is secretly working to save us all.  As an old acquaintance of mine used to say, "What a world"!

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