I've commented before about conspiracy theories and I know that I've offended people because I'm not hitching a ride on the bandwagon. Or the comet. But living with one who's a bit 'out there', and being practical, pragmatic, and with both feet planted firmly on the ground, I look sideways, shake my head and mutter, 'oh, brother' whenever the new one pops up.
For whatever reason - curiosity, distrust in government, etc. - there are many people who ascribe to them - chemtrails, 9/11 was an inside job (one of my Resident's pets), etc. Heck, my Resident popped up with Nancy Reagan was killed yesterday because she 'knows something' and was going to 'warn Trump'. Never mind that Mrs. Reagan was ninety-four years old and people do die at that age. All by themselves, too, no help required.
Perhaps that's why I'm jaded and don't buy into this stuff? In fact, I was so disgusted yesterday I trod along the edge of pissing him off by suggesting he make himself a tin foil hat. Fortunately, he didn't tumble to the fact that I was not joking. I was actually thinking of getting the commitment papers ready.
And naturally, any controversial political candidate will get the Tin Foil Hat Brigade (TFHB) excited.
Aside: I wish I was better with catchy acronyms, but I'm not, so I'll stick with TFHB.
Hell, just a hiccup from someone well known will get the Tin Foilers amped up and jumping up and down. Like my resident Theorist who leads me to believe that they're all idiots. Based on close observation, Conspiracy Theories are like oxygen to the rest of us. They cannot live without them.
What led to this post is that yesterday I heard about a new one - not my Resident's latest - and I am just so completely disgusted by this on-going stupidity I can't help but talk about it. For God's sake, people - get a freakin' grip on reality!
Okay, okay. Deep breath (taking Ted Cruz's advice to The Donald).
You've probably read or heard that almost as soon as the news broke a few weeks ago, the TFHB declared - with absolutely no foundation - that Justice Scalia was assassinated.
Why? We don't know. They aren't saying. They're just running around screaming he was murdered. If you Google 'Scalia Assassinated' or anything similar, you'll get a boatload of sites with various theories.
This leads me to logic and pragmatism, and a couple of reasonable questions that my hubby, along with the other members of the TFHB can't seem to answer with substance:
If Obie-One wanted him dead, why not years ago? I mean, anytime in the last eight years would have been a good time, a better time from the standpoint of seizing control of SCOTUS.
How about the year before Obamacare ended up in front of the Supreme Court the first time? Or what about before it wound up there the second time? He could have had a leftist Justice in there to make the decision a sure thing instead of relying on a turn-coat (John Roberts).
Hell, with a leftist Justice in there in 2009 or 2010, he could have done just about anything he wanted to do, without plastering Executive Orders all over the place.
Immigration? Slam-dunk.
Gun laws? Slam-dunk.
Whatever he wanted? Slam-dunk.
So why now? Why this year? Why not last year, a full year before the mire of an election year? Why run the risk of having the Senate stand up and say, 'no new Justices' as they are doing?
Logically, it makes no sense and there is absolutely no as in zero evidence to support this garbage.
Never mind logic, though, or known facts.
Instead, Alex Jones and Michael Savage - co-presidents of the TFHB - along with Glenn Beck (the TFHB Chairman of the Board) have been out there declaring that it's A Conspiracy! Of course, Beck is saying that God had a hand in the assassination because He wants Ted Cruz to win. (Seriously - can you help but smile at this nonsense? As if God doesn't have a few bigger fish to fry...)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/glenn-beck-god-killed-antonin-scalia_us_56c52d3ce4b08ffac127aa4d
This is just one link - Google 'Glenn Beck Scalia' and there are dozens more.
It seems that a prominent seventy-nine year old man with health issues - high blood pressure and a known heart condition - can't just die. If he does, it's because he was killed. Most recently, according to the National Enquirer, a make-it-up-as-we-go-along rag of the worst kind, he was killed by a prostitute. Never mind how hurtful that fabrication might be to the family.
What floors me about this crap is that no one of these people screaming "MURDER" was there. No one has seen pictures of the room or Scalia's body. No autopsy was performed - at the request of the family - and, according to Texas law, it is perfectly legal to declare someone dead over the phone. At the time, Scalia hadn't been identified. All the ME and local officials contacted knew was that it was 'some guy' at a ranch. So they did what they would do in any other circumstance when they can't get to the site. They asked pertinent questions, evaluated what they heard over the phone and declared the man dead.
One thing that did fan the flames of A Conspiracy was that the owner of the ranch said about Scalia that 'he had a pillow over his head'. Within hours that day, he recanted that statement saying it was 'above his head' - not much different except in perception. And it is entirely possible that in the last moments of his life, Scalia did change position and end up with a pillow in an unusual place - who cares? It does not mean that anyone else was in the room with him or that he was stabbed, shot, strangled, poisoned, gassed, or had a tarantula, snake or scorpion in bed with him.
As for Scalia's last moments in company - those who were actually there, in person, say that Scalia had said he was tired the night before, and wanted to go to bed.
Unless and until pictures of the scene are released that give rise to any reasonable question, I'll stick to my belief that it was simply his time. He was overly tired. Perhaps he ate or drank a little too much. He went to bed and his heart gave out. It happens.
More recently, there's a Conspiracy Theory bubbling up over Donald Trump and Mitt Romney.
Do you remember who John Hinckley, Jr. was? He was the nut job who shot Ronald Reagan. Didn't kill him - shot him and was sentenced to life in a mental institution because he was found guilty by reason of insanity.
So last week Romney gives that hate-filled speech. It happened to be given at the Hinckley Institute in Utah. The TFHB are connecting the two, even though there's nothing there except a name and a shared religion between Romney and Robert Hinckley.
To be sure there isn't some linkage, I did spend some time trying to connect Hinckley to Hinckley and came up with nothing except that Robert Hinckley was a Mormon, too. He grew up in Utah and had a son name John Hinckley (John Seely Hinckley while the would-be assassin was John Warnock Hinckley). John S. Hinckley died in 1990 at the age of 67.
Of course it could not possibly be that Romney was in Utah because he's a Mormon. And there is absolutely no chance he could have been there for some other reason - like the LDS work on hurricane relief for the Fiji Islands?
No. Oh! No, no, no, no, no! He was there specifically to send a message to The Donald by giving his hate-filled speech from the Robert Hinckley Institute. It's a Sign.
Furthering this stupidity, there's an observation from during the last GOP debate. Bush I was in the house and, when the camera was on him, he made a slashing gesture across his throat. TFHB members swear that it was a sign to Donald Trump that he's a dead man walking.
To me, and I suspect to the other rational people who saw that, it was a signal for the networks to get the camera off of him because he didn't want to be seen in a wheelchair.
Oh! And never mind that there were three moderators and three other candidates on the stage that night, along with several hundred people in the room. Nope. That gesture had to be a sign from an Illuminati that The Donald Must Die.
Give me a freakin' break.
Then Donald didn't go to CPAC. Instead - as a presidential candidate - he chose to campaign. First in Kansas, then in Orlando. According to the TFHB, he didn't go 'because he heard that something might happen'.
Yeah - some flippin' idiot was going to try to stage a walk-out, and another hate-filled cow was going to give a Romney-like talk about how horrible Donald is.
Now I ask you - why the hell would any self-respecting human being deliberately go to throw himself in front of a crowd of small-minded idiots when he has real voters to court? I sure as hell wouldn't, and damn the consequences. I have enough self-respect that I'd rather give the entire damn thing a pass than subject myself to that.
He didn't go and nothing happened. He had his rally in Kansas and another in Orlando. All is well and, I hope, continues to be so.
Needless to say, the TFHB is going to declare anything that happens to Trump between now and the day he leaves office is part of a conspiracy. If he stubs a toe, gets a bloody nose from a sneeze, or is constipated - it's all because 'someone' is out to get him.
Sometimes you can make this stuff up and Alex Jones and Michael Savage and Glenn Beck, along with willing idiots like this one:
are spreading the manure of utter nonsense as far and as wide as they can.
Now I'm going to go back to the rational world and take a few more deep breaths.
Have A Conspiracy-free day, okay?
Best~
Philippa
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