WHO ARE THE BELIEVERS?

The world is full of problems. As soon as one situation is cleared up, another one or three arise. One way to deal with life’s difficulties is to ascribe them to some sort of a conspiracy. Since most conspiracies are not backed by accurate information, using these theories to explain situations, rather than solving problems, usually create new ones.

Conspiracy theories fly at us every day. Some people latch onto these “explanations” of everything, while others see right away that these stories too ridiculous to believe. What makes some people accept these tales while others reject them out of hand? Psychological studies have shown that people who are open to accepting conspiracy theories have some things in common.

Conspiracy followers often have a need to feel unique. They’re likely to be narcissistic, feel alienated and socially isolated. They may feel powerless in relation to the problems they see in the world. Believers may feel that American values are eroding. They look for a scapegoat to blame for the problems. Theorists are suspicious, sometimes to the point of paranoia. They tend to see the world as a dangerous place.

The big problem of the present time is the coronavirus and its effects. Some people find it difficult to deal with the facts of the issue. If they adopt one of the conspiracy theories relating to it, they feel they have some power over it. If government agencies like the CDC are not telling the truth about the virus, the theory makes the virus seem less threatening to them. According to the CDC, over 180,000 Americans have died of the virus. Suppose most of those people died of something else. What if only six percent of those deaths were actually from the virus, and the rest died from other causes. That makes the virus seem less powerful. People who follow that theory can also get a sense of superiority since they know the “real” facts, and they are not taken in like the sheep who believe what they read in the newspapers and see on television news.

Why would the CDC lie about the numbers? Theorists just ignore questions like that, but they tend to disbelieve any authorities, so the CDC might have its own reasons for exaggerating the number of deaths from the virus. Maybe they need to scare people to get the funding they want from Congress.

The truth of the 6 percent story is actually a misreading of a CDC report. The report stated that 94 percent if those who died from the coronavirus had some other health condition. That is why the virus is especially dangerous to older people. Most older people already have some kind of health problems like disease of the heart or lungs. Once people with a health issue came down with the virus, it was likely to exacerbate the existing problem and cause their death. In other words, they would not have died if they had not contracted the virus.

Bill Gates has donated money to research on vaccines to counter the virus. Theorists tend to be skeptical about that too. To them, vaccines are questionable anyway. Further Gates might make a lot of money from the sale of the vaccine. And while they’re at it, theorists promote the idea that vaccines promoted by Gates might contain microchips that will allow “the authorities” to trace the movements of anyone who gets the vaccine.

Josh Hart, a psychology professor at Union College, stated that both Republicans and Democrats followed certain conspiracy theories. Republicans were more likely to believe that climate change is a hoax, whereas Democrats were more apt to be drawn toward the theory that that in the 2016 presidential campaign the Trump team colluded with the Russians.

Perhaps Hart’s examples were an attempt to be fair and see similarities in the mindset of both parties. But a quick look at the examples shows that the events are not equivalent at all. For decades scientists have known that greenhouse gases are creating a climate change. The physical evidence of the change is here for everyone to see: the melting icebergs and the increasingly hotter summers. To deny climate change is to deny obvious facts.

The Trump campaign’s collusions with the Russians is hardly a theory at all. The Mueller report detailed accounts of Russian help to the Trump campaign. More recently the Republican-controlled Senate released an account of even more

collusion between the campaign and the Russians. One of campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s contacts was a Russian intelligence officer. As we look at the existing conspiracy theories, we see that they belong mostly to conservatives. We will explore this further in a later post.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES

 

Did you know—

The “Illuminati” is a group seeking to establish a New World Order, in which they will control everything. It says so on the back of the American dollar bill. Novus Ordo Secolorum.

If the Illuminati don’t gain control of the world, the Jews will. You can read about it in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, written early in the 20^th century.

When the Jews aren’t trying to seize control of the world, they are up to other kinds of mischief. They are responsible for the promotion of Communism. After all, Karl Marx was a Jew. George Soros, who was 14 at the end of World War 11, was a Nazi collaborator. Whenever there is a protest in the streets, Soros is handing out $100 bills to the protestors. He promotes Antifa. Such luminaries as Victor Orbon, Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Bill O’Reilly, and Alex Jones have attested to this last statement. Incidentally, the holocaust is a hoax, designed to promote Jewish interests.

If the Jews and the Illuminati don’t seize control of the world, the Catholics might try. You can read about it on the Berean Beacon, written in 2000.

Look out for black helicopters. They may be carrying UN forces seeking to control the U.S.

Water condensation trails (contrails) from aircraft contain chemical and biologic agents under a secret government program.

The assassination of Jack Kennedy was a conspiracy by the CIA, the Mafia, LBJ, Fidel Castro, or the KGB. The federal government concealed crucial information to cover up the conspiracy.

Global Warming is another hoax invented for ideological and financial reasons. Donald Trump and Sen. James Inhofe promoted this explanation for global warming stories.

The Deepwater oil rig accident in 2010 was caused by sabotage by environmentalists. Or maybe it was just a Russian submarine, according to Rush Limbaugh.

The shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School was another hoax, aimed to promoted gun control. However according to former KKK Grand Master David Duke, maybe the Zionists were responsible. Alex Jones suggested it might have been staged with actors. Rush Limbaugh noted that it might be the Mayan Calendar that caused Adam Lanza to make the attack.

Autism is caused by vaccinations. This was reported by a British doctor who published an article about it in Lancet. Later the article was denounced by Lancet, and the doctor lost his license to practice medicine.

QAnon promotes several theories: Civil servants (the Deep State) is in a plot to take control of the government away from elected officials. Many prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, are Satan worshiping pedophiles. She was said to be connected to a child pornography ring in a Washington, DC, restaurant in 2016. In recent month a number of Republicans have come out supporting the QAnon theories. Marjory Taylor Greene is one of these. She recently won a primary in Georgia and will probably be elected to Congress.

Televangelist John Hagee called COVID-19 a dress rehearsal for the New World Order. Some have called it a Jewish plot to force vaccinations and sterilization. Or perhaps its was manufactured by the Rockefellers and Bill Gates with the goal mass of vaccinations to reduce human population. Gates, whose foundations donated millions to vaccine research, may have wanted to use the vaccine to plant microchips in people’s bodies. That would allow him to monitor their movement.

It is difficult to understand how any otherwise intelligent person can fall for these outlandish theories, but a lot of people do. In later posts we will look at how people come to believe these things, the psychological difference between believers and skeptics, and how a reader can test the validity of theories like these.

 

 

TRUTH

According to the Washington Post, after Donald Trump had been in office for three and a half years, he had told 20,000 lies or misleading statements. Twenty thousand! The President of the United States!

It is hard to believe. It would have been unbelievable before Trump. Never before have we had a President so unfit for office. He is unfit morally, intellectually, psychologically, and temperamentally. He has created irreparable damage to the United States in many ways, much of it through his prevarications. He has destroyed the credibility of his office and of the United States itself. Promises made in the name of the United States under previous administrations have meant nothing to him. The message he has created: The United States is not good for its word.

His misinformation about the Covid 19 virus has caused the death of tens of thousands of Americans. In his eagerness to reopen institutions that had had been closed to limit people’s exposure to the virus, he encouraged many states, mostly under Republican governors, to reopen prematurely, causing death rates from the virus to shoot up. He has ignored advice from experts, from scientists. He has minimized the effects of Covid 19, calling it little more than a cold. He has said it will be gone in little time. He has called it a hoax. 

While Donald Trump has been the Great Prevaricator of our times, he is not alone in spreading misinformation. Alex Jones spread the message that the shooting of twenty school children in Sandy Hook, CT, was a hoax. Can you imagine how the parents must feel? To lose a child in that terrible event and then have an unprincipled person like Jones tell people that it was a hoax?

Jones also promoted the false story that Hillary Clinton was involved a child porn ring located in a pizza restaurant in Washington. One man was so convinced on the truth of that story that he went to the restaurant armed with a rifle, determined to free the children from the basement where they were held. There was no basement in the restaurant. Or any children.

QAnon is another group that promotes false conspiracy stories and accuses prominent people of child pornography. We now have a woman from Georgia, Marjorie Greene, who espouses the QAnon message. She will probably be elected to Congress in November. Anyone who believes Fox News and personalities like Rush Limbaugh does so at their peril. Misinformation is spread freely through the social networks, and gullible people believe these propagators of falsehood. Some people believe that social networks are reliable sources of news.

There have always been liars of course. The difference is that today liars can spread their poison on the internet, and gullible people are taken in by the falsehoods. Then they spread the false stories through the social media. It is difficult sometimes to know what to believe. 

The purpose of free education is to enable people to make wise choices in electing candidates to public office. If people are fed disinformation, they will elect candidates like Donald Trump. Clearly something must be done to limit the dissemination of lies about public events. We cannot afford the election of another candidate as woefully unfit for office as Donald Trump.

Something must be done. We can’t rely on the government to do it. An administration like the present one cannot be allowed to declare what is fake news and what is not. The social media cannot be trusted to do it. Mark Zuckerberg refused to remove Holocaust denial statements from Face Book, saying it was a matter of opinion. Of course it is not a matter of opinion. The Holocaust was a fact. To deny that it existed is a lie.

The answer is in education. Teaching people to think and to evaluate information is as important as the three Rs. Two professors at the University of Washington have a class that does just that. The name of the class is Calling Bullshit https://www.callingbullshit.org/index.html . The course teaches students how to evaluate data and check sources. Even though this is a college course, it has been taught on the secondary level as well.

As the course description says, the world is awash in bullshit. People are posting misinformation online about the coronavirus. They are denying climate change. They are electing people like Marjorie Greene and Donald Trump. We must educate everyone on how to detect bullshit. 

Politics and the Evangelicals

            A couple of years ago I saw a Facebook post placed by an Evangelical I know. The post had side-by-side pictures of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Sanders was being arrested by the police. Trump was wearing the uniform of the prep school that he attended, New York Military Academy. The intended message, I assume, was that Sanders had been a trouble maker for some time, while Trump was prepared to serve. I got a different message from the two pictures. Bernie Sanders had long been willing to fight for what he believed in. Trump’s uniform reminded me that he had never actually served in the military, and he avoided serving Vietnam because of a dubious case of bone spurs.

            I can’t help but wonder why Evangelicals would support Trump. We think of Christians as law-abiding, moral citizens who generally follow the rules of society. Trump, on the other hand, seems one of the least moral public figures in recent memory. Of course some of Trump’s policies are deeply in line with The Evangelical political goals. He has appointed conservative judges to the Supreme Court as well as to lower courts. Perhaps the courts will one day declare abortion illegal again. Are these people willing to put up with the President’s cruelties, his crudeness, his incompetence, his immorality in order to accomplish their agenda? I may be naïve, but I don’t think the typical American Christian is that cynical. Some of the Republican politicians, such as Mitch McConnel, however, are just that cynical. A lot of them, I believe, do not personally like or approve of Mr. Trump, but they support him so they can get their agenda passed.

            The Evangelicals hold Trump to be a sinner, as is everybody. The only way to overcome our sinful nature is to accept the help of Jesus. In June, after the police and used tear gas to clear peaceful demonstrators from the area in front of the White House, Trump marched to that spot, holding a Bible. I don’t think many people were fooled by this gesture. Some people suggested that instead of holding up a Bible, the President should read it and follow it.

            A recent study showed that 56 percent of Evangelicals were Republicans, with only 28 percent Democrats. Is it just a coincidence that these people are both Evangelical and Republican? I don’t think so. I believer there is some connection, but I don’t know what it is. I would be glad to hear any explanation that anyone might have.

IN ADAM’S FALL

In Adam’s Fall

We Sinned All

            These are the words that begin the New England Primer, written in the late 17^th century. This is the book that taught children their ABCs. It is at the same time a statement about human nature. We were all born in sin, and sinfulness is our natural state.

            We can find a lot in our own experience to support that view of humanity. We don’t need to reach very far to the great evil doers of history, the Hitlers and the Stalins. We can find examples in our own lives. Even the best of us sometimes fail to live up to our own ideals. We have all done things that we knew were wrong, wrong by our own standards. We knew this even as we committed these wrongful acts, yet we went ahead and committed these sins. All of us have indulged in at least some of the Seven Deadly Sins.  

            Did those old New England Puritans have something? Is human nature depraved to the core? Are we at best, at least some of us, kept to the relatively straight and narrow because of the strictures of society? Do we obey the rules of society mainly because we fear the punishment of disobeying?

Trailing Clouds of Glory

            While human imperfection is undeniable, not everyone believes that we born in sin, that our very nature is sinful. The English poet William Wordsworth believed that each of us had an existence before our birth. He wrote about this belief in “Ode: Intimations of Immortality.”

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

            In this view we are not born in sin. On the contrary, we are born trailing clouds of glory, from God.

            If we are not born in sin, how does one account for our many failures as human beings? How do you explain the difference between our lofty aims and our ineffective accomplishments? Where do those clouds of glory go? How does the innocent child become a despot, a murderer, an egomaniac? What has corrupted this child?

            According to the Romantic poets like Wordsworth, society is the corrupter. Society with its artificial rules takes the child molds him into something that is unnatural. The further we get away from nature, the more imperfect we become.

            These two views of human nature mark the fundamental difference between the political views of conservatives and liberals.

            We no longer use things like The New England Primer to teach young children that we are born in sin. How, then, do people acquire a sense of the quality of human nature? How do they decide whether people are fundamental good or basically bad? We derive these opinions inductively from our experiences. We all have had experiences where other people treated us badly. We have also witnessed many acts of goodness from our fellow human beings. The way we encounter these actions determine the way they shape our outlook. 

            Our opinions on human nature are not derived as conclusions based on logical considerations. Rather they are attitudes that we are barely aware of having considered, but they are attitudes that influence our thinking most of the things we do.

            Few, if any, people think of themselves as evil. Or their close family members or best friends. If the people they know best seem like decent human beings, how can they think of the vast majority of people as being fundamentally bad? Most people follow most of the rules most of the time. But we weren’t born following the rules. In so many ways society teaches us the rules. In effect it civilizes us. We learn the Golden Rule. We learn the ways we are dependent upon one another.

            We learn that if we apply ourselves in school as children, we will be able to get into college and learn a career that will help us succeed as adults. These opportunities are available to everyone. Of course we can’t deny that opportunities are more readily available to some than to others, but we can all think of members of minorities who have made great successes of their lives.

            It is virtually impossible for someone who violates too many of the rules to succeed. If a young woman has several children, all by different fathers, she is going to be unable to be a fully functioning member of society. If a young man drops out of school before graduating and joins a gang rather than take a minimum wage job, he is unlikely to ever hold a “good” job. While people like these clearly do not have the opportunities that most of us have, they do have some opportunities.

            We may not be born in sin, but we are born as little narcissists. As we grow, we have a responsibility take advantage of whatever opportunities are available to us and allow society to civilize us. That is the bad that some see as infecting large numbers of humanity. It’s not that that we are born in sin. The bad is the failure of some people, not just members of minorities, to make the effort required to become functioning, productive members of society.

            If some people are too lazy to follow the rules and take care of themselves, the conservative asks, why should I donate some of my hard-earned money through taxes to take care of such people?

            Some people have a more sanguine view of human nature. Most people, they believe, are basically good. Obviously there are some bad actors among us, some truly vile human beings. If we are born fundamentally good, how do so many of us turn out to be less than sterling characters?

            Conservatives may feel that we need society to civilize us and make us conform to appropriate patterns of behavior. Liberals, on the other hand, may feel that society itself is the culprit. Society might corrupt the innocent soul and force it to be an unthinking conformist.

            Two iconic books, both published in the 1950s, illustrate these two views of human nature. In Lord of the Flies a group of English schoolboys are stranded on a desert island. Without the guidance of adults to civilize them, the boys descend into savagery.

            In Catcher in the Rye, the main character, Holden Caulfield, is not sure what the phrase “coming through the rye” means. He envisions innocent children playing in a field, and someone is there, a catcher in the rye, to catch them if they fall off. Playing in the field is innocence. Falling off is losing that innocence, becoming phony, like most adults in Holden’s view. Adults, society destroy the innocence that we are born with.

            There is more to this question than the view of humanity of liberals and conservatives. For example, one wonders why so many evangelical Christians embrace a man as morally deficient as Donald Trump. We also wonder why Republicans are more likely to ignored the science in issues like climate change and the coronavirus.  We will look at these questions in later writings.

           

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WORKING FROM HOME

The COVID 19 epidemic has changed the way we do many things. Some of these changes will become permanent. One of the big changes we have seen is in working from home. To protect their employees from the virus, many companies have been allowing employees who can do so to work from home. The big tech companies have been doing this and plan to continue at least through the end of this year. So much work is done these days on computers and over the internet that tasks can be done at home as easily as they can in a corporate office.

Working from home has advantages to employees, to businesses and to society at large. Because of this, the change in work procedures is likely to become permanent. Employees can save the time and expense of a long commute to work. They can also save the cost of business clothes because they can wear anything they want on the job done at home. Businesses that allow work at home save money on office space. During the partial shutdown in this country, those who do go out have observed much less traffic on the road. Scientists tell us that atmospheric pollution has gone way down in recent months because there are fewer cars on the road.

Several members of my extended family have been working from home during the crisis. One of them is my daughter, who works for a small internet company. They serve their customers over the internet, so workers can do this easily at home. Several employees live in states far from company headquarters. My daughter has been able to work from home occasionally when it is convenient for her to do so.

People who work from home save of the expense of commuting and office clothes. They also save on lunches because they’re not likely to go out for lunch when they are home. They also have more choice about where they will live if they don’t have to live within commuting distance of the office.

If working from home becomes widespread, it will affect many areas of modern life. The money that employees save on commuting, clothes, and lunch, is money that someone else will not earn. People who do not drive to work will not need to get newer cars as often, and they won’t buy as much gas. Recently the price of petroleum dropped so low that producers had to pay storage facilities to take the excess off their hands.

As for saving money on business clothes, several old-line department stores have filed for bankruptcy in recent years. The stores are not only feeling a lowering demand, they are also facing competition from online sellers like Amazon. While J C Penney files for Chapter 11, Amazon’s business grows larger. Companies like Walmart and Target are surviving the crisis because they emulate Amazon. Customers don’t have to go to Walmart to buy stuff. They can order it online. Indeed, during the crisis, online ordering has often been the only way people can purchase things they desire. Customers have found how convenient it is to look up merchandise over the internet, make comparisons and order the product. Increased online shopping is going to be one of the long-term effects of the COVID 19.

Restaurants operate on a small margin at best. They are feeling the effects of the COVID 19 very strongly. For several months they could not operate as they usually did. They tried to keep afloat by offering takeout meals. Now they can serve on tables outside, as long as the tables are far enough apart. Both of these techniques might help the restaurants keep their heads above water, but they are not going to be as profitable as traditional restaurant methods have been. Several fast food chains have been considering Chapter 11. When things start to recover, some restaurants will not be among them.

Real estate will be affected by the changes that have been brought about by the epidemic. Right now New York City is losing population. Well-to-do people who have a second home have been fleeing to those homes to escape the contagion of the big city. Workers who have lost their jobs have been moving out, perhaps to live with family members in other places. If working at home becomes a more readily available option, many people will choose to live someplace less expensive.

No one knows of course what life will be like after we have recovered from the pandemic, but we know there will be major changes in the way we do many things. And the handwriting is on the wall for many of these changes.