It’s (Long Past)Time to Talk of Many Things- Like How and Why So Many People Can Be So Easily Fooled

I have been wondering lately about what makes some people so easily fall for lies, false narratives, alternate facts or reality, conspiracy-theories, and such-like canards. Quite a number of people believe (or claim to believe) that the earth is a flat disk rather like a frisbee, with a wall of ice along its circumference (like the ice-wall in Game of Thrones); some seem to still believe there is no climate change going on; others still claim that COVID-19 is a hoax; and (believe it or not) quite a few people apparently still believe that the sun revolves around the earth (the long-exploded geocentric theory). How can this be?

Quite a few folks claim that we’ve never been to the moon — that was all a Hollywood set; and that all the photographic, video and personal testimony evidence from astronauts is all just part of a huge fake-out by, well, everyone else. This is part of the flat-earther argument.

Nowadays, we have the amazingly bizarre doctrine and manifesto of Q-Anon, which evidently quite a few people have fallen for. We have quite a lot of people who bought into the false 2020 election claims of widespread voter fraud, voting machine conspiracies, child-trafficking, blood-sports, and a non-existent connection with the former leader of Venezuela. How is this sort of thing to be explained?

Somebody (I think it was George Carlin, but I may be wrong) said: if you take two pieces of wood and nail them together differently than everyone else, some idiot will buy it. Remember mood rings, and moon rocks? Are you old enough to remember Clackers? Two colored glass balls on the end of a string with a ring in the center, that you banged together at high velocity — like the saying goes, it’s always fun until someone loses as eye. None of those things were ever good ideas, but people bought them anyway.

Can a person literally just make shit up out of whole cloth, provide not even a scintilla of evidence, and get a bunch of people to believe it? Evidently so — now, how and why do others fall for it?

I recently set myself the task of trying to understand how and why; and to begin with, I have to disclose a bias. Having been educated and trained both as a lawyer and an archaeologist, I have an evidence-based approach to things. If you want to convince me that something is true (or false), you’d better have solid, reliable and convincing evidence. Evidence is anything that tends to prove or disprove an alleged fact. The Trumpian wheeze of “everybody knows” that something is true (or false) just does not work with people who think critically; nor does just repeating the falsity over and over suffice.

Belief, or just a claim of belief for an ulterior motive?

In thinking about this, it occurred to me that some people might claim to believe something, but not because they really believe it. They might claim the belief only because (from their viewpoint) it is important to say they do. Here, I’m thinking about, in general, politicians; and in specific folks like Senators Johnson, Cruz and Hawley (and a slew of Republicans in the House like McCarthy) — on the issue of the outcome of the 2020 elections.

I do not include Marjorie Taylor Greene in this category of politicians who might be alright with looking and sounding crazy for another reason. For one thing, in my view she is not a politician; she’s a “Karen” who knows not one jot about governance or politics, but happened to get elected in a total freak situation. Also, I am afraid that the evidence suggests her craziness is not an act. Her current daily frivolous motions that interferes with everyone else doing their jobs is more evidence of an imbalance in the upper story.

Having watched closely all of the statements of these people from before the elections, and since, I’ve noted some evidence consistent with play-acting. I think most of them, if not all, actually know that there was no major problem with the 2020 election (i.e. that Trump in fact lost), and have always known it. It’s just that as a political calculation, they for some reason feel it’s better to act like they believe it was a stolen election. What reason could that be? Silly question. It’s the Trump, stupid; they cannot survive without the Trump; or at least they think they cannot. Happily or sadly, they may be right on that point.

Speaking of Trump: paradoxically, he’s the one I am absolutely convinced is the most sure he was going to lose the election, that he lost the election, and that there was nothing fraudulent about it. How can I be so sure? Go back to mid-2020, right when he started predicting that he would lose by saying only fraud could prevent a win; move forward through the COVID-19 catastrophe when (knowing he had lied to America) he saw the writing on the wall; through the steadily-worsening press coverage of the pandemic and lost legal battles over his taxes; and through when he himself came down with it and then — the piece de resistance: election lost and all the court challenges fail, as court cases will in the absence of any admissible evidence.

With Trump way back then, the first time I heard him say it, I had the feeling that he was “trying it on” as the saying goes. It came out oddly, at the tail end of an unrelated statement. Then, almost like as an afterthought: it seemed like he was thinking to himself “hey, yeah, that’s the right angle, gotta remember that.”

Of course, there are people who really do believe all the crap I’ve alluded to above — and that’s scary.

So, that’s my take on belief versus finding it convenient to say you believe.

What the magician’s left hand is doing vs. what her left hand is doing

The time has come,’ the Walrus said, ‘To talk of many things: Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax — Of cabbages — and kings — And why the sea is boiling hot — And whether pigs have wings.’

Many may recognize this as a stanza from a poem called The Walrus and the Carpenter, which appeared in Lewis Carroll’s amazing fantasy story of Alice Through the Looking Glass, the second Alice story by Carroll. Good old Alice runs across the twins, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the latter recites the poem to her. The poem has often been analyzed as an instance of how easy it is to distract people sometimes, and yes, even fool them…those poor voters, er, I mean oysters.

I’ve often wondered (but have not bothered to research it) whether the last line of this stanza is the genesis of the retort we sometimes hear someone say something that we don’t buy or are reluctant to do: “yeah, when pigs fly.”

Moreover, an uncritical voter (damn, I did it again — I mean oyster) could be tricked, bamboozled and fooled. But one (an old one) was not fooled, staying safely in the bed. I am recalling a nice line Agatha Christie had her Miss Marple once say: young people think old folks are fools; but old folks know young people are fools. That, of course, does not explain how so many older people get misled and conned, including the older folks (should be wholly ashamed of themselves) who participated in that Capitol attack on January 6th. I’ve also seen quite a few older people on video totally buying into Trump’s bullshit. No fool like an old fool, I guess.

The thing is, it’s not really being stupid…anyone can get fooled by a competent con man or woman, or a magician. Naturally, though, one must account for the people who are just weak-minded and therefore easily led; and there are some of these around. Just watch a few videos of Jay Leno or others asking lots of people some basic things…and getting bupkis. It’s enough to make one weep at how unprepared many are for life.

Or, like I facetiously suggested in a previous article: maybe Donald Trump is really The Last Jedi, and that’s how he does it? Naaaahhh…for sure his golf game would be better, and his cheating on the links would look and feel more natural, and fool everybody.

Everybody collects something — some collect injustices

It’s true that collecting things is a popular hobby, sometimes approaching a mania or fetish. I have always collected books, and in my youth had baseball cards and coins. Most people would agree that collecting things like that, or antique blue glass, or Washington’s campaign medals — even diamond-studded left-handed monkey-wrenches, is all fine and can be therapeutic if it does not get out of hand.

But, naturally, there are some things it is not really healthy to collect. Here I speak of injustice collectors who gather into themselves and suffer based on injustices and grievances not necessarily personal to them. This personalty disorder grows with time and further supposed injustices and grievances; and makes them prone to look for solace in some rather strange places.

The subject is nicely summarized by the New York Times in a recent article. That NYT article contained a link to a study published in the Journal Social Science & Medicine. In that particular study they specifically investigated conspiracy theories as barriers to controlling the COVID-19 pandemic — fascinating science there, which one can easily see might carry over into other how some folks fall for other false theories.

I am thinking that for people who get bamboozled and bumfuzzled by the false theories, perhaps a more creative and less-dangerous outlet is in order: forget insurrection and violence, and focus on using the imagination to help other people, or to write fiction, or to paint or garden. Nobody ever died from those things, and those things never nearly destroyed a democratic government.

Just sayin’.