Politics

The Rise of the American Crackpot

Kooky conspiracy theorists are now at the center of American politics

American history is filled with colorful cranks, country club hustlers, and conspiracy mongering zealots of every stripe and form, and yet rarely have society’s snake oil salesmen had such a massive platform with which to communicate their lies to the wide-eyed millions, and more rare still has what they’re selling been so poisonous as to threaten to topple American democracy.

Yet that is precisely what is happening in this American moment, as the internet’s vast reach provides a chorus of cynical con artists and cunning political operators the chance to acquire power, money, and infamy by insinuating themselves into Donald Trump’s Big Lie, American democracy be damned.

Exhibit A is Mike Lindell of MyPillow fame, a former Minnesota crack addict turned inferior (they’re the worst pillows) pillow salesman who is now the leading evangelist for the Big Lie in the United States.

Mike Lindell was recently interviewed by CNN, where he was confronted and ridiculed by reporter Drew Griffin, after Lindell presented meaningless images he claimed proved the 2020 election was stolen by China in a vast and incomprehensible global conspiracy. CNN easily disproved Lindell’s incoherent claims with rudimentary reporting, showing that his lies were literally not possible, as in the case where Lindell claimed a particular county in Michigan had its election hacked, despite the fact that it was conducted entirely on paper.

Griffin told Lindell about his proof, “This proves nothing,” garnering an angry reaction from the bedding salesmen, who insisted that Griffin simply needed to trust him. The pillow salesmen urged the veteran reporter to attend his upcoming “symposium” where Lindell says he will unveil his secret evidence and finally prove the 2020 election was hacked and stolen from Donald Trump.

Yet the fact that CNN interviewed Mike Lindell at all shows the astonishing reach of his misinformation, as the United States faces a profound crisis of confidence in its democracy deliberately manufactured by craven liars in the Republican Party, and smeared across the American psyche like so many jingling infomercials.

This national cognitive dissonance is possible only because of the merger that took place between the fringe right wing and the so-called establishment conservative movement in the GOP under Donald Trump, a process in which QAnon adherents, hardcore racists, and neofascist ultra-nationalists were all warmly embraced by the president of the United States, a once unthinkable prospect.

Thus, Donald Trump’s presidency ushered in the mainstreaming of the worst elements on the political right, as avowed racists and nutty conspiracy theorists once rejected by the Republican Party were now welcomed into its ranks.

Indeed, the president himself was perhaps the leading purveyor of conspiracies in America during his own presidency, consistently spinning outlandish lies, deceiving the American people for what he perceived to be his own short term political benefit.

Donald Trump went from preaching birtherism, the notion that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. to launch his nascent political career, to COVID-19 denialism in the middle of an historic pandemic, to the Big Lie at the fiery conclusion, leading to a deadly insurrection at the Capitol. You can trace a straight line from the first baseless accusation that Obama was born in Kenya directly to Mike Lindell saying Donald Trump is going to be reinstated into the presidency.

Truly, Trump’s was the Conspiracy Presidency, a political movement that from its outset was based on toxic lies and the harnessing of the raw political power of disinformation. Conspiracy mongering was built into the DNA of the MAGA movement, because it was built into the DNA of Donald Trump, and the two are inextricably joined together, inseparable.

Now that Trump has effectively been muzzled by Facebook and Twitter, his two favorite vehicles for personally lying to the masses, he has surrogates like Lindell to carry his destructive falsehoods into American consciousness, as his authoritarian dream sits temporarily on hold in Palm Beach, Florida, even as his lies continue to animate the Republican Party’s voters and dictate the direction taken by Republican politicians across the United States.

In May, a poll conducted by FiveThirtyEight showed 70% of Republicans believe Joe Biden is not a legitimate president, as elected Republicans work feverishly from Texas to Pennsylvania, in 18 states successfully so far, to restrict and roll back voting based on the very same lie that the election was stolen through fraud.

In her 2020 bestseller, Twilight of Democracy, historian Anne Applebaum writes:

“The emotional appeal of a conspiracy theory is in its simplicity. It explains away complex phenomena, accounts for chance and accidents, offers the believer the satisfying sense of having special, privileged access to the truth.”

She goes on, “For those who become the one-party state’s gatekeepers, the repetition of these conspiracy theories also brings another reward: power.”

It is impossible to forget Mike Lindell sauntering out of the White House on Donald Trump’s last Friday in office, in the tense atmosphere following the bloody siege on the Capitol, and being photographed clutching papers suggesting Trump impose martial law on the United States.

That moment seemed to capture both the inane absurdity and the immense peril American freedom faced, and continues to face, at the hands of lying con men attempting to grift democracy and maintain their grip on power.

I remember wondering, will Trump impose martial law? Anything seemed possible in those days.

It is impossible to divine Mike Lindell’s true intentions from his bizarre campaign on behalf of the ousted president; perhaps he believes he is on a special mission from god, or he has relapsed on cocaine, or maybe he has somehow convinced himself of his own lies in a strange quirk of psychology.

Regardless, the fruit of these efforts, in the unlikely event that Donald Trump is ever returned to office, would presumably be great power for Mike Lindell.

Perhaps the pillow salesmen sees himself as a budding statesman.

After all, Donald Trump showed that there is a path to power for every dishonest salesmen and crooked demagogue in the land, and that path begins at the point where reality and lies meet and then diverge. Indeed, you can manufacture your own reality with a bold enough lie, and that seems to be what Mike Lindell is toying with, as he batters American democracy with lies tainting a fair and honest American election, in what I hope is not a terrible self-fulfilling prophecy.

As Anne Applebaum noted after interviewing Lindell, he is “utterly impervious to any argument of any kind.” He represents the reality defying characteristic of the new American right following its marriage to Donald Trump, in all its bizarre and sinister contradictions.

One hopes reality will prevail against lies, though as we’ve all witnessed, truth does not always win the day. Even when everything is at stake, there is always someone willing to spin a lie for a bit of fame and fortune.

The recent reporting about unvaccinated Americans hospitalized and near-death with COVID-19 issuing teary-eyed warnings for others to get vaccinated, so as to avoid a similarly dark fate, they seem to embody American democracies life-or-death struggle with truth itself in this age of talented liars and political cons.

Let’s hope we take heed.

Subscribe here for free to see my latest work

Want to read more of my writing? Sign up for a Medium membership for $5/month to receive unlimited access to all my new writing along with all the other talented writers publishing on Medium. I’ll receive a small referral fee with no increase to your cost if you sign up using the above link.