Conspiracy theories are now spreading faster than the COVID virus itself. There are those who think Trump is faking his diagnosis and others who think he is faking his recovery. What about that ego trip he took in his car while hospitalized> The misinformation age we have been living in for these past 4 years has soared to new levels with Trump testing positive for COVID 19.

And now this pathological liar who has long driven me nuts has turned me into one of those conspiracy nuts.

No, I’m not wearing a tinfoil hat.

Yet.

I’m still confident that in 1969 Buzz Aldrich took one small step for man one giant leap for mankind from the surface of the moon and not from studio lot just as I’m certain there are no lizard people disguised as corporate leaders.

But in the Trumpian age of untruths, the news of Trump’s COVID19 diagnosis and subsequent hospitalization has caused my mind to race into all sorts of speculation and convoluted theories. American’s imaginations are running wild especially when little and confusing information is given

The fact is there is nothing I trust about what we have been fed.

The flood of speculative commentary on social media is not exclusive to one particular side of the political aisle.  There are doubters and conspiracy theorists on both sides, each seeking out and promoting information that confirms their respective biases about the world.

The deluge of conspiracy theories about Trump’s positive test comes against a mountainous backdrop of misinformation built by the president himself. After a steady diet of fabrications and falsehoods is it any wonder conspiracies are thriving, encouraged by the president himself.

When it comes to conspiracy theories there are so many you can choose one from column A and 2 from column B.

Fake News

Researchers at Cornell University recently published a study showing that Mr. Trump was the single largest driver of false and misleading information about the coronavirus. Trump has repeatedly misled the public about the pandemic having consistently denied or downplayed science regarding the spread of this virus, questioning the need for masks and promoting fake cures.

Is it any wonder that critics of Trump like myself are questioning the legitimacy of his illness after years of him spreading lies and misinformation about everything.

Is this just another manipulative distraction to change and control a narrative that was spiraling perilously downward for Trump right before his diagnosis? The news cycle changed on a dime. Taxes? Melania’s vile tape, Disasterous debate? Falling poll numbers? Fuggedaboutit.  Might he be lying about his diagnosis for the sake of a political gain with about a month to go before Election Day?

But we aren’t the only folks circulating conspiracy theories about the situation.

QAnon signs at Trump Rally

On the flip side, followers of extremist groups like QAnonn have connected a variety of falsehoods about the roots of the pandemic to explain Trump’s illness to fit into their false premise.

They attempted to decode the wording of his tweet announcing he had COVID as a sign that the president was poised to arrest Trump’s nemesis  Hillary Clinton who was falsely accused of involvement in a cabal of satanic Democrats running a secret child-sex trafficking ring. They suggested, that Trump actually doesn’t have the virus at all but was sending a message that he’s about to go on a mission to root out the evil group.

Fools Rush In

Who is the fool in all this? Are we all being fooled?

We may have once been justified in believing Abraham Lincoln’s familiar maxim “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Until Donald Trump, this has been the foundation belief of American democracy.

Lincoln’s slogan rests on 2 assumptions.

First that there is a clear and visible distinction between sham and reality, between the lies a demagogue would have us believe and the truths which are there all the time. Second that the people tend to prefer reality to sham, that if offered a choice between a simple truth and a contrived image they will prefer the truth.

Neither of these any longer fit the facts. Not because people are less intelligent or more dishonest. We now have a demagogue in the White House who has blurred the edges of reality.

We cannot say with certainty that we are being fooled. It is not entirely inaccurate to say we are being “informed.” By whom and to what end?

One thing is true. This pseudo president creating pseudo-news has created genuine chaos and disruption.

For Trump, the image is the thing.

Its purpose to overshadow reality. In Trumpland images displace ideals. Ideals are created by tradition history or God. It is not ambiguous, It something to strive for. He trucks in illusions, an image we have mistaken for reality.

Now we find ourselves caught in this thicket of unreality that Trump has constructed which stands between us and the facts of life. Each in our own way is struggling to extract ourselves from it but he keeps ensnaring us.

This has brought us to this unprecedented opportunity to deceive ourselves and befog our experiences. I will not be an accessory to this great hoax of our age.

Count me in the skeptic’s column.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.