Cancer in the Republican party

Does Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene really believe that “a plane did not hit the Pentagon on 9/11, the Clintons crashed JFK Jr’s plane and that the 2018 California wildfires were started by a space laser controlled by Jews”? “Karl Rove blasts GOP rep Marjorie Taylor Greene”  Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, stated Monday (belatedly) that her “loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party.” “Has Mitch McConnell been struck by Jewish space laser”

An even more disturbing question is why do so many people believe her and other obviously (to most people) false claims? QAnon is sadly not the only group espousing claims that even my grandmother (or maybe especially my grandmother) would find transparently laughable. QAnon “followers believe that a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and billionaires runs the world while engaging in pedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children.”  “QAnon conspiracy theory explained” 

We live in a time in which sorting fact from fiction has become more challenging than usual. As a young man I had Walter Cronkite, who I could check against Huntley and Brinkley. If they reported it, we believed it. If they got it wrong (rarely) they corrected it the next day. The pronouncements of QAnon are so ridiculous that most of us don’t need a fact checker to reject them. Common sense is enough. But when the previous President of the United States lied to us more or less every time he tweeted, and claims to this day that his reelection was stolen without producing any credible evidence, sorting fact from fiction becomes more challenging.

Sometimes we are lucky enough to encounter contrary evidence directly, in which case we discard the lie and downgrade our trust in its source. This seems to be happening to some QAnon supporters–but unfortunately not to Congresswoman Greene. But this also raises the question of why those inventing and perpetrating lies do so. The specific example of Rep. Greene’s claim that 9/11 was a hoax and that no plane crashed into the Pentagon presents an interesting case.

Of course, the conspiracy theorists do not claim that planes didn’t crash into the World Trade towers, too many of us saw it in real time on TV (I watched in horror from my hotel room in Bratislava, Slovakia). They claim that the U.S. Government was complicit and that the buildings were brought down by planted explosives, etc. In short, they developed clever, even plausible but highly improbable arguments for not believing what the press reported.  https://www.serendipity.li/wot/911_a_hoax.htm

Some years ago, probably sometime in 2002 or 3, one of my children sent me a video claiming that the 9/11 crash into the Pentagon was a hoax. I no longer remember the details of the lengthy arguments it made to convince us that American Airlines flight 77 never crashed into the Pentagon that day and did not kill the 184 people the press reported, but it was well done and convincing. If I had not had directly contradictory information, I might have wondered whether these claims of hoaxes might be true.

First of all, I knew from an acquaintance (Lawyer Ted Olson) that his wife Barbara had died in that crash. Secondly, at the time, I lived next to the Pentagon in Crystal City and could view firsthand the crash site after returning home from Slovakia (the hole in the west side of the building and the plane wreckage laid out in the Pentagon parking lot). The impressive and potentially convincing story in the video was totally made up. But why? The video was expensive to make. Perhaps psychologists can shed light on why gullible people fall for these lies, but what motivates those who put up the money to propagate what they know full well are lies?

Who has an incentive to undermine the American public’s confidence in its government and institutions? Who has an incentive to weaken the United States via a distrusting public turning on itself? The devil himself, of course, but who else? Q? Followers of QAnon “believe that “Q” is a high-ranking government insider, presumably with a military or intelligence background, committed to exposing the hidden truth of what they see as an international bureaucracy scheming against Mr. Trump and his supporters.” “What is QAnon-what we know about the conspiracy theory” Russia? Russia has been playing both sides against the middle in the U.S. for years.

And what about Rep Greene, herself? Is she one of the gullible followers or knowing perpetrators?  In a private meeting of Republicans in the Capital Wednesday evening she apparently expressed “contrition for some of her most outrageous comments made on social media — including questioning the 9/11 attacks, blaming a space ray directed by a Jewish cabal for a deadly wildfire and doubting school shootings. She also, according to Republicans in the room, apologized for putting her colleagues in a difficult spot.” But she has not repudiated any of her outrageous claims publicly.  “’I won’t back down. I’ll never apologize. And I’ll always keep fighting for the people,’ she tweeted Saturday.” “Amid GOP paralysis democrats vow to force vote on rep Greene’s extremism”

“While McCarthy on Wednesday condemned Greene’s comments questioning the veracity of school shootings, encouraging political violence and promulgating anti-Semitic falsehoods, he said he would not bow to demands that she be removed from her committees.” [op. cit.] I have sympathy for McCarthy’s position but a tent big enough to include people like Greene is not one I am willing to reenter. Vladimir Putin must be smiling.

We will never be able to prevent the devil in one guise or another from manufacturing lies in efforts to keep us divided and at each other’s throats. But we can and should better educate our public to critically assess wild claims and more carefully choose more reliable sources of information.