Editor’s Note: The print version of this column included a factually incorrect statement that was made during proofing and not on the original submission of the author. It was corrected in the digital version Jan. 24.
Disinformation peddlers are at it again – big-time. And, make no mistake, it’s the kind of toxic disinformation that led to the vile acts of domestic terrorism Jan. 6 at our nation’s Capitol.
The conspiracy crackpots keep repackaging more crazy theories. First, it was anti-maskers during the so-called virus hoax, then it was (still is) election-fraud howlers and now – wouldn’t you know? – it’s anti-vaxxers.
More than 400,000 Americans have died of the COVID-19 virus as these dangerous fools keep spouting nonsense. We all have a patriotic duty to speak up against it. So many good people are anxious, worried to death, hungry and even homeless as these loud liars peddle their nasty deceptions, making our national crises even worse.
Here’s the latest outlandish stupidity: Dallas lawyer Sidney Powell, who is slightly left of Attila the Hun, is claiming far and wide that vaccinations contain a microchip or bar code to let the “Deep State” (whatever that is) to “keep track” of people.
What’s more, those who are vaccinated will receive a reminder card to get a second dose. But – shhh! – those “reminder cards” are really ways to keep tabs on people, to spy on them and “to limit their activities.”
So go the paranoid fancies of Ms. Powell. Her toxic concoctions are posted and re-posted on social-media and gobbled up by gullibles who figure the loonier the postings, the more they must be true. Such shocking “truths” are never acknowledged by the mainstream media, so that certifies they must, in fact, be true.
Powell blabs her fool head off that the rigged-election plot hatched in Venezuela somehow involved leftist billionaire George Soros and the anti-fascist movement. Georgia’s governor and secretary of state, both Republicans, were in on the plot. Better believe it, folks! Besides millions of dead people voting (ghosts and zombies stumbling to the polls?), the dastardly scheme included rigged voting machines. But wait, there’s more! The plot – ready for this one? – also involved a “secret algorithm.” Horrors!
Not one shred of evidence is offered for these nightmare notions. But who needs evidence? Who needs facts?
Lunatic theories grow like mold these days, promulgated by social-media devotees.
Did you hear about how prominent Democrats and movie actors are sex-trafficking children, killing them and eating their bodies because their blood contains aging-retardant chemicals? Communists, child-killers, cannibals! And it must be true because the mainstream media claims it’s NOT true – the media that is controlled by a “Satanic Deep State” squirreled away in some secret building.
We hear pleas constantly to “listen to the other side,” to try to understand them, to empathize for the sake of national unity. It’s sad so many fellow Americans are so easily misled, so willingly misinformed, so eagerly gullible and, in some cases, so dangerous. In fact, I have indeed listened to them closely, including white-supremacist militia hate groups, and I remain appalled and disgusted by what I’ve heard and still hear.
On Jan. 6, whipped up by Trump’s incendiary pep talk, a mob of terrorists disguised as flag-draped patriots invaded the National Capitol, causing death and destruction. So we are supposed to “understand” and “empathize” with those spreaders of lunatic lies, those perpetrators of violence? Well, speaking for many good Americans: Ain’t gonna happen any time soon.
