The far right is beset with obsessions about Democratic Party damaging notions like Benghazi or pizzagate being the results of cabals of conspirators plotting nefarious cover-ups or actions. We have a paranoid president who is the head coach of the conspiracy cheerleaders for concocted conspiracies.
In a New York Times opinion column today, “ We Are Not a ‘Cabal,’ Just Critics of Trump : Never before have a few guys with podcasts, academic postings and Twitter accounts constituted such a powerful evil empire,” Ben Rhodes brought up the following: emphasis added
During the preparation for his second 2012 debate with Mitt Romney, I had to walk President Barack Obama through the conspiracy theories about the Benghazi attacks so he’d be ready for them: that he issued a “stand-down” order, for instance, to deny military assistance, or that we’d watched the attacks unfold in the White House via a drone feed. He didn’t believe me at first — unlike the current occupant of the Oval Office, he rarely watched cable news. “I’m serious,” I said. “It’s all over Fox.” Obama shook his head: “That’s some real tin-hat stuff.”
In the debate, Mr. Obama noted that he stood in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, the day after the attack, and condemned it as an “act of terror.” Mr. Romney pounced, insisting repeatedly that the president had not done so. Mr. Obama, who had practiced his answer to this charge, replied, “get the transcript,” and the moderator, Candy Crowley, did just that, providing a rare real-time fact-check.
I watched the scene unfold backstage. Mr. Romney, a smart and serious man, reacted with disbelief. He was certain Mr. Obama had not called it an act of terror, even though the president had done so on national television from the Rose Garden. I shuddered a bit. I had grown used to Republicans using conspiracy theories to rile up their base. Watching Mr. Romney’s genuine shock, I confronted an even more disturbing reality: What if they actually believed these theories?
Mr. Obama may have gotten the best of that exchange. But having failed in 2012, the Republicans kept breathing oxygen into a meandering series of Benghazi conspiracy theories for four years — a trail that led all the way to Hillary Clinton’s private email server and, in some warped way, helped propel Donald Trump into the White House. CONTINUED Mr. Rhodes was deputy national security adviser to President Obama.
We could almost look back fondly on a time when the promulgation of these baseless conspiracies was as quaint as where President Obama was on Sept. 12, 2001, or blaming the Benghazi attacks on Democrats. At least President Obama was someplace on that horrible day-after in 2001, and at least Benghazi really happened.
Now we X-Files alien abduction level tall tales making the news and being believed by an alarming number of people. One hit close to my home the other day when Portland’s Voodoo Donuts was supposedly a front for a child sex trafficking ring.
In his essay, Ben Rhodes references competing realities. He notes that Trump and his supporters have succeeded in creating numerous false narratives, starting with birtherism and culminating now with the falsehoods that there is a deep state and the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt.
In fact, there are no competing realities. Whether scientifically provable or not, there is only one reality. Delving deeply into this subject gets us into the realm of epistemology which is beyond the scope of this diary and far beyond my own expertise.
Merriam-Webster explains the difference between hypothesis and theory. They say that in non-scientific use hypothesis and theory are often used interchangeably to mean simply an idea, speculation, or hunch, with theory being the more common choice.
I wish this wasn’t the case. I like the scientific usage.
A theory is a principle that has been formed as an attempt to explain things that have already been substantiated by data. It is used in the names of a number of principles accepted in the scientific community, such as the Big Bang Theory. Because of the rigors of experimentation and control, it is understood to be more likely to be true than a hypothesis is.
It would serve the public much better if the phrase conspiracy hypothesis was used when it was appropriate:
A hypothesis is an assumption, an idea that is proposed for the sake of argument so that it can be tested to see if it might be true.
In the scientific method, the hypothesis is constructed before any applicable research has been done, apart from a basic background review. You ask a question, read up on what has been studied before, and then form a hypothesis.
A hypothesis is usually tentative; it's an assumption or suggestion made strictly for the objective of being tested.
Getting back to the Voodoo Donuts conspiracy theory. The Portland police actually investigated these claims and rightfully treated it as a testable hypothesis.
The harassment campaigns highlight how conspiracy theories that form in deep corners of the internet can have real-world consequences. The same theory that led conspiracists to Sweet Jesus and Voodoo Doughnut previously focused on Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizza shop where a man fired a rifle in 2016 during a "self-investigation" of online rumors that a child-sex ring was being run out of its basement. The shop has no basement.
Monaghan said he refers callers to the Portland Police Department. Sgt. Chris Burley, a department spokesman, said that “an enormous” number of emails and calls had been made to the department asking why they aren’t investigating Voodoo Doughnut.
Burley said a detective had looked into the situation but that the so-called whistleblower, who made the allegations against Voodoo Doughnut in the widely shared video that was ultimately deleted by YouTube, failed to cooperate.
“The lead investigator has repeatedly attempted to contact the person who made these allegations and has not heard back,” Burley said. “We take these allegations seriously, but when the complainant won’t come forward with information, it’s difficult for us to continue.”
“Based on what we have seen, there is no information to suggest that any of the allegations against Voodoo are credible,” the sergeant said. KGW-TV “Far-right conspiracy theorists harass Voodoo Doughnut, other small businesses”
Addendum:
I wonder how many of these Amazon sells.
Friday, Aug 31, 2018 · 4:19:14 PM +00:00
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HalBrown
I agree with two commenters that in many of these instance stories or fantasies are the proper words. However, some are testable and then the word hypothesis makes sense. Alien abduction claims are not worth testing. Birtherism, Benghazi, pizzagate, witch hunt, deep state, Hillary’s treasonous emails, Voodoo donuts, and all others that have real-life consequences are testable, which is why I think we should call them hypotheses.