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Conspiracy theories can only survive in a vacuum of absolutism where any hint of evaluating the actual premise is unthinkable. This is how both Trump and QAnon can lie in such over-the-top fashion yet maintain lockstep loyalty. The more outrageous the better; because that’s the intoxicant they crave. It fuels their love of the fight, defending loudly with no trace of reason.
But rather than push back directly against their bluster, the best way to defeat them is to chip away through the power of asking, “how?” And even if they choose not to answer, ask your questions or present your threads of analysis like a quick sequence of punches to the gut.
Take the issue of chem trails from jets. Contrails that form aft of the engines from condensation at high altitude happen overhead all the time. This staple of modern life becomes ominous when people like Alex Jones inject the idea that every time you see this, the deep state is spraying chemicals in the air to harm us or control us.
If someone jumps on that particular bandwagon, here’s how to skewer that assertion. Say:
“A jet flies a mile in six or seven seconds. Let’s say that it somehow has the capacity to dispense a gallon of chemicals every mile. So that’s a quart per engine per mile, with an aerosol effect dissipating throughout the 30,000 feet drop to the ground. Doesn’t sound like much of a concentration of chemicals that reach the ground in the same spot.”
While this sinks in, to his brain that is, take it on from this
“So say for a flight from San Jose to Portland, about 700 miles, you’d need about 700 gallons of this stuff. Where would that be stored on the aircraft? And each jet would have to be retrofitted with the plumbing to each engine, with the consent of the airline.”
Dumb look number two.
“But they probably wouldn’t be able to swing that kind of conspiratorial support. It would cost them a lot of time and money even if they wanted to. So perhaps it’s only the US military flights that do the chem trail thing. So if there is one military jet for every 100 commercial jets, that’s a lot less goo in the dew.”
The same goes for Trump’s Big Lie. One of his assertions is that votes are added illegally. He’s said that the same votes are run through multiple times, and also that ballots not associated with any voter are slipped into the count.
But every ballot is associated with a specific precinct, where a matching signature for the vote, either in person or by mail, resides. After pointing this out, ask this of the Big Lie believer:
“If fraudulent votes have been inserted into the count at one specific site, wouldn’t that make a precinct’s count 30,000 instead of 1500? That seems pretty easy to catch. And to avoid that, Democratic conspirators would have to sprinkle these surplus votes around multiple precincts. But they couldn’t all be within the same county, making an obvious deviation from polling numbers. A conspiracy like this would require dozens, perhaps even hundreds of coconspirators all operating to perfection. And in each case, wouldn’t every poll worker at each affected precinct have to be on board since this scheme would require bypassing the step of comparing signatures?”
Trumpers are not prepared with talking points to explain away these questions.
“And after multiple audits in Georgia, no surplus votes with these kinds of dubious origins were found. How then, did they enter the count?”
These simple truths, powered by the might of how, should be all over CNN and MSNBC. It’s not enough to call out the Big Lie as implicitly false. They should dig down in this manner to eviscerate the underpinnings of every Trump premise. Then in the next breath explain how the Big Lie was intended to manipulate tens of millions, using their own egos as the barrier to logic. Many Trump loyalists have made that ironclad loyalty part of their identity, a cornerstone of their pride.
With these harsh truths now in the minds of their neighbors, Trumpers will face the first cracks in their absolutism. And all the legislators that stood with the Big Lie on Jan. 6, 2021, will see their complicit actions as the reason their careers will end at the next opportunity.
This probability will perhaps help the Supreme Court choose to do the right thing and decline to hear Trump’s feeble appeal to lower court rulings that direct the National Archive to release all of Trump’s presidential documents to the House Intelligence Committee. Within them, there should be loads of emails and texts that reveal that the Trump administration knew the Big Lie was false. Also expect that Trump’s own words will reveal that he sees his minions as suckers, enslaved by his masterful banter and hate-laden charisma.
It makes sense that CNN and MSNBC actually can effect the SCOTUS decision to take Trump’s case or not before January 14th when the lower court’s rulings will apply. Chief Justice John Roberts knows that the legacy of his court, and even its legitimacy for decades, may be at stake if he decides to take on the appeal because that act in itself would be seen as helping Trump run out the clock.
And if the Big Lie is seen as a useful fabrication by three quarters of Americans, Roberts knows that a decision to hear the case would be on the wrong side of history.
That prospect would also finally loom over Senators Manchin and Sinema. They still stand in the way of a carve-out of the filibuster for the sake of preserving our actual democratic process. With the Big Lie debunked throughout their own states, as well as the nation, while GOP-run states still legislate racially targeted voter disenfranchisement tactics, the handwriting will be on the wall. There will be no upside to continue to hold out when the Republican Party is about to implode.
Manchin and Sinema, either quietly or through adopting the heroes’ roles, will allow the carve-out and help pass both the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. All the partisan gerrymandering freshly installed will be thrown out, and every GOP tactic to limit the opportunities to vote will be tackled head on.
This is what a just America should see as its New Year’s resolution. CNN and MSNBC set the stage for #HumptyTrumpty’s great fall by showing the fatal flaw of the Big Lie, that individual precinct and county tallies don’t allow for the simple insertion of votes into the count. And the day that Roberts declines to hear Trump’s appeal marks how long the fuse is on the entire Trump mystique.
With these two bombshells pulverizing the Fox/OAN disinformation machine, the dots will finally be so close together that almost all Americans will be unable to prevent themselves from connecting them.
Do you agree with this dissection of the Big Lie? Please share if you do, particularly on the Twitter feeds of CNN and MSNBC hosts...