Make-Believe by Geoff Carter « The Pen in Hand Blog

Artwork by Michael DiMilo

By Geoff Carter

We live in strange times. In an era with nearly unlimited access to knowledge available anywhere or at any time, an era of fantastic leaps in science and technology, and an era of unparalleled artistic accomplishment; in this era, today, a significant portion of our population is still mired in archaic and unfounded beliefs. Unfounded belief, in fact, has become the mantra of our time. It overshadows, science, fact, and logic. It trumps reason.

For example, significant segments of the population still believe:

The moon landings were faked.
The Earth is flat.
Democrats kidnap children, eat their body parts, and drink their blood.
Vaccines cause autism.
The government covered up an alien landing near Roswell, New Mexico.
Contrails are actually chemicals sprayed into the atmosphere by the government.
Covid vaccines contain tracking chips.
Lizard people run the government.
Birds aren’t real.
The 2020 presidential election was stolen.

There are mountains of scientific evidence disproving each of these assertions, yet—in the face of pervasive belief systems supporting these assumptions, proof doesn’t matter. It’s the power of belief. Believers don’t want the science. They don’t want facts, and they don’t want proof. They think they’re right—they know it.

Some of these theories are so absurd they almost seem funny—until you talk to one of its zealous adherents. “Birds aren’t Real” was actually started as a send-up of conspiracy theorists by a man named Peter McIndoe maintaining that birds are actually government drones. It was a hoax within a hoax until it started somehow gaining real press and serious followers. People began to believe it. It became the truth for them.

Some theories, like Roswell or faked moon landings, are simply crackpot ideas with a smidgen of wishful thinking thrown in. They seem harmless. Who really cares if adherents think the Earth is flat or aliens landed at Roswell or if the moon landings were faked? They’re all relatively innocuous—if completely whacked-out—ideas.

Anti-vaxxers, however, endanger innocent victims with their misinformation. According to the New Jersey Department of Health, after an absence of over forty years, an outbreak of polio occurred in Rockland County, New York, in an unvaccinated adult. Thousands of citizens who refused Covid vaccines because of anti-vaxxing misinformation came down with the virus. Many died as a result.

The fiction that President Biden and other Democrats kidnap children, harvest their body parts, and drink their blood as part of a global Satanic conspiracy is beyond ridiculous, but to some people, it’s apparently believable. But it’s dangerous. This fictitious demonization of political serves only to widen the political divisions in this country and injects hate into the political process. Perhaps that’s what they’re intended to do.

One of the most widespread and pervasive conspiracy theories—and one of the most destructive—is that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. This tale was first circulated by Trump weeks before the 2020 election actually took place. He planted the seeds of doubt and distrust early and often, and then, late on election night, he declared (at a point when he was ahead in the vote count) that he had won and that all subsequent ballot counting should cease. When it didn’t, and it turned out that Joe Biden had won the election, Trump cried foul, claiming his case that the election had been stolen from him—just as he said it would be.

Because Donald Trump was—and still is—the head of the Republican Party, most of the party fell in line behind him, agreeing with—or at least complicit in their silence to—the ex-president’s lie. Some politicos, like Senators Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson, and Ted Cruz, recognizing a chance to galvanize the radical fringe of their Republican, went in whole hog with the president’s lie. And partly because of their support and partly because of the relentless and interminable repetition of the lie on Fox News and by other conservative outlets, this misbegotten belief, this monstrous lie, grew until it became a mantra for the MAGA Republicans.

Nothing has deterred the lie. Not the recorded phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump demanded the secretary “find” 11,780 votes, the exact amount he needed to carry the state. Trump was not asking the man to uncover election fraud or perform an audit. He was asking for votes. At his urging, the State of Arizona performed numerous recounts and audits, none of which turned up any hard evidence of election malfeasance. Yet he persisted, stoking his electoral base to a fever pitch with his distortions of th e truth.

He summoned his followers to Washington, D.C. and riled them up—creating a mob that he knew to be armed, to stop the election certification. He incited them to riot. He, in fact, led what was—unthinkably—a failed coup d’état. This was all a direct result of the big lie.

The January 6^th Congressional Committee, convened to determine the causes and architects of the attack on the Capitol Building, have delivered damning evidence that the White House was responsible for the attack, evidence ranging from the testimony of White House aides, Capitol police officers, rioters, and videotape recordings of the riot itself. It all leaves little doubt as to the perpetrators of this black day in American history.

And yet the belief of the stolen election persists, spreading like a cancer to include state, local, and even school board elections. Proponents of the big lie, who are also claiming the entire election process is corrupt are running for offices that regulate and control the election process. Karri Lake, Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, states outright that she believes Trump won the 2020 election. She is currently nursing a slight lead in the polls. If she wins, she will have the power to deny Arizona election results. She has already stated she will recognize the midterm’s results—if she wins. At least two hundred and seventy-six Republican candidates running for office this year refuse to acknowledge the 2020 election results.

Whether some of these candidates truly believe Trump’s lie or are cynically using it as a steppingstone to further their own careers is debatable. The irony that the doubt they sow to further their political careers is destroying the same political system that empowers their party seems lost on them. But that’s too logical.

Belief is as powerful as a bull and as fickle as a spoiled child. Why people choose to believe outlandish stories like birds aren’t real or the Earth is flat is irrational and idiotic. Yet belief in these tales persists in the face of logic, evidence, and scientific proof. There are those who refuse to believe their own eyes. Some have denied violence at the Capitol ever happened even though film of the event was splashed all over the media.

P.T. Barnum allegedly once said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Con men and manipulators know this and use it. Now, today, those who have sworn to serve and protect the Constitution and the people of the U.S. have led their followers into a nebulous reality where the truth doesn’t matter. They are suspended in a world ruled by broken promises and false hopes, a world that will eventually come crashing down on them.