Conspiracy theories should concern Democrats

 

Illustration: Samrit Pholjan/Shutterstock

Dave Rubin recently interviewed Peter Boghossian and asked him why Democrat mayors are turning our cities into dystopian hell holes.  I paraphrase, of course.  And I paraphrase Mr. Boghossian’s answer for brevity and clarity.  Please watch the whole thing (link below).  But the conversation went sort of like this:

Dave:  Why are Democrat mayors turning our cities turning into dystopian hell holes?
Peter:  The most generous answer would be that the powers that be see inequalities in our society, and seek to remedy them through policies which inadvertently cause suffering, destruction, and death.  But they view their policies as virtuous, regardless of their horrifying outcomes.  I think that’s their thinking.  Not sure.
Dave:  That’s pretty generous.
Peter:  If I were prone to conspiracy theories, I’d believe that they were in service to a foreign enemy state.  Because it’s difficult to believe that such rapid destruction could possibly be due to mere incompetence.

I found that passage fascinating.  Not because I take an opinion on his particular point.  But because the recent rapid and efficient destruction of American institutions and society has led to a wave of conspiracy theories about all sorts of things.  China is paying Biden to open the border so they can get special forces troops into America.  Russia is funding Black Lives Matter protests to win elections for Democrats.  Iran is organizing riots on college campuses to stir up hatred for the Jews, and to destabilize America.  I could go on and on.

I used to laugh out loud at such things.  Now I discretely roll my eyes.  But I’m beginning to understand the origin of such thinking.  Surely the collapse of Western Civilization couldn’t be the work of just a few idealistic hippies, right?  Destroying American society would be more difficult than just passing a couple misguided laws, right?  Surely.

I still believe that destroying things is much easier than building things, and the efforts of millions of people over hundreds of years can be destroyed by just a few radicals intent on revolution.  It’s happened before.  In history, such things are more the rule than the exception.

But I understand how some people continue to search for some world-wide hostile force.  And yes, there are such forces out there.  Everyone from Iran to the UN to Russia to our media to China and so on and so forth.  Yes, they do seek to weaken America.

I just don’t think that they’re succeeding here.  I think it’s us.  Great cultures don’t die of murder.  They die of suicide.  Over and over, throughout history. But Democrats should be listening to these conspiracy theories.  When their policies convince half the population that they’re under assault from a foreign hostile force, Democrats should be ready for significant resistance at some point.

Democrats have made satire impossible.  And they’ve made conspiracy theories plausible.

That is a serious problem for America.  And it’s a serious problem for Democrats. I hope the leadership of the Democrat party isn’t laughing or rolling their eyes.  I hope they’re wondering if perhaps they’re pushing too hard, too fast.

Maybe they’re creating a conflict they can’t manage.  Maybe.

Or maybe I’m just a conspiracy theorist, too.

What do you think?

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  1. DrewInWisconsin, Œuf Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Œuf
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Like you, I would say it’s not China paying Biden to open the border; its not Russia is funding Black Lives Matter; it’s not  Iran organizing riots on college campuses . . .

    It’s agencies within our own government or otherwise directly funded by our own government.

    Which is why people correctly say “We’re not voting ourselves out of this mess.”

    • #1
  2. Lunchbox Gerald Coolidge
    Lunchbox Gerald
    @Jose

    Dr. Bastiat: What do you think?

    All of the above.  Plus greed, stupidity, arrogance.  And senility and cocaine.

    • #2
  3. MikeMcCarthy Coolidge
    MikeMcCarthy
    @MikeMcCarthy

    Mad, bad, terminal stupidity, and, lots of dark money.

    • #3
  4. Lunchbox Gerald Coolidge
    Lunchbox Gerald
    @Jose

    Add in a big scoop of naivete

     

    • #4
  5. Django Member
    Django
    @Django

    Somebody once said in a book I read years ago, “The distinguishing feature of modern man is his unawareness of how indebted he is to previous generations.” I took that to mean that people today seem to believe that the greatness of America and Western Civilization just sort of happened. They took it as a given, that the world they knew is the baseline, and that they are free to enjoy their situation. They don’t think or understand that if we could hold on to what we have it would be a major achievement. IOW, they don’t believe in consequences and especially what is called “The Law of Unintended Consequences.” 

    You have that fool representing Louisville who said that the government couldn’t go broke because it can print money. He probably has no idea what gives that piece of paper any worth. There is the moron from CA who said that if you can’t afford to pay your employees a “living wage” which she considered to be $100K per year, you are too incompetent to own and run a business. These people make laws. 

    • #5
  6. DrewInWisconsin, Œuf Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Œuf
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Lunchbox Gerald (View Comment):

    Add in a big scoop of naivete

    I can call Con, Inc. naive because they still think they can deal with their “friends across the aisle.” But for the Democrats it’s malicious evil.

    • #6
  7. Scott Wilmot Member
    Scott Wilmot
    @ScottWilmot

    I love that you have a picture of Obama and Pope Francis – there are many conspiracy theories about those two and the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. But that is neither here nor there.

    But to your post, Biden has done a wonderful job of messing everything up – that and telling lies has been his MO throughout his career. He has been the perfect senile puppet to get us to where we are.

    The Left has power and that is what they crave – and I don’t think they care how they get it (it is still hard to fathom that we have Biden and Harris as POTUS and VP), as long as they get it.

    • #7
  8. Paul Stinchfield Member
    Paul Stinchfield
    @PaulStinchfield

    See also: The suppression of  important information–and the promotion of falsehoods and propaganda and indoctrination– by the increasingly corrupt news and education establishments. Is it any wonder that disillusioned people seek out alternative sources of information?

    • #8
  9. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    Scott Wilmot (View Comment):
    I love that you have a picture of Obama and Pope Francis – there are many conspiracy theories about those two and the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI

    I find that endlessly fascinating.  Why would an intellectual & moral giant like Benedict yield to someone like Francis?  What on earth happened?  (and I do mean ON EARTH – this is the work of men)

    But again, it seems to be happening to lots of important institutions, all over the world, all at the same time. 

    There is a reason that conspiracy theories are sprouting up like winter wheat.

    • #9
  10. Ray Gunner Coolidge
    Ray Gunner
    @RayGunner

    Dr. Bastiat: Surely the collapse of Western Civilization couldn’t be the work of just a few idealistic hippies, right?  Destroying American society would be more difficult than just passing a couple misguided laws, right?

    Work?  Let me come at this another way, Doc.  Destroying Western Civilization/American society does not take any work at all.  Quite the contrary.  It takes work to preserve it, and the absence of work for it to collapse.  The way I look at it, we who value our Western inheritance are like the painters and welders who go to work every day preserving the Golden Gate Bridge.  The work is a grind, but if we stop going to work, the bridge will collapse–and not by any conspiracy or clandestine plan, but by the natural law of entropy.  Western Civilization (property rights, speech rights, due process, rule of law) is not the natural state of human affairs.  It takes a lot of preservation and maintenance, so all it takes for it to collapse is for the institutions dedicated to preserving it and maintaining it to stop doing their jobs.  Obviously many of them have.  And I don’t think it is a conspiracy that Western Civilization’s guardians have stopped doing their jobs.   I think it is plain ol’ Uncle Entropy.  Just do nothing, and the Golden Gate Bridge will turn to rust.  Just do nothing, and Western Civilization will turn to a totalitarian ant heap.

    • #10
  11. Fritz Coolidge
    Fritz
    @Fritz

    Ray Gunner (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat: Surely the collapse of Western Civilization couldn’t be the work of just a few idealistic hippies, right? Destroying American society would be more difficult than just passing a couple misguided laws, right?

    Work? Let me come at this another way, Doc. Destroying Western Civilization/American society does not take any work at all. Quite the contrary. It takes work to preserve it, and the absence of work for it to collapse. The way I look at it, we who value our Western inheritance are like the painters and welders who go to work every day preserving the Golden Gate Bridge. The work is a grind, but if we stop going to work, the bridge will collapse–and not by any conspiracy or clandestine plan, but by the natural law of entropy. Western Civilization (property rights, speech rights, due process, rule of law) is not the natural state of human affairs. It takes a lot of preservation and maintenance, so all it takes for it to collapse is for the institutions dedicated to preserving it and maintaining it to stop doing their jobs. Obviously many of them have. And I don’t think it is a conspiracy that Western Civilization’s guardians have stopped doing their jobs. I think it is plain ol’ Uncle Entropy. Just do nothing, and the Golden Gate Bridge will turn to rust. Just do nothing, and Western Civilization will turn to a totalitarian ant heap.

    Western Civilization’s entropy is accelerated when we got “education professors” like domestic terrorist Bill Ayers molding teacher education, and helping to turn K-12 schools into covert Marxist indoctrination centers, while race hustlers from Obama to Sharpton degrade relations among Americans so as to create and deepen division, creating spaces into which radicals can pour their dystopian creeds and gain power.

    Normies just want to be left alone to live their lives and raise their families. But oooooh, nooooo, can’t have that! The personal is political! Totalitarians everywhere seem to follow the same playbook.

    • #11
  12. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    The Democrats are to be congratulated. It’s tough to be this consistently stupid. We used to joke around here that Lori Lightfoot was turning Chicago into West Detroit. She got bounced, but Brandon is accelerating the process. And it is not the only city that this is happening to.

    • #12
  13. Ray Gunner Coolidge
    Ray Gunner
    @RayGunner

    Fritz (View Comment):
    Western Civilization’s entropy is accelerated when we got “education professors” like domestic terrorist Bill Ayers molding teacher education, and helping to turn K-12 schools into covert Marxist indoctrination centers, while race hustlers from Obama to Sharpton degrade relations among Americans so as to create and deepen division, creating spaces into which radicals can pour their dystopian creeds and gain power.

    Agreed.  Going back to the Golden Gate Bridge analogy, it would be as if the painters and welders did not just stop working, they painted with acid and popped out the rivets. 

    • #13
  14. Django Member
    Django
    @Django

    I think Step 1 in destroying a state/city is to put people such as this woman on the bench: 

    But maybe the destruction has to be well under way before these people get on the bench? 

    • #14
  15. Stina Inactive
    Stina
    @CM

    Normies just want to be left alone to live their lives and raise their families.

    I hate to be that guy, but this probably helped things progress. The idea that the only way you can protect your rights is by being left alone and you don’t need anyone else is what gives the entropy, malignants, conspirators, and idiots the opening to destroy what you love.

    We need to work harder to build communities and pass on culture in those communities in order to pass down values.

    So much of what lefties are doing is taking over space that was left vacant by well-meaning conservatives thinking it wasn’t that big a deal. Instead of freedom of religion, we have state sanctioned wokism. Instead of noblesse oblige, we have DEI charters. Nature abhors a vacuum and it’s better to be for something than against something.

    • #15
  16. Gossamer Cat Coolidge
    Gossamer Cat
    @GossamerCat

    Dr. Bastiat: But they view their policies as virtuous, regardless of their horrifying outcomes.  I think that’s their thinking.  Not sure.

    On the assumption it is not a conspiracy, it is, at the least, tribalism at its most destructive. It’s not just that they view their policies as virtuous, the only praise they seek are from their progressive peers.  As long as they are applauded by the press and University professors and the nutty small percentage of people (in terms of absolute numbers) that vote for them, they actually have no interest in the destruction they cause.  They will not feel it.  They will be in the Hamptons, or Aspen or other progressive enclaves trying to out progressive each other while their cities burn, and if anyone calls them on it, all they have to say is “It’s the Republicans fault” and case closed. 

    That’s the governing class. Their nitwit progressive voters who happen to be the recipients of these destructive policies, I can only conclude are simply mentally ill.  These are the ones who are robbed at gunpoint and instead of actually turning conservative, as a classical liberal would, they say stupid things like “Well, I guess he needed it more than I did” or “I didn’t want to call the police because it was a black man and they might kill him”  (I actually read that last quote from some Minnesotan after they defunded the police).  Because you get props from your progressive peers on those idiotic statements too.  You can see the same mental illness in rich, white college students who are actively supporting terrorist organizations that would kill them in a second.  

     

    • #16
  17. Ekosj Member
    Ekosj
    @Ekosj

    There are grand overarching conspiracies like the Chinese or Russian conspiracy to forge an EurAsia bloc to oppose the West; and there are smaller but no less dangerous ones.    One that’s operative right now is first cousins to the old JournoList email group of Leftist journalists who met to harmonize media coverage on the issues of the day.   Today’s version is apparently a Zoom meeting group of media talking heads who regularly meet to choreograph coverage of the Trump trials.  There’s a reason it seems like every MSM channel and website sings from the same hymnal.   They are.   

    • #17
  18. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Django (View Comment):

    I think Step 1 in destroying a state/city is to put people such as this woman on the bench:

    But maybe the destruction has to be well under way before these people get on the bench?

     

    Proving again that John Derbyshire was right.

    • #18
  19. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Education establishments adhering to the proposition that correct answers in mathematics are an example of “white supremacy.” Or was it the patriarchy?

    Are airplanes that stay in the air and buildings that don’t collapse part of white supremacy too?

    • #19
  20. DrewInWisconsin, Œuf Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Œuf
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Ekosj (View Comment):

    There are grand overarching conspiracies like the Chinese or Russian conspiracy to forge an EurAsia bloc to oppose the West; and there are smaller but no less dangerous ones. One that’s operative right now is first cousins to the old JournoList email group of Leftist journalists who met to harmonize media coverage on the issues of the day. Today’s version is apparently a Zoom meeting group of media talking heads who regularly meet to choreograph coverage of the Trump trials. There’s a reason it seems like every MSM channel and website sings from the same hymnal. They are.

    Amazing. And the attendance list at these Zoom meetings is a who’s who of people who pushed the Russia Collusion hoax. Which is to say, “known liars.”

    That they still hold jobs in the media or our government is to the great shame of . . . well, of the media and the government.

    Leading the legal group is Obama Administration lawyer and former Trump impeachment attorney, Democrat Norm Eisen. He works as one of CNN’s legal analysts now. Among the people who have joined this weekly Zoom meeting are Laurence Tribe, the once sane law professor; George Conway, the Lincoln Project OG; and John Dean, the man who set up Richard Nixon and is widely believed by investigative reporters to have green-lighted one of the Watergate break-ins. 

    Other regular attendees include Andrew Weissman, the Robert Mueller attack dog who was lead prosecutor for the fake Russia Collusion scandal; Jeffrey Toobin, an original JournoList member, CNN analyst, and Zoom meeting self-pleasurer; and Jennifer Rubin, an opinion writer for the Washington Post who this week wrote a screed called, “Trump was going to dominate the courtroom. Instead, he is shrinking.” 

    • #20
  21. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Percival (View Comment):

    Education establishments adhering to the proposition that correct answers in mathematics are an example of “white supremacy.” Or was it the patriarchy?

    Are airplanes that stay in the air and buildings that don’t collapse part of white supremacy too?

    Actually, yes.

    • #21
  22. navyjag Coolidge
    navyjag
    @navyjag

    Another good one Dr. B.  Agree with Lunchbox although think it is mostly incompetence. Ex. A Gov. Newsome.  A guy with average intelligence, great contacts with rich folks who thinks spending other people’s money on derelicts will lead to progress and no need for public safety.  Hard to image that these morons can keep digging us in deeper. But then started reading Kurt Schlichter’s Kelly Turnbull novels.  Hair still handing up on the back of my neck.  So it really might get worse. 

    • #22
  23. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Scott Wilmot (View Comment):
    Biden has done a wonderful job of messing everything up

    Have you seen his proposed hike for the capital gains tax?  Yikes:

    https://www.newsmax.com/politics/biden-capital-gains-taxes/2024/04/24/id/1162315/

    • #23
  24. Mark Camp Member
    Mark Camp
    @MarkCamp

    Barfly (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Education establishments adhering to the proposition that correct answers in mathematics are an example of “white supremacy.” Or was it the patriarchy?

    Are airplanes that stay in the air and buildings that don’t collapse part of white supremacy too?

    Actually, yes.

    The proposition is an example of a philosophical doctrine that has been usefully labeled “polylogism”. Polylogism is an essential element of post-WWI Marxist theory, of which “wokeism” is a part. 

    The doctrine creates a dilemma that becomes a matter of life and death to all politicians and cadres who are successful in establishing an atheist totalitarian aristocratic state under the penumbra of Marxism—let’s call it “Progressivism” for short.

    “What to do about the scientists? Murder them, or no?”  Scientists deplore polylogism. Even modern physicists, though I suspect you would argue that they are a major exception. (Really, they mostly are not. If they all were, there would be no interest in a GUT and anti-Heisenberg quantum theories, as I, admittedly just a layman, understand these things .)

    The Nazis tried “murder, with exceptions.” They might have invented the A-bomb sooner if they’d made more exceptions.

    The Nazis are number #3 in order of all-time success for cognicommunists (those descended from a common ancestor with communists), with the Wokeists closing fast. The latter have surpassed even the USSR at #2 by some measures, in the case of the blitzkrieg COVID mass repression.

    • #24
  25. BastiatJunior Member
    BastiatJunior
    @BastiatJunior

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):
    Why would an intellectual & moral giant like Benedict yield to someone like Francis? 

    He couldn’t know ahead of time who his successor would be.

    • #25
  26. Scott Wilmot Member
    Scott Wilmot
    @ScottWilmot

    Scott Wilmot (View Comment):

    I love that you have a picture of Obama and Pope Francis – there are many conspiracy theories about those two and the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. But that is neither here nor there.

    Apparently the editor didn’t like the picture.

     

    • #26
  27. Steve C. Member
    Steve C.
    @user_531302

    Lunchbox Gerald (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat: What do you think?

    All of the above. Plus greed, stupidity, arrogance. And senility and cocaine.

    Mostly arrogance. 

    • #27
  28. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    Scott Wilmot (View Comment):

    Scott Wilmot (View Comment):

    I love that you have a picture of Obama and Pope Francis – there are many conspiracy theories about those two and the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. But that is neither here nor there.

    Apparently the editor didn’t like the picture.

     

    They’re being really careful about copyright stuff.  So when my posts hit the main feed, they take out most of my pictures. I find that irritating, but I understand why. It’s my understanding that there was a lawsuit over a picture that appeared on this site, some type of copyright violation. I think. Anything to go after conservative website. At least, that’s my understanding.

    • #28
  29. TBA, sometimes known as 'Teebs'. Coolidge
    TBA, sometimes known as 'Teebs'.
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Can we subpoena their discussions and charge them with conspiracy to affect the outcome of an election? 

    • #29
  30. Fritz Coolidge
    Fritz
    @Fritz

    TBA, sometimes known as 'Teebs… (View Comment):

    Can we subpoena their discussions and charge them with conspiracy to affect the outcome of an election?

    Probably not, unless there is proof of some overt act taken in pursuance of an actual crime. Affecting the outcome of an election has many more lawful components, like door-belling, calling voters from phone banks, giving rides to the polls, for a few examples, than illegal ones, like fraudulently filling out bogus ballots and slipping them in secretly to be counted, or knowingly running the same batch through the tabulators over and over.

    • #30
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