Well, today may have been better than yesterday, but if so it was not by much. I’m glad it wasn’t worse, and I have my fingers crossed for tomorrow. It’s still basically just congestion, and just a hint of an impending sore throat that has yet to arrive. Oh, and some difficulty with temperature regulation. I think my head feels a little clearer today, but the fact that I’m so uncertain seems to imply otherwise.
Anyway, here’s a video that I think is useful. The ruling class of the US has spent the last century or so making corruption so much a part of daily operations that a lot of people can’t even tell it’s there. Growing up, I remember hearing about corruption in other countries – through media of various sorts – and it was always presented as a pyramid of officials shaking people down, and shaking each other down, all the way to the top, all outside the actual laws. I’ve grown up a bit since then, but even so it’s hard to really pick apart just how much the United States has been designed over the years to have a scared and obedient workforce that willingly gives almost all of everything they create or earn to corporations.
In that setting, is it any wonder that people believe in conspiracies? Add in the various conspiracies that we know have happened, and I think it would be more surprising if people didn’t start seeing patterns where none actually exist. This video is an interesting dig into some research into why people believe conspiracy theories, and how government corruption can lead to them. As always with Rebecca Watson’s videos, you can find a full transcript on Skepchick.org.
Thanks for this Rebecca Watson clip and glad you’re feeing if not better then at least not worse and not too bad.
Best wishes for a speedy recovery and it does seem like a good sign that you’re not getting worse.
The clip was interesting and I compared it to the conspiracy theorist in the family (does every family have one?) We all used to joke in a bleak way that at least he wasn’t political…but thanks to Trump, he’s now political. He was much easier to cope with when he was just ranting on about aliens and perpetually-charged power sources that THEY don’t want you to know about and how garlic (yes, really) is a nefarious poison introduced by THEM to…do exactly what is not really clear. The fact that people have been successfully consuming garlic for thousands of years with no ill effects is a lie and just what THEY want you to believe. Why? Just shut up, that’s why.
The other thing is that all bullshit conspiracies tend to lead back to antisemitism, because in order to protect belief in the conspiracy, it has to keep getting bigger, until you’ve got to explain some global force manipulating everything for some nefarious purpose.
And pretty much every conspiracy theory about that puts Jewish people at the heart of it in one way or another. It’s almost surreal how much tenacity that idea seems to have, but I suppose it makes sense once you actually learn history, rather than the series of near-useless factoids people tend to get in school. If the people developing White Supremacy didn’t already have their antisemitism to work with, they would have had to invent it. Otherwise they wouldn’t have had any scapegoat for why shit kept going wrong even with the self-proclaimed “master race” running everything.
🙂 I beg to differ; the conspiracy theorist in my family boils everything down to…aliens from outer space. Or Hillary Clinton. You should hear his rant on how aliens built the pyramids, because obviously humans are too stupid to…stack things on top of other things?!?! 🙂