Guest Post by Martin Bishop

Every day now, we are drowning in Conspiracies. And we always have theories about what really transpired.

From whether there was election fraud in 2020 to thinking you saw the fast food guy dropped your sandwich on the floor, they’re a daily part of life.

But if you ask the kid behind the fast food counter, and he said “Nah bro!” with a smirk, few of us would say “welp, he is the one in the paper hat!”

Yet that is exactly what many do when people wear shiny suits and have makeup and studio lighting, or wear glasses and have “doctor” or an Ivy League school affixed to their name. Those are uniforms – the fast food chain’s paper hat of the modern Oracle we come to for our answers.

Now, we have a POTUS who not just promised but signed Executive Orders demanding the release of some of our favorite Conspiracy Theory subjects: the murders of JFK, RFK, and MLK. This same President went on Joe Rogan’s podcast for his last big media appearance before the 2024 Election – a podcast widely known for discussing UFOs, alternate realities, and Bigfoot. So it seems a good time to bring up my position that it is not only in our personal interest, but our ethical duty to be a Conspiracy Theorist.

Let’s review some things we were not only told to accept, but many of us have been threatened with the loss of our jobs if we publicly questioned them:

• Epstein Island is a sick right wing fantasy
• COVID originated in Bat Soup
• That 99 cent masks filter viruses
• 6 feet safe!
• 100% safe and effective
• That 7-year-olds understand the implications and can consent to having a doctor cut up and rearrange their genitals
• Joe Biden was of sound mind
• Hunter’s laptop was a fraud

I could go on but I imagine there’s a word limit on this thing (J6, George Floyd, RussiaGate/Steele Dossier, Diddy, Twitter files, and Jussie Smollett – okay I’ll leave it that and let your memories hum… there’s gotta be a “We Didn’t Start the Fire” parody in there).

The phrase  “conspiracy theorist” has been tossed around like hand sanitizer in 2020 – and speaking of COVID, the other popular term flung around  is “pseudoscience”.

Mathematician and hyper-rationalist Eric Weinstein refers to this rather brilliantly as “Weaponization of Stigma”. My favorite example of the WoS is Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis. In 1847, he proposed that the postpartum infection in new mothers could be drastically reduced by —gasp!— the doctors washing their hands, especially after handling dead bodies.

In his experiments he reduced mortality rates from 18% to 2%, a phenomenal decrease. His reward? Being run out of his profession by other doctors and getting referred to an insane asylum, where he died of septic shock.

His pre-germ theory idea that there were “cadaverous particles” transferring to vulnerable mothers was declared pseudoscience. Never mind his studies, that’s crazy talk! Trust the Science!

This exact concept was also brilliantly dramatized in Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People,” (I highly recommend Arthur Miller’s wonderful distilled adaptation).. The added element was the local politician being bullied into condemning the scientist because of money, similar to keeping the beaches open in Jaws, but I’m getting away from my point here.

We watched the one of the largest transferals of wealth occur as people living paycheck-to-paycheck and running small businesses got shut down, while pharmaceutical companies and the “approved” big companies made billions.

We watched thousands of medical professionals lose their voices if not their jobs. We watched the science be “settled,” one censored account after another. All the while telling us we were crazy for questioning things… this is the definition of gaslighting.

Now since the Truth is never sharper than when it’s embedded in good comedy, I’d like to share this brilliant bit by Ron Funches:

The key section:

“How do you not believe in conspiracy theories? I understand not all of them, not most of them, but you don’t believe in ANY conspiracy theories? You just think the government is batting 1.000 and telling us the whole truth? That’s a strong stance to take.”

What this so brilliantly cuts to is this: if you think the government has outright lied to us – and hasn’t come clean about it – then you are a conspiracy theorist. To NOT be a conspiracy theorist, one must not simply accept that the moon landing was real or think Oswald acted alone… they must also believe Bush really believed there were WMDs in Iraq and still think COVID lockdowns and sending the sick to Old Folks’ Homes were warranted and executed in good faith.

See, that’s the thing: even as the MSM and their Government Cohorts lied to our faces and were called out by declassified documents, whistleblowers, and investigative journalism (making a comeback!), their narrative never changes. They never apologize. They’ve doubled down so often they’ve created a Fibonacci sequence of falsehoods which have created a completely false reality – and millions choose to live in it.

This is a Matrix far more dangerous than any AI Deepfake.

If there’s anything we’ve learned in recent years, it’s not only that these people lie – but that they lie at a much grander scale than we can imagine.

When something does come out, part of us wants to think, “OK, but that’s the worst lie they’ve ever told us. Anything beyond that would be crazy.” Rinse and repeat.As the popular meme says, “What’s the difference between conspiracy theory and truth? About six months”.

Pop Quiz: Have elements in our government ever had an established program where they employed members of the media to push specific narratives and suppress others?

Allegedly, yes, very much so… And if one knows anything about the Dulles brothers, it’s easily one of the most least alarming things they’ve been credibly accused of. Whether it’s actually called Op Mockingbird or was a holdover from a “former” OSS bigwig purchase of North American Newspaper Alliance isn’t important – this practice was never formally acknowledged.

Yet one can only wonder at what DCIA William Casey meant when he said “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

The Anticonspiracy Theorists would argue even if that was a thing, it clearly ended decades ago.Conspiracy Theorists argued it has continued and grown ever since and they were called crazy…up until about a week or two ago, when the truth about USAID payments came out.

Even more embarrassing for the media, as the likes of Politico and Bill Kristol went into denial and damage control, “Conspiracy Theorists” were the first ones digging into the fresh data, doing the work so many “real journalists” wouldn’t touch.

Which ties this up rather neatly as my final point: the institutions we grew up (mostly) trusting no longer have a monopoly on the Narrative. We the People do, and it’s our responsibility to do the work that the “real” journalists, researchers, and historians have refused to do.

I add “historians” because a common phrase in this world, “If you’re disgusted at fake news, wait until you find out about fake history.”

History is, after all, only news where the narrative has had time to dig in.

I have embedded myself deep in the world of the Conspiracy Theorist, and found that among people arguing in good faith, I’ve never encountered a more erudite, honest group of people. (The trick is finding those arguing in good faith, but that’s all part of the fun.)

The key is to use discernment and stay humble and be comfortable with the most powerful phrase to all true students of life: “I don’t know”