Jeffrey Goldberg: The Conspiracy Theorists Are Winning

Translation: Orange Man Bad.

   Which he is in many ways. But not all ways. And he's--to say the least--not obviously worse than the alternative.

Goldberg: 

   “Your reputation is amazing,” Donald Trump told [Alex] Jones in late 2015. “I will not let you down.”

   And he hasn’t. Trump does not defend our democracy from the ruinous consequences of conspiracy thinking. Instead, he embraces such thinking. A conspiracy theory—birtherism—was his pathway to power, and, in office, he warns of the threat of the “deep state” with the ferocity of a QAnon disciple. He has even begun to question the official coronavirus death toll, which he sees as evidence of a dark plot against him. How is he different from Alex Jones, from the conspiracy manufacturers of Russia and the Middle East?

Ok, so: birtherism: dumb. QAnon: Dumb, right?...or...well...stand by... Deep state conspiracy: not dumb at all, and looking more and more likely all the time. So...QAnon? Um...well...

   Finally: questioning the coronavirus death toll...uh...you mean like Deborah Birx does? And lots of experts do? And lots of ordinary schmucks. Like me.

   There are two problems afoot here, I think:

   First: The American left has gone almost completely off the rails.

   Second: Even their ostentatious, demonstrable failures of late have not shaken their faith in themselves and...well...their faith. They still see themselves as more intelligent, well-informed, reasonable, morally good and just plain right than their opponents--who are bad and wrong in virtually every way. 

   That second problem, a meta-problem, makes it impossible for them to even acknowledge the first problem. They have doomed themselves by disabling their own error-detection protocol. There is no way to survive that. It is invariably fatal--unless reversed, of course.

   We have proof that the left's greatest obsession of the last three years was a complete hoax and quite literally a conspiracy theory. And yet this has shaken their faith not at all. They still not only seem to think they're right about everything, but to reserve the term 'conspiracy theory' exclusively for the views of the right. Even theories of the left that are literally about conspiracies and that are conclusively proven false are not conspiracy theories. Even views on the right that are supported by substantially more evidence than their counterparts on the left are conspiracy theories.

   The only thing missing from that is the leftist academician's trick of defining away the possibility of error--of simply defining 'conspiracy theory' as something on the right. (Because gibberish gibberish power and privilege or some such ****ing nonsense.)

   One final thing: note that Trump didn't say he believed Alex Jones. He deployed some flattering pablum. Maybe I'm giving him too much credit, but I'm not wedded to that. Again a comparative point: nothing I ever say about the guy overestimates him to anything like the degree that the left under-estimates him. For however much that's worth.