How Twitter Generates Lunacy

Well, two of the most prominent ways, anyway:

   Spin and conspiracy theories.

   As soon as there's some event, announcement, whatever, the two major sides, red and blue, get to it.

Red-teamers start spinning The New Thing hard rightward; blue-teamers start spinning it hard leftward. Many different angles of spin will emerge on each side--along with some unaffiliated spin elsewhereward--but most of it will be in a major-partisan direction.

   And much of the spin will be tangled up in conspiratorial thinking sooner than later.

   Trump shot!?

   Red team: heroic Trump! USSS DEI!--lookit that woman who can't find her holster! She is small and pudgy! What's she doing there? Biden denied Trump additional agents! BLUE-TEAM CONSPIRACY!! Why didn't they take out the shooter faster? Fist-pump Trump--hooray!!! Bravest and "most physically courageous President since Teddy Roosevelt!* 

   Blue team: Trump not shot at all! Hit by glass! Much less heroic! In fact: a hoax! He cut his own ear with something concealed in his hand! Or the shooter was a red-team plant who...[checks notes] uh...nicked his ear on purpose [looks off-stage, incredulous; you people expect me to read this stuff?] Not heroic at all! Trump stood up and pumped fist--endangered USSS agents! Shooter was Republican!! Ha ha why did he want his shoes? Lifts?

   Now...granted, the Trump shooting was weird, to say the least. I've been taking a wee break from the madness...but...USSS saw the shooter on the roof twenty-nine minutes before he shot??? That degree of (seeming) incompetence is just gonna produce conspiracy theories... 

   Um and...not to go easy on the red team here, but: this Biden disappearing act...it's pretty weird. Of course I do not think that Biden is dead. Ha ha! No! That would be nuts! But...making the announcement via Twixxer and then...nothing? Alread against the background of age and illness?

   Anyway.

   Yes, some conspiracy theories are less crazy or at least more understandable than others.

   But that's a different point for a different time.

   Here I'm really more interested in the spin than the conspiracies.

   The immediacy and diligence with which the team spin everything in a way that's favorable to their tribe is a sight to behold.

   When Biden dropped out, it was suddenly Heroic! Noble Joe puts country first! Trump would never do this! [Sidebar: this is actually pretty much exactly what I expect Trump has in mind...but that's just speculation.] NOW TRUMP IS THE OLDEST CANDIDATE EVER AND YOU WERE JUST COMPLAINING ABOUT THAT WITH JOE SO...!!!!!

   The other guys: We told you Biden was too old and demented! The Dems lied to us all! If he can't campaign, he can't run the country! 25th Amendment! The MSM is blue-team propaganda! Why didn't they know? Why didn't they tell us?

   Of course there's a grain of truth in a lot of this from both sides. And if you sift through it appropriately, you can find ideas and arguments worthy of consideration. But it's the routine partisan dogmatism that's so stupid and tedious.

   Oh and: the conspiracy theorizing.

   Twixxer is like an irrationality generator/amplifier.

   Blah blah blah.

* Sigh. This ridiculous claim may have irritated me most of all... As other have pointed out: Eisenhower, SHAEF Commander? Bush '41, dive-bomber pilot? Jimmy Carter, submarine nuclear technician? I'd add: Harry Truman, artillery Captain, WWI? Even Bush '43 was an interceptor pilot... That's not even trying. Just about everybody up to Clinton served in some way or other, no? [Almost forgot: JFK.]