The term “conspiracy theory” was created in the 1950s to mean disinformation spread to prevent people investigating uncomfortable realities. It is true that there are many conspiracies in history, the most famous being the culmination of the New Testament and the fulfillment of history where the Messiah, the Holy One of Israel, is betrayed in a conspiracy between the authorities of the Temple and one of His own disciples.
However, there are a lot of conspiracies that are simply insane in that not only are they false, but one would have to possess a questionable mental state to believe them (for starters, one can look up the “reptilian conspiracy” to get an idea). One example of this happened recently with President Trump, where he started to allude to a conspiracy in the death of an intern for Joe Scarborough to which a Republican representative told him to stop because “It will destroy us.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) called on President Trump to stop promoting the “completely unfounded conspiracy” theory regarding the death of an intern for MSNBC “Morning Joe” anchor Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida.
The president on Sunday morning urged his followers in a tweet to read an article from conservative website True Pundit, which claimed that evidence showed foul play in the death of Lori Klausutis, 28, in 2001.
“Just stop,” Kinzinger responded said. “Stop spreading it, stop creating paranoia. It will destroy us.”
On Saturday, the president also tweeted out a story about his calls for further investigations into Klausutis’s death, which a local medical examiner ruled accidental.
Klausutis was found dead in Scarborough’s district office in 2001. A medical examiner determined she had collapsed because of an undiagnosed heart condition and struck her head in the fall.
Trump has previously promoted the conspiracy theory that Scarborough was involved in the death, including earlier this month when he requested Comcast, which owns NBC Universal, to investigate the case.
The MSNBC host, who frequently critiques the president, responded to that tweet on his show, saying Trump was dragging Klausutis’s family through the mud.
Scarborough’s wife and co-host, Mika Brzezinski, tweeted last week that she was going to speak to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey about getting the president banned from the platform in an apparent reaction to Trump’s tweets about her husband. (source)
It is wrong to be against conspiracies. However, it is also wrong to believe in them without even a suggestion of proof.
The entire “Q” campaign has reasonable suspicion, as noted by many, to have been a massive PR stunt by the Trump campaign. This has mostly taken in Boomers and really has run its course because far from the idea of having “patriots in control”, the only “patriots” that Trump would seem to back are those in settlements in the West Bank, Malibu, and New York (or Miami depending on the time of year).
Trump has NO proof of what he is saying. It is purely speculation, but since he is the president, his words will be taken as absolute fact by many people. It is the same with his comments on hydroxychloroquine- because he is the president, he has a social responsibility to people that he presents his words carefully lest the simple be gravely misguided. This is a responsibility which he has not fulfilled.
I am not a fan of either Joe Scarborough or Mika Brzezinski, but I am also not a fan of ideas which have absolutely not even a hint of proof, for it is important to be open to the possibility of ideas that are diverse and strange, but as a matter of seeking truth and not political gain. Trump’s words in the context of what he has said are not simply unhelpful, but are intentionally irresponsible at a time when leadership is needed and the “commander in chief” is rather choosing to behave clownishly for his own perceived benefit in the coming election.