Want to Know Where Conspiracy Theories Come From? Not from Trump.

If nothing else, the Select Committee hearings on the January 6th ‘insurrection’ just go to show that maybe Trump’s conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 election results weren’t just an attempt by the Democrats to play the conspiracy game too. After all, we had a Chief Executive who not only created an entire national Presidential campaign based on conspiracy theories about how there was an international, deep-state cabal which didn’t give a rat’s damn about the ’little guy.’

But just in case anyone begins to forget how the whole conspiracy theory stuff got started, we have an op-ed in The Failing New York Times which explains why conspiracy theories flourish in the world as described by Trump and his alt-right friends.

And here’s how the writer, Tom Edsall, tells us what conspiracy theories are all about, namely, they are: “designed to capture anger at the liberal establishment, to legitimize racial resentment and to unite voters who feel oppressed by what they see as a dominant socially progressive culture.”

Edsall goes on to quote studies done by academics who argue that conspiracy theories are used to “attack opponents, galvanize followers, shift blame and responsibility, and undermine institutions that threaten their power.” Got it? Good.

Except there’s only one problem with this theory about conspiracy theories, namely that Trump really can’t claim to have put such theories into play after he was elected in 2016, because there was another Presidential candidate who beat him to the punch.

Who am I talking about? I’m talking about Hillary Clinton, whose analysis of the 2016 campaign (in her book What Happened) makes Trump’s use of conspiracy theories amateurish to the extreme.

In the very first sentence of her book, Hillary says that in 2016 she was determined not to make the mistake she made in 2008. This time she was going to hire and surround herself with the very best campaign staff that she could find. She then goes on to describe, in excruciating detail, how the 2016 campaign professionals were the smartest, the most experienced, the most fantastic group of people that one could ever imagine running a Presidential campaign.

So how could she lose to a nobody like Donald Trump, particularly when she spent two bucks for every dollar that Trump spent in the race?

Never mind that she stopped making campaign appearances after Labor Day – her absence from the campaign trail is never mentioned, let alone explained. Never mind that it took her more than two months to figure out what to say about having a completely unsecured State Department mail server in her home, a ridiculously stupid move which Trump used to bolster his ‘crooked Hillary’ campaign. Never mind that she couldn’t show up in Michigan because -ready for this one? – her appearance there would bring out more votes for Trump.

Never mind any of it and don’t talk about God knows how many other mistakes were made. Instead, blame the whole fiasco on – ready for another one? – the collusion between Trump’s people and some Russians to ‘steal’ the campaign.

That’s right. Four years before Trump ever said anything about election ‘fraud,’ Hillary ran it up the flagpole and didn’t pull it down until Joe got the nomination in 2020 and told her to shut the f*** up.

And let’s not forget that when it comes to conspiracy theories, Hillary had plenty of practice from when she and Bill were running things in D.C. How many times did the Clintons talk about this great, unseen conspiracy that promoted all those stories about Whitewater, all those stories about Vince Foster’s suicide, all those stories about Bill getting a pipe job from Monica while he was standing in the Oval Office talking on the phone?

Clinton was such trailer trash that he couldn’t even take Monica across the street and spring for a room at the Mayflower Hotel. And before you think I’m being too harsh, I voted for Bill twice and voted for Hillary in 2016.

If expert pundits like Tom Edsall think there’s one, single POS/GOP voter out there who’s going to be support the blue team because the Select Committee can prove that a real conspiracy existed leading up to January 6th, then as Grandpa would say, ‘a be gezunt’ (read: so what?)

Nobody voted for Trump because they believed he would stand up to the Deep State. They voted for him because they liked him, and if they still like him, they’ll vote for him again.