CynicalPublius
I'd like to talk about an important skill I think all Patriots need to develop.
I call it "Conspiracy Theory Recognition Ability" ("CTRA").
Let me explain.
First, some background.
I think there are a lot of people like me--people who spent most of their lives trusting that the USA was mostly a force for good, generally believing what our government told us to believe, and mocking people who fell for “conspiracy theories” like the CIA killing JFK. Then 2016 happened, and it became apparent that our government was capable of the very most nefarious acts, and then lying to us about it. Suddenly, conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory came to mean “truth.” The “Trump-Russia Collusion” hoax caused many of us—myself included—to trust NOTHING we heard from our government (or any other authority figure or source, for that matter).
SUDDENLY, the prudent person trusted nothing they were told to believe, and in fact rightfully began to assume that the opposite of whatever they were told to believe must be true. The problem is, however, that some things ARE true, and CAN be trusted. This creates a dangerous problem: believing that EVERYTHING is a lie is as deceitful as believing that everything is true. I believe the very people who have been feeding us official lies understand this, and started creating fake conspiracy theories to sucker us. The idea here is that if one falls for a fake conspiracy, one’s judgment in all matters (even correct identification of conspiracy theories that were TRUE) can be viewed as that of a crackpot loon. I believe that Q Anon was such a thing. I believe that Q Anon was nefariously created and fostered by some dark forces as a means of making all Patriots look stupid. After all, if you believe the Q Anon nonsense, then your belief that “Trump-Russia Collusion” was a hoax must also necessarily be stupid as well, right? By discrediting a person through their connection to Q Anon, everything else that person believes must also be wrong—or at least that’s the idea.
Let me give you a smaller but useful example.
In my recent foray into the world of Ukraine propagandists, I learned that as a rule they like to change their location on X to “Langley, VA, USA” (i.e., the location of CIA headquarters). This is done for the specific reason of making a Patriot believe that some Ukrainian nutter in Paris is actually a CIA agent. When the Patriot makes that assertion, they are mocked for believing a conspiracy theory and this is used to discredit everything else the Patriot believes. This is a very simple example of what I call a “False Flag Conspiracy Theory.”
Now we live in a world that is as flooded with False Flag Conspiracy Theories as it is flooded with official untruths.
The False Flag Conspiracy Theories are out there in great numbers, and they are designed specifically to discredit us when we expose ACTUAL official untruths.
Thus, my CTRA theory is that we all must be as distrustful of seemingly obvious conspiracies as we are distrustful of official untruths. We must all develop a skillset that seeks deep discernment, that drives us to conduct independent research of primary sources to ascertain objective truth, and that leaves us skeptical of LITERALLY EVERYTHING. We must separate the wheat from the chaff, and develop the ability to identify official untruths without falling prey to False Flag Conspiracy Theories.
It’s a dangerous, confusing world out there.
To paraphrase the great Ronald Reagan: “Distrust, but verify.”
CTRA: a skill we must all develop.
OK, just so we are clear, as some seem to maybe be missing the distinction:
Reagan said: "Trust, but verify."
I say: "Distrust, but verify."
That's a paradigm shift that I attribute mostly to the existence of the Internet.
