Everybody is a Conspiracy Theorist, As It Turns Out

   Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm misreading my fellow man. But humor me for a moment.

 

  I talk to people (in the sort of face-to-face way that is rapidly disappearing), and I keep noticing a trend.  It seems to me that  there are literally millions of everyday people who for the first time in my life believe they are being lied to about the basic facts of their daily lives.  Virtually every conversation I find myself in , whether with a stranger or a friend, eventually wanders around to current events, and  nobody believes the official story.  Now we might not agree on who is lying to us, or what they are lying about, but there is definitely an undercurrent of distrust in what we are being told.

  Now I find that fascinating  because my entire adult life it has been my policy to never believe the official story, and for that contrarian worldview I have endured the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.  And yet here we are.  Millions of us. welcome to the party, friends.

  I used to wonder what it was like to live in the old Soviet Union, and to be subject to their amazing propaganda industry.  By my reckoning, millions of Soviet citizens got up  every morning and would read , for example, an article in Pravda (which I'm told means 'Truth'. Orwell was on to something) about the bumper potato crop that year. These same people would look around at their family on the brink of starvation and they would know that they were being lied to; that the official story was bunk.  They didn't need 'alternative media'; they had the evidence of their own two eyes and the workings of their own God-given brain.

  Of course they couldn't say anything about what they saw and knew to be true.  Their very safety depending on their ability to pay lip service to the lie; to nod their heads at their neighbors and agree that yes there indeed was a bumper potato crop this year.  Such things are demoralizing to an honest man, and frankly demoralization, not persuasion,  is the point of propaganda. But that's another sermon for another time.

  Of course it goes without saying that I am not a Soviet citizen, and there is a significant cultural difference between us. Woven into the very culture of our American nation is a distrust of our overlords, and a willingness to say something. we are a bunch of spitfire skeptics,and that might prove to be the greatest philosophical gift  passed down to us by our Founders. I maintain that every time you do your best to circumvent our Big Tech overlords to pass along a video or a study that rebukes the ubiquitous propaganda, you are  imbibing in the greatest of American traditions.  You are a true patriot, you conspiracy kook.

  So there are millions of us, and we all 'know' we are being lied to, and maybe we cant prove it, and maybe we even look around a bit before we talk about it.  But we know it as sure as we know the sun came up this morning.  The question before us, to which I have no easy answer, is what do we do about it?

  

 

  I don't know.

 

  But I have some thoughts. 

  One thought is that, although I may disagree with a man on the particulars of the truth, that in and of itself does not make him my opponent. The truth is, we are both being lied to, and our enemy is the liar that benefits from the two of us remaining adversaries. People that are at each others throat are easy to control.

Another thought is that  'alternative media', by itself, isn't the solution, as it is just as prone to assimilation as anything else.  Youtube was once the Wild West of unvarnished unfiltered boots-on-the-ground truth. Now it's practically Pravda. Google promised us access to all the information in the world. How's that working out for you?  Twitter defended people who rocked the boat, until they didn't. And don't even get me started on  Mr. Zuckerburg's  baby.

  But what alternative media DOES accomplish is that it keeps the conversation going. When Youtube was co-opted, somebody started another thing, and it's not as big, but it's out there. When that one gets swallowed up somebody needs to start another one.  But those things are just an extension of what we need to be doing; talking to people.  You see, our hapless Soviet citizens did what they had to do to survive, but they didn't do themselves any favors by agreeing to the lie.  Agreeing to the lie perpetuates it, while simply saying 'I don't know about all that...' is an intensely powerful  statement.  It keeps the cement of propaganda from curing all the way, and buys us a little more time. 

 As Doug Wilson has said "Stupid can't last forever." and the very earth I live on was crafted by One who cannot tolerate a lie. The very fabric of reality itself is imbued with His nature, and as a result, the truth is always struggling to come out, and will come out, if given enough time. We just have to keep it going.