The right-wing crackpot machine is cranking out conspiracy theories in connection with the coronavirus pandemic.
Yep. They’re out there. I’m guessing they’re going to get even more ramped up the more this health crisis mounts, the more deaths we suffer, the more illness our nation has to endure.
Some demonstrators who have gathered in places like Lansing, Mich., and in Austin have told reporters, for example, that they disbelieve the casualty count being released. They say the numbers of deaths and illness are actually much lower. They tell the world that people are dying of causes unrelated to the COVID-19 unique virus, but that medical authorities are blaming the disease.
Yes, the authorities are making it up! That’s what the nut jobs are saying.
George Soros, the progressive political activist, billionaire philanthropist and all-round bogeyman for damn near every right-wing cause you can imagine, also has been dragged into the conspiracy muck. The right-wingers suggest Soros is feeding false information because he detests Donald Trump so much that he is willing to foment lies about the disease just to ensure that Trump loses the November presidential election.
Same for Bill and Melinda Gates, who earned their fortune through Bill Gates’s founding of Microsoft. They’re liberals who are financing false narratives being told about the virus. Their motive? It’s the same thing that’s driving Soros, the wackos say.
I have long been an anti-conspiracy American. I’ve never bought the conspiracies that suggest, for instance, that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald murdered President Kennedy; or that men didn’t actually walk on the moon; or that President Bush lured the terrorists to attack us on 9/11.
The coronavirus erupted in central China. It came to the United States when infected passengers arrived in Seattle. It has exploded around the world.
Tragedies happen. It has happened in this instance. We are being subjected to unprecedented restrictions. Our nation’s economy has all but been shut down. The restrictions have angered many Americans, too many of whom have been concocting dangerous and hideous conspiracy theories designed to take our eyes off the target and to distract us from examining how we can find ways to repair what has gone so terribly wrong with our response.
These conspiracy nut jobs make me sick.