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…