There was a time in my early 20s when I was convinced that JFK’s assassination was the result of a conspiracy. As an 11-year-old I lived through the event and remember it vividly — being dismissed by our teacher in the middle of the day and arriving home to find my mom crying, watching Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby on live TV, the national mourning that convulsed and united grieving Americans. As time passed, though, the event took on darker and more sinister tones and conspiracy theories bloomed like algae. Who shot JFK? The Mafia? Angry Cubans? Big business? Or could it have been the Umbrella Man?
Eventually, I realized it for the rabbit hole that it was. In the JFK assassination theory, there were so many violations of the rule of Chekhov’s gun that it made the head spin. In fact, I realized later, one of the fundamentals of great conspiracy theories is the accretion of extraneous detail to the point where shade crowds out all sources of light. That’s certainly one of the hallmarks of America’s latest and greatest conspiracy theory: the Stolen Election.
There are many pretenders to the throne of great conspiracy theories: the aforementioned JFK assassination, 9/11, the climate hoax, the Covid hoax, QAnon’s alternative universe, the faked moon landing. But it’s clear now that the Stolen Election is the reigning apotheosis of conspiracy culture, and one of the most consequential, which we’ll get to in a moment.
The conspiracy of the Stolen Election is a whirligig that was years in the making. Its seeds were planted in the well-documented, growing distrust of American institutions, particularly politicians and media; the rise of income inequality and garish consumerism; and festering class resentment that exploded into public view in dramatic fashion when Hillary Clinton made an off-hand comment about the “deplorables.” Trump’s greatest talent is his ability to both read the public mood and push it in a direction he wants. A recent Pew survey captures the corrosive cynicism of Americans right now that Trump leveraged to create his grand theory of a rigged election.
The prosaic truth, of course, is that Trump is a sore loser. Throughout his career, when he lost in business or love, he would simply ignore it, spin it, get another loan or a new girlfriend, or lie about it. He is a master of throwing shade. And when given a bigger stage — the Presidency — he rose to the occasion. Throughout his campaign and administration he challenged convention and orthodoxy (remember the Deep State?). Trump’s genius was building a false narrative or conspiracy based on a small kernel of truth, then letting it metastasize. The media, for example, is biased and was out to topple Trump, which he turned into his unified conspiracy theory of Fake News. For Trump, Fake News and Fake Media were like Chekhov’s gun; once they were introduced into his narrative, he would later pull the trigger to launch the Stolen Election conspiracy.
Sometimes, conspiracy theories can be so preposterous that they’re sort of entertaining. Does anybody really believe the moon landing was faked in a TV studio? Not really, but the notion is good for a laugh. Do chemtrails really exist? No, but they provided a good title for a Lana Del Rey album. Do 5G cell towers cause Covid? Uh, no, but then again, what good is 5G anyway? The culmination of conspiracy-theory-as-entertainment is the “Birds Aren’t Real” movement, a tongue-in-cheek meta-conspiracy making its rounds on the Interwebs.
The Stolen Election is a higher-order conspiracy theory, one that taps into a deep and dark place in the American psyche. Thus, we had the Capitol riots on Jan. 6. There is a conspiracy theory of sorts out there that Jan. 6 was the result of a master plan by Trump and his sycophants to storm Congress, hold hostages and force a decertification of the election, returning Trump to the throne. In fact, it was a simple riot rallying around a slogan — “Stop the Steal” — whose “ringleaders” couldn’t decide what to do once they breached the Capitol. It did, however, have calamitous and tragic outcomes, including the loss of life. It had consequences.
The election, as we know, was not stolen. In fact, it was one of the most secure elections in U.S. history given the record turnout. The Associated Press did an exhaustive analysis of election fraud claims in six battleground states and found less than 450 actual incidents of fraudulent voting, which, given the scale of the election, is what we like to call in the South “spitting in the ocean.”
“Voter fraud is virtually non-existent,” quoted the AP of George Christensen, the election clerk for Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, where five people statewide were charged with fraud out of nearly 3.3 million presidential ballots cast. “I would have to venture a guess that’s about the same odds as getting hit by lightning.” This reality, sobering as it might be, hasn’t stopped legislatures in 36 states from introducing 148 bills that could politicize elections by giving more power to elected officials instead of constitutionally sworn officers, according to the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy. The Stolen Election may be a conspiracy theory, but it is generating real consequences.
Where does this leave us? This can’t be laughed off like “Birds Aren’t Real.” Republicans, inexplicably still in the thrall of Trump, refused to sanction a bipartisan commission to investigate the root causes of the Jan. 6 riots, similar to the Warren Commission or the 9/11 Commission. We are left with a highly partisan, Democrat-controlled committee to investigate, to which several of Trump’s closest advisors, and Trump himself, are thumbing their nose. One year after the trauma of Jan. 6 — and watching the Capitol being stormed, police officers being attacked with flag poles, and a self-professed “shaman” roaming the corridors of Congress in a buffalo hat was every bit as traumatic as 9/11 — we’re further down the rabbit hole than ever.
It may be that as the world becomes more chaotic, conspiracy theories appeal to us because they help make sense of things, even if they’re not true. Like a lot of things we confront in the “infodemic” afflicting the 21st century, it requires a lot more vigilance on our part, certainly more than displayed among this group of discerning citizens.
Citizenship requires vigilance — against enemies, Covid, natural disasters and My Pillow commercials. It also requires vigilance against bullshit. We know it when we see it. And as citizens, we are compelled to call it out when we do. Peace out.