Dec 18^th

We come now to conspiracy theories; the most insane of which involves the recent, and some not so recent, mass shootings. Consider the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The perpetrator of this crime, Adam Lanza, first killed his mother and then stealing her guns he went on to kill twenty children and six adults at the school.

Alex Jones, who runs a radio talk show in Texas, is convinced that these murders never happened. He claims the victims were actors paid by the government to discredit the Second Amendment. Adam is certainly the premier conspiracy theorist we have today. He has an alternative conspiracy theory for the Oklahoma City bombing, the Moon landing, 9/11 (the towers were dynamited by the government), the incineration of the Astronauts, Grissom, White and Chaffee (murdered by the government because they might reveal that the Moon landing was a hoax)) all of the recent school shootings (never happened, all done by actors hired to help discredit the gun lobby.)

Who buys into this nonsense? A good 6 percent of the people who heard the Moon landing fake believed it. For the 9/11 conspiracy that the government had planted explosives in the twin towers the believers amounted to 16 percent. There are similar percentages of Americans who believe in each of Jones conspiracies. Well, who cares?  We’ve always had the looney tunes fringe, what harm can they do?

Quite a lot of harm; one of Jones’ fans, James Tracy, an Associate Professor of Communications at Florida Atlantic College went so far as to send messages to the parents of the youngest victim of the Sandy Hook murders insisting that they provide him with proof that their son, Noah, had in fact once lived, and that they were his parents and the rightful owners of his photographs. Tracy continued to bother the parents of this murdered child until Noah’s parents got a restraining order to stop this curiosity from harassing them. Florida Atlantic University is in the process of dismissing this member of its faculty.

Why Americans seem to love conspiracy theories I have no Idea. Incidentally it will be no surprise for you to learn that Donald Trump agreed to be a guest on Alex Jones radio show. Then this morning when Trump was on Morning Joe he was asked what he thought of his endorsement by Vladimir Putin whose minions had executed a variety of news people. The only thing Trump cared about was Putin’s compliment about his intelligence. I guess if you’re not that sure of yourself you’ll take whatever compliments you can get from whomever you can get them.