I was talking about conspiracy theorists in general, not specifically people worrying about getting their guns taken away. That’s a different ball of wax.
I’m talking about people who just can’t stand not having a narrative to the universe and their life. People who will outright ignore all the facts and evidence in order to make themselves play some kind of special role in the world, where they have secret knowledge nobody else knows. Something to make themselves better than the sheeple who refuse to listen, when in actuality the “sheeple” have heard the conspiracy theorist’s word-salad of ramblings for a long time and see them for what they are: badly developed coping skills.
That certainly sounds like a subset of conspiracy theorists. Their belief is rooted in the fact they are so much smarter or at least aware than everyone around them.
Though I do have a saying I came up with: “What’s more terrifying, that there are secret groups controlling everything, or that no one is in control we are just bumbling around as best we can.”
I think it is sort of akin to some religious beliefs where instead of a higher power having a plan, its a secret society or government.
That’s pretty much what I’m getting at. A lot of conspiracy theorists just seem to need a teleological explanation for everything. Except instead of saying “God did it” or “the Archangel Gabriel spoke to me” they believe “lizard aliens posing as the knights templar infiltrated the local PUD in order to change the rates charged for electricity in order to manipulate saudi oil futures in order to pressure the president into a foreverwar in afghanistan in order to distract us from the fact that the lizard aliens are stealing our sea water and helium.”
You know what’s fucked up? Exchange lizard men for “my mom” or “my dad” and you get most people’s internal dialog that they have with themselves every day. I think the conspiracy theorists are lucky in a way in that they’ve been able to transfer all that dysfunction to something farcical and I’d dare say imaginative and interesting! Meanwhile the rest of us spend our lives trying to outcompete dad and dad’s busy out competing HIS dad who is so old he doesn’t give a shit anymore and just wants to be left the hell alone.
“My relationship with logic is complex… Oedipal Complex”
NEWS FLASH TO ANTI-GOV GUN NUTS
The largest, most advanced military-industrial complex the planet has ever seen does not fear your little pea-shooters.
If you stunted hicks ever manage to form an armed militia that even hints at becoming large enough to overthrow our government, our military will utilize advanced surveillance and weaponry that can send everything from heat to sound waves into your being to incapacitate you (en masse).
Your little guns are not going to stop anything the government wants to do. You will not be able to properly aim your weapons while you are vacating your bowels uncontrollably. You will drop your guns to the ground while screaming in agony as advanced, less-than-lethal-but-somewhat-lethal weaponry forces you to shit your camo pants.
Speaking of camo pants, our government can still see you.
At best you’ll be incapacitated and rounded up, at worst you’ll end up as a red smudge that a unionized public worker will power-wash off the ground.
Most liberals honestly only want to restrict some gun access to help quell mass murders. If liberals really wanted to kill you (which we don’t), we’d just poison your beer with polonium-210 at Ted Nugent concerts.
Disclaimer: I like guns.
Leave these fucking families alone.
Reality Check:
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has given Obama an “F” on every issue on which it graded him. (PDF Link)
Obama signed an order that allows the carrying of firearms in national parks, reversing an order by Ronald Reagan that guns had to be kept in locked glove compartments. He also signed an order allowing guns to be carried in checked luggage on Amtrak, reversing a ban that went into effect after 9/11 under the Republicans. Even the strongly Republican-aligned NewsMax admits: Obama Denying Fewer Gun Purchases Than Clinton, Bush. And for all that, the NRA declares him “The most anti-gun President ever.”
Heck, even after the Newtown Massacre, with Republicans screaming to anyone who would listen that Obama would use it to take away everyone’s guns, Obama simply punted the issue to a Republican-controlled Congress.
The most you can accurately accuse Obama of is calling for the same background checks that even Wayne LaPierre of the NRA was calling for years earlier. Really. Look it up.
If you did a blind comparison of quotes and policies of Obama vs. Ronald Reagan, you’d declare Reagan to be the one most wanting gun control. (“There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” - Ronald Reagan.) (The same might even go for a blind test of Clinton vs. Reagan. Reagan was one of those who urged Congress to pass the Clinton-era assault weapons ban.)
Bush I banned the import of assault rifles.
It doesn’t matter that some Democrats are given an “A” or “B” rating. Even if the head of the NRA ran as a Democrat, you still could count on Republican fear mongering that he was going to take everyone’s guns away. It’s part of every Presidential election.
This Modern World pretty much summed up the Obama administration’s policy on gun control a couple dozen massacres ago:
The NRA’s attacks aren’t saying “oh no, Obama wants the gun show loophole will be closed, and is pursuing more background checks,” they are “That lying, conniving Obama is a gun-grabber who is coming for your guns.” Obama is not trying to take away everyone’s guns, he is pursuing policies that he believes (rightly or wrongly) will make just make it harder for criminals and mentally ill people to arm themselves without preventing everyday Joes from buying guns. The attacks that they actually offer are virtually never warranted since they’re flagrant lies.
I like some guns. I feel no need to own anything beginning with an AR or AK or anything even remotely of that ilk. A very fancy Remington dazzles my eyes, for deer and elk. And there are some sweeeeeeet bird guns out there. But I don’t have time for hunting right now. Way too busy with other stuff.
What baffles me about this - in addition to the fact that this kind of denial even exists - is how the fuck they think these tragedies are supposed to work as “false flag operations”? I mean, 9-11 actually was used to justify turning our entire government upside down, so on some level it makes sense as to make conspiracy theories out of that (even if the actual conspiracy theories are totally batshit insane). But when we have mass shootings of small children and the government’s response is not only to not pass stricter gun laws but to make them more permissive, does anyone think that a couple people getting shot is going to be used to justify anything? Plus, going all conspiracy theory over only a couple people being shot seems weird. Do they deny that people are killed by guns in the dozens each day? Are only the cases that get attention fake?
I wonder if it’s not some sort of defense mechanism in this total info immersion society. If you don’t cling to the bizarre fantasy that it’s all some sort of hoax, then you have to truly face the fact that there are some horrible people out there and some really horrible things that simply happen for no good reason to perfectly good people. With the current sensationalist news cycle where we hear about every little fucking horrible thing that happens everywhere (that we may not have read about in our particular local paper in decades past), it may be easier for some to just buy into the “hoax” theory than to embrace the reality…
I would disagree. I think they are scared, childlike people who are fundamentally aware that there are forces in the world that are trying to play them, but instead of rationally evaluating who those parties may be, what are their agendas, how do they operate, etc., they instead create fantastical illusions that usually implicate the wrong parties.
But let’s not be idiots. There ARE conspiracies, in fact huge swaths of public policy, the economy, religion, etc. are based on the dealings of relatively small, secretive groups, often motivated by nothing more than money and power. They DO engage in conspiratorial activities. We KNOW this.
So frankly, I think we need to separate out the “crazy conspiracy wingnuts” from those of us who take for granted conspiracies in some circumstances and seek to use rational methods of analysis to deduce what is actually going on behind the scenes.
Does that make any sense?
Future shock, perhaps? But then again we’ve always sought deeper meanings behind things. Just look at indigenous cultures and their mystical belief systems, often influenced by highly ritualized psychotropic substance use.
And frankly, I am one who does believe in a “deeper meaning” behind it all. Maybe we seek out conspiracies because there really is something afoot? 
Absolutely, it fills the same existential need for these people. Maybe we could even call internet conspiracy theory the first 21st-century religion?
Some of us have fantastic and uplifting conspiracy theories, however – not nearly so bleak. We just get less press. But I am always looking for ways to encourage pronoia, if you have any ideas!
Agreed.
This makes me think of my grandma’s story: Shortly after her first husband died (yes, she had three very real children who witnessed his sickness and death) of ALS, she would get prank calls from some man always asking for her deceased husband. The calls became obsessive (no home caller ID in the 1960s) and saying awful things like he didn’t believe he was dead or she was lying.
The police never caught anyone but it was filed for as a nuisance by police and they assumed the weirdo had just picked up info from obituary in newspaper.
Weird. Just not so public as the Internet.
Sometimes I think that I should have been a homeless bum on the street. Terrible social skills, an awful employee… a few bad moments and I could have been homeless and alone and dying in a back alley.
But somehow I met a wonderful wife, with whom I have a couple of smart, charming children. I have a decent job. That Talking Heads song seems weirdly appropriate for me.
There has to have been a Guiding Hand of some sort. Not God. I’m not superstitious like that. But something, someone, has made sure I land on my feet far more often than I ought…
Look.
These truthers, all of them (9-11, Sandy Hook, whatever), they’re all of them guys (and they’re mostly guys) who might’ve finished 4 years of college, but just barely. (But many did not.) They’re guys who just should not have attention paid to them.
These are not the Best and the Brightest. These are the Worst and the Dullest.
They exist. And they have the right to exist. But no more than that.
God bless those poor people who have to endure their insults.
