The Tagline
19th November 2023
Freeberg nails it.
I’m seeing this pattern…
There is a tagline for committed “conspiracy theorists” and “nutcases.” In the case of January 6, it would be something along the lines of “We have a ‘Deep State‘ and they arranged this spectacle.” For the 2020 election, it was “democrat activists coordinated within & across state lines to fraudulently bump up Joe Biden’s vote count in the key battleground states.” For COVID, it’s “The virus is a bioweapon that was grown in a Chinese lab.” And in general for all things related to Donald Trump, it’s “Hollywood is opposed to him because they’re full of perverts, pedophiles and pederasts who belong in jail and they don’t want him putting them there.”
For a year or two, everybody is watching, and everybody’s watching everybody else watching. Passing judgment on who’s a nutcase and who isn’t. And you gutterball yourself if you say anything approaching even a watered-down version of the tagline…
“Fact checkers” emerge to “debunk” the tagline. Once and for all! But also, repeatedly, like a lab rat hooked on amphetamine.
And then after a little bit of time, when 90% or so have stopped watching…the tagline that clearly called out the most obvious nutcases…migrates. It becomes not quite so nutty. Then it becomes more probable. Then it becomes a likelihood. And then, one by one, all the alternative explanations are logically ruled out and this one is the only one left standing.