Batshit Crazy & Conspiracy Theorists

I passed a car on US 31 the other day with a bumper sticker that read, "9/11 Was An Inside Job!" With a reflexive sneer I craned my neck to get a good look at the driver as I passed. A bearded, tight-jawed, 30-something dude gripped the steering wheel with clenched fists, glaring at the road before him.

Figures he’d look a little . . . crazed.

My patience with conspiracy theorists is utterly gone. Feels like bat shit crazy is spreading across America like the stomach flu on a cruise ship. I've gone from laughing at it to fearing it. Our nation is overfilled with folks who’d rather believe blurry, complicated, bizarre conspiracy theories than an obvious truth screaming in their face. Vaccines cause autism, global warming isn’t real, Obama was born in Kenya, and oh yeah, he's a Muslim, and the government is hiding the truth about UFOs. Who believes all this crazy shit?

Are these the same people who sign up to sell Herbalife?

Years ago I had a conspiracy theorist next-door neighbor. Once over the back fence he explained that the United States never landed on the moon. Claimed it was all filmed in the Texas desert. He eventually developed his own conspiracy theories about me. After that first unnerving conversation, I started avoiding him. When gardening, every time I saw him pull in his driveway, I’d stroll to my garage as if looking for a rake. I’d wait there watching from the window until he disappeared in his back door. Years later he said to me, “I know you're up to something. I've seen you sneaking around over there.”

He was half-right. I had been sneaking around. Trying to avoid his crazy ass! I guess even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in awhile.

President elect Trump is the king of conspiracy theories and he’s spun some real doozies! On his twitter feed he's claimed that global warming was a hoax concocted by China, that thousands of Muslim American’s celebrated in New Jersey on 9/11, that Christians aren’t allowed to immigrate to America while the U.S. is importing terrorists, Obama wants to take our guns (Aren’t we about up to our 8^th annual “Obama’s coming for your guns” gun sale?), immigrants with Ebola are coming to America, and he was a prime promoter of the Obama/Kenya/Muslim story. Problem is, none of that is true. And it’s all demonstrably not true. And I’ve just scratched the surface. When you look at the voluminous list of conspiracy theories he’s spread on his Twitter feed, it gets hard to tell the difference between a conspiracy theorist and a pathological liar who's simply sees the conspiracy theories as a means to an end.

Whether Tump believes the more bizarre things he's tweeted or not, the conspiracy theories resonate with his followers. And consider this: He’s bragged on tape about sexually assaulting women and thus far 14 women have come forward claiming he in fact, did. Yet his supporters don’t believe it. With no evidence they’ll believe global warming is a hoax created by China, but won’t believe a fact based upon the perpetrator's taped confession, backed up by 14 corroborating witnesses.

Sometimes bat-shit crazy is a willful choice.

Most often, conspiracy theories are about deflecting blame or laying it at your enemy’s feet. This explains where holocaust deniers come from– anti-Jewish folks convinced it's just a scheme to build sympathy for Israel or the Jewish faith. Or perhaps Anglo European folks who’d rather not believe what their parents or grandparents did or at least allowed to happen in the 1930s and ‘40s.

My former nutty neighbor told me that the world is actually controlled by three Jewish businessmen. All of the events we see from elections to wars are manufactured elaborate slights of hand, meant to distract us. Elections aren’t real, they’re staged, the winner predetermined. And wars aren't about civil strife or ethnic differences or competition for natural resources, they’re staged to consume our attention, thin the herd, and allow those three Jewish businessmen to maintain control of the world.

And members of the tin foil hat brigade seemingly lay in wait everywhere. Three months after 9/11, I arrived late at real estate classes to find the only open chair was next to a Middle Eastern-looking man. People were avoiding taking that seat, pulling chairs from another room. Dismayed by the way fools and bullies harassed innocent Middle Eastern Americans after 9/11, I promptly took that empty seat. The man sighed with an appreciative smile and shook my outstretched hand. “Thank you for joining me,” he said. We chatted during breaks. He shared worries for his family in Afghanistan and we eventually talked about the horror of 9/11. But as I was leaving for lunch, he leaned in and whispered, “You know, on 9/11, none of the Jews went to work at the World Trade Center. They knew what was about to happen!” My heart sank. I’d heard of the conspiracy theory spreading in the Middle East claiming that Israel did it to frame Muslims and Arab nations. I replied simply, "Really?" Then I walked away and left him to sit alone when I returned for the afternoon session.

But that was a decade and a half ago. Today, my patience with conspiracy theorists is utterly gone. I will no longer nod and smile and avoid them. I’m calling bullshit every time from here on out.

Read about Kurt's latest novel, The Salvage Man

 “Kurt Meyer’s The Salvage Man is a gentle Midwestern fantasy made up of one treasure after another. Part historical fiction, part love story, and part rumination on modern day life, this novel asks hard questions about the world we live in and the world we leave behind. I couldn’t put it down.”

Larry D. Sweazy, author of A Thousand Falling Crows

Read about Kurt's first novel, Noblesville

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Susan Crandall, Author of Whistling Past the Graveyard

Conspiracy Theories and Dirty Underwear

Many years ago, soon after moving into a new home, a neighbor waved me over. He’d read my newspaper column in that day’s paper and said it made him think of something he wanted to share. But there was no connection whatsoever between what I wrote and what he told me.

He claimed NASA never landed on the moon. “It was all filmed in the desert in Texas,” he said. He claimed that governments of the world were controlled by a triumvirate of Jewish businessmen who adjust world events for profit. You think you’re voting for this person or that, but elections are fixed. The fake moon landing was simple misdirection, devised to distract the world from what was really going on.

As this hallucinogenic riff built up steam, I began to suspect he was nibbling at the edges of Holocaust denial. That’s when I lied that I heard the phone ringing and headed back in the house.

Some years later this neighbor concocted a conspiracy theory about me built on an ironic grain of truth.

“Who do you think you’re fooling?” he sneered. “I know you’re up to something. I’ve seen you sneaking around.”

I actually had been sneaking around.

After that first loony tunes conversation I’d avoided him at all costs. If he walked down the sidewalk while I was doing yard work, I’d walk casually into the garage, as if looking for a tool, then watch from the window until he passed by. I’d do anything to avoid the crazy talk. He apparently caught that vibe and thought it looked sinister rather than what it really was: pathetic.

In December of 2001, just 3 months after 9/11 I arrived at a banquet hall in Indianapolis for 2 days of classes to renew my real estate license. As the room filled with nearly 100 people, I noticed everyone avoided seats near a Middle Eastern-looking man. I felt bad about how Muslim-Americans were being treated in the aftermath of the attacks and decided to conduct a random act of kindness. I right next to him. He looked up with wide, gentle eyes that seemed to say, “thank you.”

During the morning break we chatted about his childhood home in Afghanistan, the cold shoulder he’d gotten from his neighbors since 9/11, and news he was hearing from family back in the Middle East. As we gathered our things to break for lunch he leaned close and whispered to me, “You know, on the morning of September 11^th, the Jews who worked in the Twin Towers didn’t go to work.”

“You gotta be f’in kidding me,” I thought to myself.

I’d heard this little lump of horseshit already. The conspiracy theory that Israel was behind 9/11 – did it so that we’d go ape-shit on the Arab world, doing Israel’s dirty work for them.

I nodded a thoughtful, “Hmmmmm,” in response. Returning after lunch I sat far, far away from the Afghani man.

On one hand I’m embarrassed for conspiracy theorists. But I know that believing the conspiracy satisfies something in the believer. As they say of those cheated by a con man, “You can’t be conned by a con man if you don’t really want what he’s selling.”

I have to admit I have my own proclivities. If I could choose what was true, I’d believe a lot of things I can’t prove. I’d love to believe in ghosts. But I’ve been living in old houses my entire life and still haven’t seen anything remotely passing as proof.

I’d love to believe in UFOs. When I was a kid I laid on the grass in the backyard endless summer nights staring up at the sky with my brother and sisters, looking for proof – “Please, please, please let me see something flying in the sky that’s unexplainable,” I’d plead silently to the great beyond. Never saw a thing.

So if a UFO landed in the street and a ghost appeared nearby, a part of me would be ready to believe. But another part of me would quickly suspect a car crash resulting in smoke from an engine fire.

Wanting to believe something isn’t enough to make it true.

My conspiracy theorist neighbor eventually moved away. Who knows, maybe I scared him off. The new neighbor is a lovable smart ass. He found a pair of the previous owner’s underwear tucked in the old plaster walls around a window for insulation. He knew it was the guy’s underwear because it had his name sewn along the back label (I promise, I’m not making this up). Also knowing of the animosity between myself and the old neighbor (as it is now legendary in our neighborhood), last year the new neighbor gift-wrapped the underwear and left it on my front porch at Christmas as a joke. It was labeled, “To Kurt, from Santa.”

I will gladly take dirty underwear over conspiracy theories whenever given the choice.