A Liberal Dose
June 2,
2022
Troy D.
Smith
“Fake
Conspiracies Can Lead to Very Real Dangers”
For the past few weeks my columns here have focused on
local issues, and I have not addressed the major national concerns that have
arisen. While it should come as no surprise to anyone that local and national
issues are very much connected, I’m going to shift my focus a little. Allow me
to catch you up, if you haven’t been paying attention.
After years (decades, really) of conservatives working
hard to gain control of local and state governments and ensuring an
ever-more-rightward tilt of the Supreme Court, we are seeing the results.
Meanwhile most progressives, as usual, have not noticed the ship was sinking
until their hats starting floating off their heads and wishful thinking did not
put them back on.
After 50 years, Roe vs. Wade is in serious danger of
being overturned -despite the fact that 70% of Americans do not want that to
happen. Most Americans do want some regulating of abortion, but fewer than
one-third want it banned outright. Red states around the country have proposed
-or already passed -laws that would, in the event the Court overturned
precedent, forbid abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or overwhelming
danger of death to the mother. Some propose forcing women who have miscarriages
to prove they did not cause them, on pain of prison, or to carry the lifeless
fetus to term. Our very own state legislature recently considered a bill that
would allow the family of a rapist to sue his victim if she aborted the fetus
his crime put into her. Now some states are coming forth with plans to ban any
form of birth control.
Meanwhile, just in the last few weeks there have been
more mass killings, with several targeting ethnic minorities -on top of an
ever-rising number of smaller hate crimes. This is being indirectly stirred up
by conservative politicians and media personalities who are parroting
“replacement theory” -one of several ideas and slogans popping up on the far
right lately that originated with American pro-Nazi groups in the 1930s. This
theory states that there is a Jewish plot to bring in immigrants and bolster
native people of color so as to overtake white people as the majority and take
over the country. The logical conclusion of that line of thinking, in the minds
of impressionable or unstable individuals, is that it is patriotic to do everything
possible to stop that from happening, which is exactly what the mass shooter in
Buffalo claimed he was trying to do.
All over the country, there are politicians saying
and/or voting for crazy things. And regular people, too; there are folks right
here in White County who believe that Tom Hanks is part of a secret baby-eating
cult, that Bill Gates invented Covid in order to put microchips in your brain,
and that the “My Pillow” guy is privy to secret information verifying their
conspiracy theories. I think his pillows must have something more potent than
feathers in them.
I am not saying that everyone who disagrees with me
goes to such extremes, they do not. But the number of people who do is growing,
and the consequences are becoming very, very real. Unlike the conspiracy
fantasies of the far right, this stuff is actually happening and can be
empirically documented.
Those folks are being hoodooed. Tricked. Bamboozled.
Their fears are being stoked into a frenzy until it becomes potentially violent
-and why? To get their vote, yes… but also to keep them from noticing what is
really going on. Who benefits from this? Follow the money. The corporate bigshots
who own the politicians would do anything to keep their taxes low and their
businesses unregulated. So what if it divides the American people to the point
of bloodshed? It has worked before. Check your history… while you are still
allowed to.
Come on, neighbors. Let’s put down our pitchforks and
take off our blinders, together.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
No comments:
Post a Comment