April 15, 2022

Hal Brown, Conspiracy theories

Yesterday's blog edition

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I received this in an email from Tom Dwyer Auto Repair in Selwood, Oregon (Website). This repair service is an excellent car repair service which promotes progressive books by having a collection of just about every anti-Trump book ever published in their waiting room for customers to read.


Conspiracy Theories...
When Reality just isn't twisted enough.

We live in a world that is, unfortunately, dominated by conspiracy theories.  There are the funny ones like the Jewish Space Lasers or the Flat Earthers, and less entertaining ones like the Satanist pedophile ring in the pizza restaurant or the 'false flags' of school shootings.  It may be tempting to laugh, but one need look no farther than the January 6 Insurrection, fueled by the paranoid ravings of election fraud, to see how deadly serious these self-reinforcing lies can be.  As we were strolling along the InterTubes recently, one link led to another and they all prompted us to share this short article on Conspiracy Theories with you.  There's an amazing chart with current conspiracies, reasons people believe, and ways to fight back, but keep reading for your own way to participate in spreading the lies that someone, somewhere will believe...


  

Conspiracies in the world today


***MUST LOOK***



 The Conspiracy Chart 2021


- A chart of conspiracies arranged from those that actually, provably happened to those that are even too insane for Alex Jones.  And it’s interactive, so if you see a conspiracy you haven’t heard of before (like “Biden is a robot”) all you have to do is click for more ‘information’.

  

The Craziest Conspiracy Theories That People Actually Believe


30 Real Doozies, Charlotte Chilton in Popular Mechanics, Oct 2021

 

The 13 biggest conspiracy theories,


 Benjamin Radford and Stephanie Pappas in LiveScience, Dec 2021

 

Why do people believe this horsepuckey?



Belief in conspiracy theories is the product of normal human psychology, but can be extremely dangerous, Graham Lawton in New Scientist 


Conspiracy Theories: Why Do We Believe Them? Calvin J. Emerson on Engage.youth.gov, Aug 2021

 

Speaking of Psychology: Why people believe in conspiracy theories, Karen Douglas PhD in American Psychological Association ‘Speaking of Psychology’, Jan 2021

 

Maybe a free thinker but not a critical one: High conspiracy belief is associated with low critical thinking ability, Lantian, Bagneux, Delouvee, and Gauvrit in Applied Cognitive Psychology, Jan 2021 


The Roots Of Conspiracy Theory, Helen Lee Bouygues in Forbes, Mar 2021


Fighting back IS possible… sometimes


Conspiracy Theories: What Can I Do to Stop Them? Calvin J. Emerson on Engage.youth.gov, Aug 2021

 

Expert: The best way to fight a conspiracy theory isn’t with facts, Keith Brannon in Tulane News, Oct 2020

 

It's only fake-believe: how to deal with a conspiracy theorist, David Robson in The Guardian, Nov 2020

 

Zen and the Art of Talking to Conspiracy Theorists, Jonathan Jarry in McGill Office for Science and Society, Feb 2021





My contribution to the articles above is this from AlterNet:



Thomas Zimmer, a visiting professor at Georgetown, wrote:


 "There is a calculating quality to Greene’s polemics," Zimmer wrote. "Last fall, for instance, she recorded a campaign video in which she used a military-grade sniper rifle to blow up a car that had the word 'socialism' written on it, promising to do the same to the 'Democrats’ socialist agenda.'"

However, he also highlighted what he believes to be the reason behind her antics. "It was over-exaggerated campaign nonsense," Zimmer noted. "But Greene knew the unsubtle insinuation of using violence against a political opponent would demand attention."


My view: There is no doubt that she expresses extreme views and probably does so in a calculated way In order to get media attention and incite her base. However she also promotes ludicrous conspiracy theories. It is not possible to ascertain whether she she believes them. If she does the expert analyses of why people are unable or unwilling to evaluate these theories using logical thinking applies to her.

 


It appears that some people who understand how gullible believers in conspiracy theories are use this knowledge to exploit them in order to make money. Consider:

QAnon influencers luring followers into multi-level marketing schemes: report

, Raw Story

April 15, 2022

 


 

 
 

April 13, 2022

Scrambled eggs and potato chips, by Hal Brown

 Scrambled eggs with cheddar potato chips  

Yesterday I wrote about politics here, today I have returned to food as a blogging subject. Here's the background of this story. I decided to go to Fred Meyer's first thing this morning because there are few customers in the super-store at 7:00 AM. 

In fact, there were many more people stocking the shelves than people shopping. At least a dozen staff said hello or good morning to me.




As I was finishing up shopping I got to feeling queasy and realized I'd neglected to have breakfast. I grabbed a small bag of cheddar potato chips to eat on the 10 minute drive home.

There was only one check-out lane open but I was the only one using it. 

I ate a few chips to stave off hunger on the short ride home and then decided to crumble up the remaining chips, most of the bag, and scrambled them with eggs.


There is precedent for combining eggs with both cheese and potatoes. For example, eggs with hash brown potatoes is a diner breakfast staple. I've fried up left-over potatoes of various kinds with cheese and eggs before with a tasty result. 

In fact, a half-eaten giant baked loaded restaurant potato with green beans can be doctored up to make a delicious and nutritious treat like this:


Why then wouldn't it make sense to use cheddar potato chips and eggs to make another yummy breakfast meal?



How did it taste? I rate the concoction as somewhere between disgusting and barely edible. Next time munch the chips separately and make the eggs with anything but chips.

Yesterday's blog



Hal Brown Blog April 12, 2022 Right wing displays

  


At present the blog is evolving to be more eclectic. For those new to looking at it I suggest going beyond the opening page look at the blog archive on the right, and randomly clicking on some of the other entries for the past year with photo essays of my travels around Portland, Oregon. At the least take a look at what I posted here in March.



Updated: April 13, 2022

April 12, 2022

Right-wingers are much more in your face than liberals, at least this is how I see it.


No bothsidesism here if my observations traveling around the Portland, Oregon area is any indication, those with far right sentiments are much more likely to "advertise" their viewpoints in more public ways, and often in a more obnoxious manner than liberals.


From what I see right-wingers are more likely to use the backs of their cars as billboards and their houses to rub their beliefs in the faces of those who are on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Are they psychologically  different than liberals? What personality characteristics do these people have in common? 

The Massachusetts photo was taken by Grace Welch


This photo is of a vehicle in front of the house shown below with the Trump flags.






This was at a Costco store.
My opinion is that these are people who feel marginalized and often ostracized by what they perceive as the mainstream whether in popular culture or the media.

They take their lead from the grievance politics of Trump and his most outspoken cadre of newsmakers.

Some of them may tick of all or most of the psychiatric diagnostic criteria for being paranoid or delusional, and others may just be gullible. Some may recognize that time is not on their side as the demographics of the country shift so that in the foreseeable future white people will be in the minority.

Update: This article sums up how Trump exploits the fears of many white people:

Excerpt (note the reference to malignant narcissism, a subject I have written about many times):

The relationship between the leader and follower in a political cult such as today's Republican Party is deep and powerful. Diane Roberts of the Florida Phoenix summarizes this unhealthy psychodynamic:

Republicans are angry.

So very, very angry.

Deranged White Man Syndrome has not yet been listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but it's just a matter of time.

Seriously, these dudes (and they are mostly male-gendered persons) are on a rampage of rage and loathing which cannot be healthy….

Living in a constant tantrum must be exhausting for Republicans. I suspect that somewhere in the deep recesses of their brains, they know that while they may hold power at the moment, the world is changing.

And they can't stand it.

Let's hope they get serious therapy: This is a sick, sick, sick bunch of people.

To the uninitiated — and also to those who have just become numb to it all — Trump's North Carolina speech was an uninspired recitation of his personal grievances, malignant narcissism ("I've got to be the cleanest, I think I'm the most honest human being, perhaps, that God has ever created") and victim fantasies, mixed with now-standard talking points about the Big Lie, the 2020 election and Jan. 6, "parents' rights", "invaders" at the U.S.-Mexico border, supposed crime and barbarism in "Democrat-run" major cities and an assortment of lies both small and large about Joe Biden and the Democrats.


These people generally suffer from confirmation bias because those who follow the media by and large consume far right "news" sources. In the right-wing media people like Tucker Carlson exacerbate their fears and basically tell them how to think, or to put it more accurately, how not to think.

When I see liberals expressing their views via signs and such I have yet to see over-the-top displays. For example these two houses are across the street from each other in the small Oregon town of Aurora.

This is the home of the man who has the vehicle with all the Marine stickers on its back.



This car is in his yard along with the maroon one  (below) with the Marine stickers.
My hunch is that this man bought an old police car and thinks that the emblem he  put  on the door will lead some people to mistake his car for a real police car.

Here he is. His house is an eyesore, made worse because it is on a street with historic homes including the one across the street from his, which are kept in excellent shape.




I generally find liberals expressing themselves in a more restrained way. Here are some examples:



I don't have any political stickers on my car. I have two Westie stickers on the bumper, one covers a hole and the other a dent. The window sticker is for Massachusetts retirees. 

One of the reasons I don't have so much as a small Biden/Harris sticker on the car is that I don't want to provoke an incident when I am exploring our rural areas and looking for new places to eat. Some of them have signs like this:
I sometimes end up in towns which are decidedly pro-Trump and where my car stands out enough as it is among the pickup trucks. For example in Molalla:




The man in the red plaid shirt is talking to two men at another table.

I could easily overhear the conversation of the men at two of the tables, one shown above, who were obviously regulars and townies, and all they were talking about was the comparative merits of different kinds of guns.





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