"When you test, you have a case. When you test you find something is wrong with people. If we didn't do any testing, we would have very few cases." President Trump (May 14, 2020)
"No one in this world, so far as I know -- and I have searched the records for years, and have employed agents to help me -- has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." H.L. Mencken
When I was 10 years old, at the height of the Apollo program, I had great respect for the American public's science savvy and ability to think critically. It's been all downhill since.
I am trying to process the latest tidbit regarding populist critical thinking. As reported by Business Insider, a survey by Yahoo News and YouGov revealed that 44% of Republicans think that a COVID-19 vaccine is an excuse for Bill Gates to microchip everyone. Swirl that around in your mind for a bit. Not only do we have a microchipping conspiracy theory, but we have a Bill Gates-specific microchipping conspiracy theory. Here's a great additional detail: among those who use Fox News as their main TV information source, the number goes up to 50%.
This was a poll, by the way. So it didn't necessarily count everyone who actually believed it. It counted just those with the audacity to report that they believed it.
Americans' grasp on reality must be really tenuous these days. The poll indicates that half of Fox News viewers are delusional, as in clinically delusional. Imagine, if you will, that your grandma or neighbor told you that Michael Jordan or Clint Eastwood or the Pope was behind the COVID-19 virus and wanted to microchip everyone. I don't know about you, but to me that suggests my grandma or neighbor is a danger to themselves and others. I'd contact the police so somebody could do a psych evaluation. Now does the fact that Bill Gates (as opposed to, say, Lex Luthor) is the stated villain supposed to make it all okay? No, it's still serious paranoia and delusion.
Basically, a poll has just revealed that 44% of a major U.S. political party is delusional. Clinically delusional. And this is a par-for-the-course bit of everyday news in 2020. The fact that we accept such a thing as a normal news item is delusional in itself.
The poll explains much, I suppose. On this day before Memorial Day, out of the televised hundreds on Georgia's Tybee Island, none were wearing masks. In Kentucky, some shop owners have banned people with masks from entering their stores. In North Dakota, the governor asked people to refrain from shaming or threatening those wearing masks.
I have absolutely no idea what is going on in my fellow Americans' minds. Maybe they want to die. That's mental illness. Maybe they want to kill. That's mental illness, too. A quarter of an electorate tasked with guiding the most powerful military in history believes that a vaccine is a mechanism for Bill Gates to microchip them. While I suppose that this may appear more reasonable than believing that giant invisible rabbits escort people through life, it is no less worthy of intervention, mainly because the microchip delusion promises more dangerous consequences.
This microchip fantasy will prove impermeable to disconfirmation. When no microchips result from the vaccinations, the belief will simply swing to another conspiracy with the same thrust but different details. When Bill Gates dies, either his persona will allegedly have been transferred to a computer program or someone else will take his place.
Americans have been heading down the road to irrationality for a long, disturbing time. When a president and a major political party shine light down this road for their own advantage, we have reached the point where promoting clinical insanity has become an everyday political strategy. A party that values voter eligibility over voter sanity is a threat to every living thing on the planet. Yet we're doing nothing about it. Instead, we acknowledge that clinically deluded is the new voter normal.
Blithely accepting voter insanity, however, may be worse than the insanity itself. It means that we too have become a danger to ourselves and others.
Bob Dietz
May 24, 2020
