This just in: Quite possibly my greatest disappointment to arise from the Trump presidency is not Trump’s behavior but rather, what our reaction to his behavior has told me about our country.

My plan now is to make a list of the things that people are willing to believe. Now, of course, I’m doing this from my Hero Castle high on the hill as I look down on the lesser beings however, let me say this, “I am far from being immune to believing in conspiracy theories.”

For example, I believed Bush had evidence of WMD’s in Iraq in spite of his inability to show any evidence. I once believed that Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy is spite of the fact that the only argument against it was that he made a better than average shot.

It’s easy to get caught up in these theories. Especially if everyone around you believes in them AND its a conspiracy that you “want” to be true AND you take no steps to investigate the validity because you don’t want to find evidence that is counter to what you want to believe.

Having laid out all of this “fine print”, let’s get to my list:

1. With zero evidence that a court would be willing to accept, people believe Trump when he claims the election was stolen from him.
2. People believe that there are actually people walking on the planet that know, for certain, the existence of God as well as his exact will for you with regards to behavior. There are millionaires today that exist simply because people pay them to pretend to be the spokesperson for the entity that created the entire universe.
3. People believe that COVID-19 is a hoax.
4. People believe that the Republican Party is not a corrupt money-grab but is actually a group of elected people whose priority is to represent the will of those that put them into office.
5. People believe that Climate Change is a hoax and cite as proof, there is still snow in the winter.
6. People believe that unregulated Capitalism is the best way to run an economy.
7. People believe that undocumented immigrants are the reason that all of the high paying jobs are out of reach of high school dropouts in the rural south.
8. People believe that vaccines cause autism.
9. People believe that wearing masks is a government experiment to see how easy it is to get the masses to do something that is completely unnecessary.
10. People believe that Trickle-Down Economics is something that actually works.
11. People believe that Donald Trump loves America because he said so.
12. People believe that Blue Lives Matter unless they are protecting the U.S. Capitol against insurrection. In that case, it’s okay to kill as many as you can.
13. People believe that the statement, “We need to find ways to stop gun violence in our schools,” translates into, “We need to take away everyone’s guns.”
14. People believe that the color of their skin (white) makes them superior to the color of the skin of other people (specifically, non-white skin).
15. People think “entertainment” shows like Hannity or Fox and Friends are the same thing as real news.
16. People think the Democrat Party is harvesting material from the bodies of children to create life extending potions for themselves.
17. People think the people that stormed the Capitol wearing MAGA shirts and hats were actually anti-Trump people that were trying to make Trump look bad.
18. People think only they are worshiping the right deity and everyone else that does not agree with them is wrong. This is only a problem when they try to squash those that believe differently. A ban on Muslims traveling to the United States for example.
19. People believe that mass shootings are government sponsored events to justify taking away guns.
20. People believe Donald Trump.

I could make a list of things people don’t believe. For example, people don’t believe that science is any more accurate than posts on Facebook. But, I’ll save that list for another day.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim