The Conspirator Next Door
Last Saturday I was out golfing with my friend, who is also a first generation immigrant from India. We were to be paired up with two other golfers to complete the foursome and sure enough a cart with two White gentlemen rolled up as we waited by the first tee box. One of them called out a cheery greeting and asked our names and proceeded to actually write them down on his scorecard. My friend and I have very similar names which seemed to confuse him a bit and when it turned out that their names were also somewhat similar, I made a small joke about it and a convivial air hung about the group as we got underway.
For the purposes of this story, I am going to call our playing partners Laurel and Hardy if only because they did bear some physical similarities to that famous comedic duo. One of them (who I am calling Laurel) was slimmer and fitter than the other (who I am calling Hardy), so there you go. Laurel was also the better golfer and, as soon become apparent, the bossier one. Laurel was mostly all-business while Hardy seemed to be much more easy going. Both of them, I hasten to add, were as polite and considerate towards us as you would want.
Laurel loved to talk — in fact, he would often hold up the action as he held forth on some topic or the other to Hardy, who was clearly one of his good friends. Most of this conversation happened out of our earshot since they were riding a cart while my friend and I were walking. But when we were gathered at a tee box or near a green, we could sometimes make out what was being said. And it wasn’t long before it dawned on me that Laurel here was a full-fledged conspiracy theorist of the MAGA persuasion.
It started of innocently enough with some comments about Hurricane Helene. In a seemingly casual tone, I hear Laurel tell his friend, “First they diverted the hurricane to North Carolina and now when volunteers are showing up to help, they are seizing their supplies. There are helicopters that are ready to drop supplies, but they are not letting them get into the air.” I wasn’t sure I had heard correctly (especially the part of diverting the hurricane) and wondered if he was just being facetious. His friend also seemed a bit confused. He asked, “Who is seizing the supplies?” To which Laurel replies, “FEMA.” Hardy, to his credit, is skeptical: “You actually believe this?” Laurel, with nary a trace of self-awareness, “Yes, I do! When so many people are saying it, it has to be true. It is just like that land grab in Hawaii.” In a completely matter-of-fact tone, like it was firmly established fact.
I had to look this up after I got back home, but it turns out that one of the conspiracy theories about the fires in Maui is that it was deliberately set and left to burn so that developers could “grab” the land. There is a similar theory flying around the far right corners of the internet about Helene- that the “government” redirected the path of the hurricane towards North Carolina in order to get control of the Lithium mines. Or to prevent Trump supporters from going to the polls. Or both, take your pick. Similar theories are being promoted about Hurricane Milton.
We may look at this and shake our heads disapprovingly and dismiss the purveyors of such nonsense as dumb idiots. Redirecting a hurricane, really? Unfortunately though, these nonsensical claims have real world impact when amplified by the megaphone of the internet and social networks. People in Helene’s path are refusing to heed calls to evacuate or take shelter because they are coming from the same government that is ostensibly responsible for the hurricane in the first place. FEMA employees are being subjected to abuse, both online and on the ground.
A few holes later, I overhear Laurel taking on a fresh topic. He goes, “You know how they say that all those Haitian immigrants are here legally? Well, all they did was download an app and fill in a form. Sure, if all it takes is an app, then everybody is going to do it!”
He continues with a shake of his head, “And when he was trying to explain this, he was accused of mansplaining. Well, duh! You are stupid!” Clearly referring to the person who needed the “mansplaining.” Then he concludes in a somewhat mournful tone, “He just can’t catch a break.” At this point, I guessed that he had been talking about JD Vance, but I suppose it could have been Trump as well.
Whether it was JD Vance or Trump, the claims about the app are demonstrably false. First, the app (“CBPOne”) is a scheduling app — it allows would-be immigrants to schedule an appointment with CBP to have their case heard and using it doesn’t automatically confer protected status. Secondly, the “Temporary Protected Status” (TPS) that many of the Haitian migrants in Springfield, OH have is only granted when the applicant meets several criteria, including being from a country whose citizens are eligible to get TPS, have a US sponsor, and most importantly, apply for it in their home country. So, just another example of a lie gaining credibility just because somebody with a megaphone repeats it enough.
Laurel was getting on our nerves, especially that of my playing partner. Not so much for the theories he was espousing, but for his disdain for keeping up the pace. He thought nothing of sitting in the cart and finishing his conversation with his friend before stepping out to tee off, often well after after my friend and I had finished teeing off. Golf etiquette calls for a group to keep up the pace of play, which is simply stated as “keep up with the group in front of you.” This is especially true if you have somebody close behind you. Not only had a gap opened up in front of us, but the twosome behind us was being made to wait on pretty much every tee box. This sense of righteousness was of course of a piece with his fervently held conspiracy theories and began to extend to giving unsolicited golfing advice to both me and my friend.
Laurel had one more conspiracy with which to enlighten his friend. The course winds its way between houses and as we were gathered in the middle of a fairway, we caught snatches of a song from one of the houses. Laurel brightened up, “Oh, that’s nice — a bit of Earth, Wind, & Fire to play along with.” And then he turns to his friend and adds, “You know, I was listening to this on the range.” And he continues, “I used to have wireless headphones, but I read that they are bad for you.” His friend, who is perhaps only too aware of Laurel’s gullibility, asks “Really? Why are they bad for you?” Laurel replies with the confidence of the true believer, “They make the cartillage in your ears brittle. I used to have $150 wireless earbuds, I threw them away and got myself a $20 wired set.” But, that wasn’t all. He goes, “And of course 5G! That’s terrible for you!!” His friend murmurs something about having seen a study that found that cell phones weren’t bad for you. Laurel dismisses this — “Of course, they are hiding all the dangers. I am not taking any chances — I have ordered one of those EMF boxes to put my phone into.” I almost asked him how he expected anybody to call him, but I held back. If facts and reason meant anything to people like Laurel, I wouldn’t have had material for this blog.
Conspiracy theories are nothing new of course and there are lots of explanations that have been put out for their enduring appeal. Mostly what occurs to me is that it is a defense mechanism towards a world that has become extremely complex. Being asked to just “trust the experts” for everything — technology, health, finance, politics- is emasculating to somebody who is used to having a sense of control and at their core, conspiracy theories are simplistic explanations for complex phenomena. With the added attraction that it clearly implicates the “other side.” There is a certain comfort in putting your trust in some outlandish theory — because if that is true, then you are off the hook. Unfortunately, we now live in a world where these beliefs can spread like wildfire and with just as terrible consequences.
The other thing that struck me was how unremarkable and commonplace Laurel was, otherwise. I suppose I have the persona of the Alex Jones’ and Jesse Waters’ of the world when I think of rabid conspiracy theorists, but Laurel wasn’t foaming in the mouth or raving and ranting. He was perfectly reasonable in almost every respect and had a calm, if somewhat resigned, demeanor as he shared his thoughts with his friend. I wondered how many others that I had met casually were carrying around similar beliefs? After the 2016 elections a colleague mentioned that the polls had been wrong because a lot of people had been unwilling to tell the pollsters that they were going to vote for Trump. The mainstream and pop culture had so ridiculed Trump and his supporters that a lot of Trump’s support remained hidden from the polls. A similar thing was found to be true in 2020 — Trump did better in the actual voting than the polls had suggested. On newyorker.com, Jay Caspian Kang suggests that we have reached peak polarization and that elections are essentially a coin flip. That’s a frightening thought indeed.
