(opinion) Trump’s Covid diagnosis spawned conspiracy theories and showed the limits of ‘the resistance’ – By Sabrina Hersi Issa (NBC News) / Oct 4 2020
It has been easy for some liberals to make the fight solely about defeating Donald Trump. But that absolves us of responsibility for what comes after him.
Those wishing for a swift end to the Trump presidency need to stop and think for a moment before leaping to embrace any one of a number of conspiracy theories surrounding his coronavirus diagnosis, most of which revolve around some version of the false idea that he is faking it for political advantage. To be clear: He is not, there is no evidence to support those assertions and there is no political advantage to be had.
Of all people, progressives — though we may now need to come up with another word for this — should understand that there are no easy answers to complex problems and that, in the real world, the principle of Occam’s razor still applies. Yet, in the wake of the news that President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, had tested positive for Covid-19, conspiracy theories about the news trended all over social media and were eagerly spread by liberals.
The same style of misinformation (which then leads to radicalization) can be seen in adherents of QAnon, the radical far-right misinformation cult that has risen to broader prominence after Trump’s severe mismanagement of the nation’s response to a pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans and more than 1 million people worldwide thus far.
What is seemingly driving the urge to believe that there is a grand nefarious plan afoot is that we are at an emotional nadir. We are experiencing something deeper than rage fatigue, coming after a cacophony of events that have undermined our ability to accurately discern the truth, pattern match and operate strategically. This is all happening at a volatile moment for our democracy and clearly raises the stakes for the coming election; there is already distrust on every side. None of this is occurring in a void.
Continue to article: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-covid-diagnosis-spawned-conspiracy-theories-showed-limits-resistance-ncna1241995
