Narratives and conspiracy theories

Mitchell Luftig’s commentary piece in the July 13 Nugget, “Inoculating children against conspiracy theories,” was most disheartening. For someone like me, who has spent most of his working lifetime collecting, analyzing, and utilizing data to inform public policy, Mr. Luftig’s interpretations of reality seem to come from some parallel universe, where life’s story is composed of mainstream media narratives. It’s been decades since the mainstream media has delivered much more than societal disinformation, propaganda, and entertainment.

The term “conspiracy theory” was reportedly coined by the CIA in 1967 in response to rapidly growing numbers of people who, for good reasons, failed to buy into the mainstream narrative around the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and, later, of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy. This pejorative label has been used ever since to dismiss those who expose the ugly truth of things by refusing to deal with it at all while discrediting the truth-tellers. Over time almost all of these “theoretical” conspiracies turn out to be real and true.

Among many other “theories,” Mr. Luftig laments that conspiracy theorists “challenged the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.” The reason for this is that the COVID injections are neither safe nor effective. To start with, they don’t even meet the legal definition of “vaccine” in the 1986 Childhood Vaccine Act that exempted pharmaceutical companies from all liability associated with their faulty products. Further, it’s illegal to refer to an Emergency Use Authorization product (all that’s available in this country) as “safe and effective.” Even the CDC has publicly admitted that these injections don’t prevent infection, disease, or transmission.

In addition, the injections aren’t safe. The CDC’s own VAERS reporting system has recorded hundreds of thousands of deaths and serious injuries from the shots. Before 2020, if a vaccine killed more than 25 people it was immediately withdrawn from the market. These people aren’t theoretically dead — they’re actually deceased, because of the shots. Why is it now okay to kill or seriously injure hundreds of thousands of people with a shot? Are these people just collateral damage? Toward what end?

Mr. Luftig goes on to grossly oversimplify our national problem of mass shootings by pinning the blame on a handful of “conspiracy theorists.” While the actual causes are complex, there are two fundamental drivers, unmentioned by Mr. Luftig. First, more than a quarter of Americans between the ages of 16 and 85 are on one or another mind-altering psychiatric medication, many of those on SSRIs like Prozac, Paxil, Effexor, and the rest. According to the published, peer-reviewed science and the drug package inserts, the side effects of these medications include a 2-3 times greater risk of suicide and violence, compared to the placebo group.

Adding more complexity, the Big Tech sector, led by Bill Gates, has got most of our children glued to their screens for hours a day from a very early age, to the exclusion of personal interaction with other real humans.

Many children, especially boys, spend hundreds of hours a year playing violent video games.

The conclusive research says that these children’s brain development has been significantly altered, and not for the better.

Research by Sherry Turkle (MIT), published by 2014, found that young people (under 25s) exhibited no capacity for empathy or compassion.

None.

This is because those character traits are learned only in personal interaction, from a very young age and continuing into one’s 20s.

So we have enormous numbers of people who are on mind-altering drugs, including more than a quarter million babies. They’re two to three times as prone to suicide and violence than the rest of society, and many have no capacity for empathy or compassion. To them, shooting actual people, for real, isn’t far removed from blasting the enemy in their video games. Is it any wonder that a few of these debilitated people end up committing atrocities?

Big Pharma will never let the conversation happen in which they might be held accountable for their share of the mess our country is in. Neither will Big Tech. There’s just way too much wealth and control at stake here. And you’ll never hear a peep about these things in the mainstream media, for the same reason.

Mr. Luftig has reduced our society’s highly complex problems to a handful of mainstream media narratives that don’t comport with reality or offer any real solutions. Our children would be far better off if they were better connected to reality.