Thou shalt not fall for conspiracy theories

Five months ago, right-wing media conceived an outrageous conspiracy theory. George Soros was using Taylor Swift — despite the pop star’s “legitimate beef” with the billionaire investor — as a political operative to reelect Joe Biden. The NFL — a famously merit-based sport — had been entirely rigged for at least the past four years, manipulated by some unknown entity to ensure that the Kansas City Chiefs won the 2024 Super Bowl. Then, the Chiefs' star tight end, Travis Kelce, was supposed to propose to his singer-songwriter, Pentagon psyop girlfriend, and the couple, whose relationship was entirely staged, would, at that moment, endorse the president.

The whole thing was incredibly stupid, of course — the mind-zapping contribution of a class of amateur internet sleuths with way too much time on their hands. Nevertheless, the harebrained fantasy enjoyed prominent airtime, backed by so-called Fox News “journalists,” influential “X” accounts, and a presidential candidate. It was an embarrassing spectacle, to say the least.

I, for one, rolled my eyes at the conspiracy for several reasons. In the first place, Taylor Swift is (regrettably) an insanely popular person. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t like it. I wish it weren't so. I wish our culture had more depth than to fall so obsessively in love with an entertainer. But alas. It is what it is. And not-yet-tired-of-losing Republicans, on the brink of an important election, seemed to think — ‘Hey! We know how we’ll convince people to vote for us: we’ll make up bizarre, straight-up goofy, outright weird rumors about the most famous person in the world right now!’ I just do not happen to think that’s a particularly great strategy.

Secondly — and worst of all — the entire conspiracy was blatantly, obviously, inarguably false. Everyone should have known that. The Super Bowl came and went with no proposal or endorsement, making those right-wing “truth-seekers” who developed an ulcer over the Swift/Kelce “psyop” look absurdly foolish.

So often, this is what happens when we fall for unfounded and unnecessary conspiracies — we discredit ourselves needlessly in the eyes of the public. We promote our strange conjecture about the NFL or Jewish space lasers or chemtrails like fact and then scratch our heads when no one takes us seriously anymore.

Conspiracies usually refer to a secretive plot or scheme by some mysterious cabal of globalists or elitists — the almighty “They” — who allegedly control every lever of society to manipulate humanity. While such conspiracies occasionally crop up in real life, the overly paranoid, conspiracy-sensitive mind begins to presume the existence of government plots behind everything — before any viable proof appears. If something — anything — goes wrong, the conspiracy-addled doubter knows, at once, it must have been intentional.

Right-wing media delights in this kind of rabbit-hole theorizing. Unfortunately, the trend isn’t new to Elon Musk’s “X.” Robert Welch, the discredited founder of the disreputable John Birch Society (JBS), introduced it as a pernicious influence that latched onto conservative intellectualism in the post-World War II era. William F. Buckley, who played a key role in distancing conservatism from figures like Welch, described the “Birch fallacy” as the erroneous “assumption that you can infer subjective intention from objective consequence: we lost China to the Communists, therefore the President of the United States and the Secretary of State wished China to go to the Communists.”

Such thinking still haunts the Right in America. Indeed, the John Birch Society continues to stall our efforts to limit federal power, spending, and terms of office due to their paranoia about the wholesale corruption of the United States government. The Birch fallacy never fully died; we still infer subjective intention from objective consequence. If a train tips over, if a boat wrecks, if New York City suffers a deadly terrorist attack, THEY wished for it to happen, Welch's intellectual successors inform us. If the U.S. appeared to land a man on the moon, that's because the CABAL faked it. (One of the perennial shortcomings of the conspiracy-“woke” Right, of course, is its failure to answer who, exactly, is behind all this international string-pulling. I.e., who rigged the NFL? No response.)

To be clear, we, at Convention of States, believe that Washington, D.C., is corrupt. As constitutionally-minded originalists, we tend to be very wary of centralized power. Moreover, we seek to reform the federal government. However, there is a massive difference between believing that the administrative state is real and must be dealt with, as we do, and being paralyzed to the point of inaction in the face of an almost mythical cabinet of government manipulators who supposedly control the weather and wield electromagnetic radiation to dominate the minds of the American public. 

Having lost faith in the institutions our Founders created — institutions that could, if properly utilized, help steer our country back on track — JBS has turned its conspiracy machine against Convention of States. We must be careful of how quickly we jump on every new unproven hunch on the internet lest we lend credence to their oversuspicious, baseline argument against us. 

As Senator Rick Santorum pointed out, “The whole point of COS is, at some level, you have to trust institutions to do the right thing. You have to trust people to do their duty.” Alternatively, “The whole point behind the vast majority of conspiracy theories is that institutions are inherently corrupt… and we are not to trust these institutions. The problem with that is that the whole reason we want to move forward is to actually call [an Article V] convention” — a Founding Era, constitutionally-enshrined institution of government — “and, as you know,” he continued, people are crippled “by the fear of what could happen” because they presume “everything’s corrupt.”

“Anytime we feed into a conspiracy theory,” the Convention of States Senior Advisor continued, we are contributing to the “bane of our existence at COS.” “The more we look like we’re saying, “No, no, believe in us, but, oh, by the way, we agree with all these other conspiracy theories,’ we’re just shooting ourselves in the foot.”

Of course, there is a time and place for conspiracy theories. But they are dangerous. Any movement that indulges in conspiratorial thinking cannot be taken seriously and will, ultimately, fail to make a meaningful effort to achieve its goals. Yes, we understand that the government is corrupt, but for as long as we have Article V, we must have faith that these constitutional processes will work if we use them.

Until then — until we call the first-ever Article V convention and restore liberty and self-governance to America — I, for one, don’t have the time to fret about whether Taylor Swift’s romance with Travis Kelce is inorganic or not. There’s so much work to be done: let’s set the hypothesizing aside and focus on the fight at hand.