That’s why I said highly improbable. But if they became states it would be the end of Canadian politics. It would be all American politics at that point. edit: typo

Currently it seems like there is a highly improbable but mathematically possible outcome where the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois form a government. Canada gets to be the 51st state and Quebec gets to be the 52nd state. 💀

Let’s get that last seat! edit: typos

How long ago was that? If you did that to someone younger now, who hasn’t heard of it, they would probably believe you without asking if it was real. The fact Iran-Contra is real is neither here nor there. What’s changed is how people engage with conspiracy theories. We should want people to think critically and ask for evidence.

People already dismissed conspiracy theories in general. I’m old enough to remember a time when conspiracism was a fringe belief system back in the 90’s and 2000’s when I was a kid.

The right-wing infosphere has normalized conspiracism. Fox News got people to believe there was a conspiracy where there was none so the Republicans could enact the equivalent of a conspiracy in broad daylight. TDS, Trump derangement syndrome, is the go to accusation for the MAGA movement against their opposition. Calling people conspiracy theorists would probably cause a bit of cognitive dissonance for Republican voters.

Some conspiracies do exist, and those who are part of them ALWAYS deny them.

All kinds of people deny conspiracy theories usually because of the lack of evidence and attempts at grifting. Trump never denies involvement in Jan 6th, he mostly lies about the nature of the attack on the capital. He intentionally mischaracterizes the attack as peaceful despite the deaths.

Has Putin lost any support for all the defenestration and underwear poisoning? People used to think dictators would lose support if dictators killed people in the street. The truth is if you control the narrative you can get away with killing people and if you don’t you can’t get away with doing nothing wrong.

I’m going to fast forward through the fact that the entirety of the above comment was full of nothing but baseless conspiracy theories pretending that they aren’t conspiracy theories and that some other conspiracy theories are the actual conspiracy theories. Own it.

I’m fast forwarding because the comment has completely missed my argument’s actual point.

So I live in a world where the rich and the powerful can commit whatever crimes they want and be elected world leaders.

My argument’s position is not that governments couldn’t do this in theory. My argument’s position is that they have no reason to do this in practice. They don’t need to make our deaths look like suicides to kill us. They can kill us.

They can kill us and lose no support whatsoever in a fair and free election. And it’s way easier than covering it up, because they can use the investigations as a talking point in their rallies without the downside of consequences because there are no consequences. The people still think it’s true because they are trapped in information silos. And they all accuse everyone else of having TDS, Trump derangement syndrome. edit: typos

this is the language of the powerful this is how they communicate to us not to resist and blow the whistle.

So I live in a world where the rich and the powerful can commit whatever crimes they want and be elected world leaders.

They could have this person killed and claim credit for it and still get elected. Trump publicly ordered a mob to descend on the capital and they killed cops. Now he’s president again.

Critical thinking is a skill. Anyone can learn it. We can measure a person’s ability by giving them tests and throwing a wide array of problems at them.

Trump isn’t just being facetious when he says could get away with shooting someone in public and not lose a single supporter. He is largely correct. The bulk of his supporters are people in the MAGA cult who blindly believe in any conspiracy theory they see on facebook. They would either not believe he did it or if he did that it was justified.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-fifth-avenue-comment/

So let’s continue to engage in some critical thinking.

What are the rich and powerful communicating by jumping through these extra hoops? That they can have us killed but only if they make it look like a suicide?

how many more of them are you going to watch die before you rise from your chair?

If it turns out that this person or a revelation that all the people who conspiracy theorists assert were murdered were to come to light tomorrow do you think anything would change? We know who Trump is. We know who many of these powerful people are. We keep electing them. There has been no up rising despite knowing about their connection to Epstein and other criminal activities.

You are serving their agenda by sowing doubt.

I’m arguing in favor of the current official narrative so if anything I’m sowing trust, but I digress. What are they gaining they don’t already have by me arguing this? If a government did this they won’t be able to keep it a secret for long, see the recent Signal chats, and they won’t face the blow back they deserve, see the last decade of history.

What’s happened here is that reality is outpacing the conspiracy’s capacity to be disconcerting and distressing. Conspiracy takes after narrative. This idea that powerful elites need to hide their crimes to maintain power is almost comforting. There’s a way for good to defeat evil that elites have to respect or face consequences. Unlike in narrative where the revealing of a truth is met by public outcry and backlash, in reality the truth is met with a doubling down on candidates and deeply held beliefs no matter how awful they are.

So I live in a world where the rich and the powerful can commit whatever crimes they want and be elected world leaders.

Conspiracy theorists live in a world where the rich and powerful can commit whatever crimes they want and be elected world leaders and then vengefully kill their accusers, but make it look like a suicide for some reason.

Seems like the same thing with extra steps. Why do people think they would want or need to do the extra steps?

Accelerationism has made things worse for everyone. Now we have a US president who has declared his intention to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip of Palestinians. If you want things to get better then you have to act in a way that is useful to that end. That means voting for parties that are to the left of fascists and that have a chance of winning. In the US, that’s the Democrats.

I used to think that as well. Now I think that modern conservatism is founded on a rejection of modernity. Conservatives do not want to be a break to make sure progress is slow but steady. They want to turn the car around and drive the other way. People who are willing to try new things aren’t above pointing out something was a mistake. Progressives can try a new idea and then reject it based on new evidence. Progressives do no need a mechanism that is constantly trying to wrench the steering wheel out of their hands and turn the car around in an endless exercise of driving in circles.

What a mix of progressive and conservative people actually leads to is an absolute deadlock in government. Conservatives are not simply hesitant to try new things. They would rather die than see the world change. And they would rather blame their problems on immigrants, people of color, lgbtq+ people, anyone other than their political views that are derailing our economy and the planet’s environment.

We can have disagreements on policy and implementations. Two sides to an argument can allow a person to walk down the middle. But that’s not what we have currently with progressives and conservatives. There is plenty of room for discussion on how to go about solving a problem like climate change. But that isn’t the kind of discussion we are having with conservatives. Conservatives are fundamentally opposed to the idea that there are existential problems that need to be solved. And the only problems that they do see are other people.