The conspiracy theories make us look bad

[iemanja]

Why is it so hard to accept that someone tried to shoot Trump? Why do so many of you need to concoct convoluted theories to explain it away? WaPo has an article about it. The internet is awash with it. They are calling it BlueAnon. BlueAnon, like QAnon.

Minutes after Saturday’s shooting at a Trump rally in Butler, Pa., liberals began flooding social media platforms with conspiracy theories. They claimed the blood on former president Donald Trump’s ear was from a theatrical gel pack; that the shooting was a “false flag,” perhaps coordinated by the Secret Service in collaboration with the Trump campaign; that the scene of a bloodied Trump raising his fist under an American flag was “#staged.”

“When did the Secret Service start allowing the President under duress to tell them ‘to wait’, then stand up to be seen by the crowd fist-pumping?” one user posted on X. “Can you blame me for thinking this is fake?”

The shooting threw into overdrive a phenomenon dubbed “BlueAnon” — a play on the right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon — that refers to liberal conspiracy theories online. As more Americans lose trust in mainstream institutions and turn to partisan commentators and influencers for information, experts say they are seeing a big uptick in the manufacture and spread of BlueAnon conspiracy theories, a sign that the communal warping of reality is spreading well beyond the right.

“The good-versus-evil paradigm of QAnon has really taken hold of the anti-Trump movement and you’re seeing two sides that feel like they are fighting a battle between good and evil,” said Mike Rothschild, author of “The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult and Conspiracy Theory of Everything.” “It’s coming from major leftist and liberal ‘resistance’ influencers who believe that Trump is so devious that he’d fake his own assassination attempt in order to help his campaign.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/14/blueanon-conspiracy-theories-trump-rally-shooting/

All this stuff is an embarrassment. Do you really want to be equated to the QAnon followers? Please, don't be like them. Something bad happened. It's not that complicated. Other presidents have had assassination attempts before. It happens. Guns proliferate, and the killer was a conservative with lots of rounds of ammunition. It's a miracle that more politicians haven't been killed. Lord knows lots of school children have been.