Any rumored recent sightings of the swarthy Raoul in a trendy Montreal coffee shop? And in this hot summer a woman in a polka dot dress is always stylish choice at an assassination. Anyone see her?
All echoes of decades old conspiracy theories now augmented by social media posts about the Trump shooting this summer.
Did you read the breathless report that a Secret Service counter sniper wrote on the forum 4chan that he was given orders by the head of the Secret Service not to shoot at the would-be assassin at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally. The now bankrupt Alex Jones still managed to blast out an email with a subject line that read in part: “Desperate Deep State Will Try to Assassinate Trump Again”.
Or how about a completely different spin on the shooting. In an X post from the Monday after Pennsylvania touting photographic evidence. “This image of Trump was taken today. There is absolutely nothing wrong with his ear, and it has zero damage: FROM A BULLET. Everything about Trump is a con or a grift.” 26,000 likes and 8,600 shares followed.
Just let this factoid seep in from an Associated Press story. “A top political adviser to Democratic donor and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman wrote in an email to journalists that the shooting was "encouraged and maybe even staged." Whoa.
America is rife with conspiracy theories today. Lizard men, flat earth, the illuminati, but nothing grabs the imagination like an old-fashioned political hit.
Most of us can recount the JFK conspiracy theories but if you can identify the others at the top of the story, you are scaring me. Throw away those yellowing manila folders jammed with aging, fading newspaper clips.
James Earl Ray, who shot Martin Luther King, Jr., says he was a decoy set up by a group of conspirators including the person he said was King’s actual killer, a mystery man known to Ray only as Raoul, whom he first met in Montreal in 1967. The plot, Ray claimed, was bankrolled by a Memphis businessman with ties to organized crime.
Robert F. Kennedy assassination buffs have been searching for 60 years for a mysterious woman in a polka dot dress who was spotted in the Ambassador Hotel before the shooting, talking with assassin Sirhan. Shortly after the gunfire she was now seen running from the hotel with a man at her side saying “we shot him!”
Presidential candidate George Wallace never believed the man who shot him five times acted alone.
“When something as significant as an assassination attempt occurs, it seems too important to result solely from a lone, unhinged gunman,” Greg Osborne recently wrote in the Hill newspaper. “Instead, seeking comfort from the thought that our lives are not subject to such random events, the human mind gravitates toward the idea that a powerful, shadowy group must be responsible and that we are smart enough to discover it.”
Why do people believe all of this crap? Because some of us have brains that are wired differently. I am looking at you through your basement window.
Watch Neuroscientist Shannon Odell with her take below.
Look for more videos from her online. She is a hoot.
Some of you may be angry at me for dissing your deeply held beliefs. Let me make it up to you. Have I got a movie for you! Dish up some popcorn, settle down on the couch and hit play. Best if you watch it alone, with the blinds closed.
In the late 70’s I moved to Seattle to work in television news. I couldn’t wait to look up at the Space Needle from the park below. Not to fulfill some long simmering tourism checklist. It was because of the “Parallax View” a movie starring Warren Beatty as a journalist who attends a political fundraiser in the Space Needle where he witnesses the shooting of a U.S. Senator.
The day after the Trump shooting, the movie was available on Amazon for a few bucks. What movie isn’t ?
So, if you are in the mood to dabble in conspiracy theories settle back and watch. Witnesses to the shooting die, the CIA lingers in the background and soon the reporter is being tailed. There’s even a scene with a U.S. Senate star chamber brushing off any conspiracy. It might make some of you look over your shoulder when you walk to the grocery store. Look for guys in a suit sporting sunglasses. Mirrored ones are a dead giveaway.
I’ve asked Amazon to track anyone who watches it multiple times. If you watch it more than three times, we will ask mental health experts to check in on you. More than that and the Secret Service gets the list. You’ll fit the profile of an assassin. Not a trained killer, but like John Hinkley Jr., Mark Chapman or Thomas Crooks, just a kook.
Haven’t watched the movie and pay no attention to conspiracy theories however watching Trump on a daily basis is quite a movie. The things he says show that this man is just not quite right. A flawed man. How is there the middle at this point?
Confirmation bias is pretty good explanation! Nothing like the comfort you feel hanging out in an echo chamber :) Have to segue this to the "drinking" culture = also promoted and continued by confirmation bias!