Thomas A. Firey: Conspiracies of cloud seeding and election fraud – Herald-Mail Media
In the 1980s, Washington County was abuzz with rumors of cloud seeding. The county had suffered several dry summers and people began saying that planes were spraying chemicals to disperse the clouds whenever a storm loomed. The rumors made no sense: Seeding causes clouds to rain, not dissolve. And no one had a reasonable story for who was behind the scheme or why.
The cloud seeding tales reflect a quirk of human nature: When calamity occurs, people are inclined to blame it on some nefarious plot. It doesn’t matter that these conspiracy theories often are so wild that they should be laughed off, or originate from people with a shaky grasp on reality.
So it’s not surprising that Donald Trump’s supporters have been blaming his election loss on a conspiracy of voting fraud. Depending on the specific rumor, the conspiracy is being orchestrated by some combination of Democrats, Republicans, bureaucrats at all levels, Trump’s own appointees, China, George Soros, illegal immigrants, tech companies, big business, the media, and satanic pedophilic cannibals (no, really).
Let’s be clear: There’s no conspiracy. Specific claims of fraud (usually originating in the wackiest anonymous corners of the internet) have been repeatedly investigated by federal, state and local election officials and law enforcement since Nov. 4 and — with a few isolated exceptions, some involving Trump supporters— have been found baseless. Nonetheless, Trump backers have taken their case to court some 60 times, only to scale back their claims upon learning they could be sanctioned for lying, or else had their suits thrown out for lack of evidence or because the suits were so incompetently assembled.
(An aside to Trump supporters: When you ask for judges to rule on facts and the law and not on politics, don’t be angry when those judges rule against you when you’re wrong on the facts and the law.)
Detailed findings of these investigations and court proceedings are readily available to the public, yet the election fraud conspiracy theory persists. And on Jan. 6, some of its believers — egged on by Trump himself — attacked police officers and invaded and desecrated the U.S. Capitol to show support for Trump allies in Congress who were trying to throw out lawful election results from several states.
Make no mistake that Trump lost the election, and why. He’s never been a popular president; his approval rating has usually hovered in the low 40s. He is divisive, repulsing voters who might have supported him.
He is a threat to national security, making foreign and military policy on whim, antagonizing allies like Canada, Japan and Germany, encouraging and sharing national secrets with rivals like Russia, and inducing Iran to restart its atomic weapons program while “falling in love with” North Korea’s ruler as he builds nuclear missiles that can strike the United States.
His economic policies are no better than those of his predecessor, Barack Obama. Unemployment did reach a low of 3.5% under Trump, but it decreased no faster under him than Obama, and it now stands at 6.7%. By the time he leaves office, Trump will have run up nearly as much government debt in four years as Obama did in eight. The Code of Federal Regulations remains the same 186,000 pages it was when Obama left office. Trump has done nothing to address the coming fiscal crises of Social Security and Medicare. And the U.S. economy is now mired in recession.
What probably hurt Trump most among voters was his mishandling the coronavirus pandemic. Consider: The United States has 4% of the world’s population, yet 19% of COVID deaths. The disease is the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer, and 400,000 Americans will have died of it by the time Trump leaves office later this month.
Given all that, plus Trump’s ethical issues, abuses of power, attempts to violate the Constitution, efforts to expand government control over the economy, and his disordered personality, it’s no wonder the majority of American voters chose last November to make Joe Biden president. That’s not a conspiracy; it’s a hope for something better.
What worries Trump’s supporters is that, with Biden in the White House and Democrats in charge of Congress, America will turn away from conservative, constitutional and Christian governance. But what was conservative, pro-Constitution, or Christ-like about Trump’s presidency?
If people are worried about Democratic Party control, then they should demand reform of the Republican Party that so willingly abandoned its small-government principles and embraced Trump for the last five years. If Republican officeholders and party leaders had disciplined his behavior early on, he might have had a successful term, won reelection, and left the nation better off than it is now. Sycophantic Republicans are as much to blame for the nation’s calamity as Trump himself, and they should never be trusted in leadership roles again.
A conspiracy theory isn’t needed to explain Trump’s defeat; only Republicans’ rejection of their party’s principles and basic reality. No rallies, lawsuits or internet rumors will change that. The only way to restore the party is through the hard work of admitting its terrible errors and removing the people who so badly led it astray.
Thomas A. Firey is a native of Washington County and a public policy analyst.
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