Spike is Best

In conversation with a priest many years ago, he described a group of people this way: "They are like the flea on the elephant's head that thinks it's the elephant."

While I can't remember the particular group of people we were talking about, I remember being dissatisfied with the image, for it seemed to miss something, yet it sufficed.

Not having a better image right now, it certainly works as an analogy for conspiracists.

Conspiracism is fueled by spiritual narcissism. Conspiracism is the spiritual narcissist's self-absolution of his own delay in meeting reality, and then more and more a justification of it. He comes upon a future scenario for a pandemic written by some think tank a number of years ago, and says, "Ah ha! See here!"

Completely failing to realize the very ordinary realization that if a number of people from a number of expertises from around the world come together to produce what a scenario for a world pandemic might look like, chances are, they'll get it right by at least 8 out of 10 - thus proving, well, you know, their expertise - the conspiracist then proceeds to do precisely what he is accusing these supposed conspiring elites of doing. He applies and offloads an entire unspoken and hidden bias, motive, and agenda to his spoken (and error-riddled) interpretation and basically says, "Now let me write you up a future scenario! Listen to ME!"

And thanks to the previous work of the think tank which he hijacks, he begins to initiate his cult base by the narcotic of get me in on this super secret knowledge! In the Christian-Fundamentalist version this super secret knowledge is equated to "vigilance".

The look here this number-by-number future scenario - isn't it creepy! shtick by the conspiricist is precisely a page out of his own playbook. This is why the conspiricist is a consistent failure at meeting reality.

One result of the failure to meet reality at this particular moment is the psychopathic imposition of the risk of death onto other people in a pandemic by flouting safety measures. Flouting them out of narcissistic fideism makes it all the worse.

Conspiricists hear the words of experts who are merely bearing a message and they stone them. They stone the messenger. When they then meet resistance from people who feel the completely reasonable response to being offered arsenic to drink is to use their reason and say no, these conspiricists then bless themselves as martyrs and cry about how they are the messenger being stoned.

There is a reason why Jesus compared false prophets to vultures.