Don't believe the malarkey: Get informed, vote responsibly

Why do so many people believe malarkey?

I am having difficulty understanding why the United States electorate has so many ill-informed people who believe in all manner of lies, conspiracies and ideas. For example, a poll shows that 49 percent of Republicans and 52 percent of Trump voters believe that Democrats were involved in sex trafficking and pedophilia, a QAnon conspiracy that Trump recently embraced. Trump is a known liar with 30,000 lies recorded during his presidency by the Washington Post.

Yet millions still believe he tells them that the 2020 election was stolen and that he is the legitimate president, not Joe Biden. He tells this lie despite the fact that former Cyber Security Director, Chris Krebs said it was one of the most secure elections ever. Politifact reported in June that repeated polls show that about 70% of Republicans say they don’t think Joe Biden is the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.

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The scary thing is that 299 of these election deniers are running for office in the midterm election according to the Washington Post, others put the number at more than 300. This includes Senate, House and key statewide offices. Those that are in safe Republican districts number 173 and likely will easily win. Another 52 will appear on the ballot in tightly contested races so if half of them win it means 200 election deniers, i.e., malarkey believers, will hold office. Republican voters in three states nominated election deniers in all federal and statewide races according to the Washington Post.

This Trump election lie led to a horrible Jan. 6 insurrection attack on the nation’s Capitol that has forever tarnished our democracy. Another poll in June 2022 revealed that 61 percent of Republicans believed that the events of Jan. 6 were a “legitimate protest.” One-hundred forty Capitol police were injured and some died in this attack to overthrow election results. Quite a protest but definitely illegitimate as several hundred insurrectionists have gone to prison for participation.

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Trump has claimed that former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Obama finally produced a long birth certificate in April of 2011 showing he was born in Hawaii. Despite this proof, a survey in 2014 found that 39 percent of Americans still believed that Obama was not born in the U.S.

A 2019 survey cited by David Corn’s My Land newsletter found that 56 percent of Republicans said it was possibly true or definitely true that Obama had been born in Kenya.

Then there is the Alex Jones Infowars program, which has a national audience of nearly 3.5 million who listen to his radio show broadcasts on 100 stations nationwide. His followers suck up lie after lie. He was fined nearly $50 million in the first trial for his allegation that the Sandy Hook School massacre was a staged event followed by a fine of $965 million in the second trial.   

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Another noteworthy lie claims that actors staged the Parkland High School shooting and that the Federal Government staged the 9/11 attacks. Jones was also a proponent of the Pizzagate hoax which claimed that there were tunnels beneath a Pizzeria in Washington, D.C., where powerful Democrats including Hilary Clinton sanctioned a web of child trafficking, pedophiles and murder. Edgar Welch believed this lie and came to rescue these sex slaves. He fired an assault gun in the restaurant for which he received a 36-month prison term.

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One political conspiracy theory and political movement on the far right advocates a nonsensical conspiracy known as the ‘Great Replacement’ theory which is the bizarre idea that people of color will replace the white race. Unfortunately, people have been murdered as a result of this belief. An 18-year-old killed 10 elderly Blacks in a supermarket in Buffalo, NY, and 33 people were murdered in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

QAnon is one of the premiere spreaders of lies and conspiracies  . They were big in spreading lies about pedophilia among Hollywood elites and Democrats and were in on the Pizzagate lie. The scary part in all of this is that so many people believe this malarkey. We definitely need a more informed electorate and a reason-grounded Republican Party like it was once upon a time. I hope that someday we don’t say once upon a time we had a democracy.

Lee W. Miller is a retired biologist supervisor with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and a contributing writer to the "The What’s Growing On" garden column in The Record.  

This article originally appeared on The Record: Election deniers, QAnon: How people believe so much misinformation