Given that most of the conspiracy theories I look at have a solid connection between the baseless theory and a direct fundraiser for the promoter of the baseless theory, it’s no surprise that money issues pop up that strike my fancy.
Starting with the gematria grift, the bulk of the activity is centered around a demographic that appears to be a younger crowd. The age that is interested in playing sports as well as enjoying live events. Simply put, younger people with dispensable income seek out entertainment to fulfill their social needs. If you really think gematria works for improved success in your gambling endeavors, well you just go ahead and go crazy and gematrify to your hearts content. But don’t try to push the bullshit parts on to the rest of us. You can play with your toys while the adults figure out what to do about the important stuff.
Within that important stuff is an ongoing argument about what do about debt. At the extremes neither the gung ho U.S. left wing give everyone freebies nor the gung ho U.S. right wing give more to the already rich people ideas work. Free money gets you rampant inflation in the future. Letting the financial sector run unregulated gets you global financial crises with too many corporations too big to fail just doing whatever they want.
John Oliver’s latest episode was about student loan debt. And the nasty trap of debt that can be next to impossible to get away from. Things like taking on huge student loans for a degree that ultimately doesn’t give you the employment edge you expect. Once you’ve paid your university for the courses with the money you borrowed, they really don’t give a damn about what happens to you. Unless you’re lucky enough to score a cushy job then they’ll fundraise the hell out of that section of the alumni, you included.
For a long time the tug of war between the main ideologies has gotten us to where we are now. And the politicians that don’t call out baseless conspiracies for what they are also get to capitalize on the tug of war. Instead of getting votes regarding how much entertainment you can get with disposable income it’s much easier to do political fundraising off how a lot, an awful lot, of people are financially screwed.
Although I indicate the demographic for gematria grift is younger with gambling money to spare, there is and will be a set of people that have aged, made bad decisions and instead of student loan debt they have “I can’t pay my bills because my job is shitty and I refuse to actually settle down and try an honest days work” debt. To be read in sarcasm font - employers just loooveeee how a bunch of people want unemployment compensation from day one and another bunch read on the internet that their value (salary) can be determined because some bogus headhunter site said the overinflated amount is true.
The losers in the tug of war are the average person, you could call them the middle class. They aren’t truly the middle class anymore, so you can only call them that in name. The gap between well off people who want no regulation on their often ill gotten gains and the woe is me sorry losers grows every day. And the average person who is stuck in a decent job as far as pay scale goes has a miserable work/life balance because 20% of the people do 80% of the work. And the best option, “Well just find a new job!”, is a lateral move that ends up being the same. And all the time the chances to get into debt keeps growing. Shit happens. Kid goes to college that’s way pricier now. Medical issue bankruptcy. Fancy wedding Dad really can’t afford. Messy divorce.
The social media atmosphere seems to enjoy the tug of war. There are clear violations of community standards that have nothing happen to the perpetrator. There are ticky tack penalties assessed for the stupidest reasons. Those that report genuine violations are frustrated. Those that get hit by unreasonable penalties are pissed. They are all losers in the social media tug of war to pick a side, when maybe they just want a new piercing, a pet iguana and other chances to be an individual in a society determined to mold them into one of the two extremes. And maybe have a dignified retirement to look forward to.
There is an attraction to baseless conspiracies as a solution to financial problems. And maybe even more than current salary and level of enjoyment the soul crushing thoughts of being buried in debt are a larger factor. There’s even a direct “get out of debt free Monopoly card conspiracy”, bypassing the get rich quick schemes:
https://www.adl.org/glossary/nesaragesara
Just to get by, 20% of the people doing 80% of the work can work for a time. In a democratic system, 20% people f the voters can’t vote for 80% of the people. That’s why we have so much news about topics like gerrymandering, voter suppression, and insurrections. Gullible and financially desperate people get to vote too. And they don’t really care about thinking critically about the long term consequences. So they just latch on to the story that gives them the most hope, regardless of the overwhelming subjective evidence that will show it will result in just one of the bogus extremes. The swing states and true moderates and those topics. Those are the people that get the lovely choice of trying to mitigate the damage and going with the lesser of two evils.
Regardless of the outcome later this year, the U.S. loses. People vote with their hearts and pocketbooks not with facts. Like an election is a big football game that you get to replay even before the next big game in four years. The final whistle has blown, but the opposing team is already lined up to run another play because the game is being protested.
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