America Is Letting Paranoia Win
The spread of QAnon and other conspiracy theories shows how easily people turn to superstition and panic when the world falls apart
Our baseline state is fear. This fall, as the Halloween decorations are starting to come out, the news feels like a nightmare from which we can’t wake up: The West Coast is blanketed by a hellish, apocalyptic red sky. Families flee their burning houses with their shoes melting on their feet. We walk through life, masked like medieval plague doctors, while a virus kills hundreds of thousands of people (the equivalent of one 9/11 attack every three days). Police violence and racism have always been part of American life, but we can now see it happening, as videos of Black people being killed by police are omnipresent on social media. Scientists may have found aliens on Venus, but we may have a much harder time living on this planet, as the climate change–induced collapse of our own ecosystem becomes increasingly likely.
It shouldn’t be surprising, under these circumstances, that people are allowing their fear to get the best of them, and more and more Americans are allowing their anxiety to blossom into outright paranoia. Talking about politics means entangling oneself in a thicket of conspiracy theories about rigged elections and elites deciding…
