{"id":64665,"date":"2026-07-14T14:07:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T18:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=64665"},"modified":"2026-07-14T14:07:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T18:07:32","slug":"the-source-of-the-conspiracy-theories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=64665","title":{"rendered":"The Source Of The Conspiracy Theories"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, The American Thinker<\/a> posted an article about conspiracy theories in America.<\/p>\n

The article includes the following meme:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

Five years ago, suggesting that COVID-19 may have originated in a laboratory rather than a wet market could earn someone the label \u201cconspiracy theorist.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Discussing vaccine injuries could result in a post being removed from social media. Questioning prolonged school closures, forced masking, or vaccine mandates often led to accusations of being \u201canti-science.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today, many of those once-forbidden discussions have become part of public debate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean every alternative theory is correct.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But it raises an important question.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What happens when institutions repeatedly assure the public that they are unquestionably right, only to revise, retreat, or quietly abandon those assurances months or years later?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The answer may be found in Rasmussen Reports\u2019 latest survey.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nearly half of Americans \u2014 45 percent \u2014 now believe it is at least somewhat likely that COVID-19 was deliberately released as part of an effort to reduce the world\u2019s population.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pause and consider that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not five percent.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not fifteen percent.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nearly half of the country.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am not arguing that this belief is true. I have seen no evidence that COVID was part of a deliberate depopulation plan, and the Rasmussen survey does not make that claim.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But public opinion tells us something equally important.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Americans increasingly assume the worst about the institutions that once enjoyed their confidence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In my recent Rasmussen Reports column, I argued that the greatest casualty of COVID was trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

The real lesson of Rasmussen\u2019s poll isn\u2019t that nearly half of Americans believe a depopulation theory. The real lesson is that nearly half of Americans now consider such a theory plausible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Those are not the same<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ironically, the officials who warned most loudly about \u201cdangerous conspiracy theories\u201d seldom paused to ask why those theories were gaining traction. People rarely abandon trusted institutions without cause.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That should alarm every physician, scientist, public health official, and elected leader across America.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Distrust doesn\u2019t arise in a vacuum. It is cultivated when certainty supplants humility and questions are treated as threats rather than as opportunities for inquiry.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Trust is the foundation upon which modern medicine rests. Once that foundation is fractured, rebuilding it may take generations\u00ad\u2014far longer than it took to destroy it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Skepticism is healthy within reason, but trust is also important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, The American Thinker posted an article about conspiracy theories in America. The article includes the following meme: The article reports: Five years ago, suggesting that COVID-19 may have originated in a laboratory rather than a wet market could … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19798,12609,444,11239,19799],"class_list":["post-64665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-covid-19","tag-rasmussen-reports","tag-the-american-thinker","tag-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64668,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64665\/revisions\/64668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}