Conspiracy theories

Instead of going down rabbit holes of cyber space, maybe it’s better to get involved in our communities and in the political process?

Maybe it’s better to address the attacks on political and economic freedom we know are occurring such as the militarization of the US border, mass incarceration, corporate control over both political parties, militarized policing, criminalization of protests, lethal fprce and secret police used against protesters in Portland, the housing crisis, the healthcare crisis, the ecological crisis…etc?

There is plenty to work on.

The caricatures of billionaire super-heroes (Gates and global health, Musk and electric cars and space travel…etc) on the one hand; and billionaire villains conspiring against the world on the other hand, are flip sides of the same coin, in that our focus is on personalities.

Maybe it’s better to focus not on heroes and villains but on the task of revolutionizing political and economic systems so that extraordinary talent and intelligence don’t result in extreme wealth but instead more widely boost the general welfare.

It’s a sort of superstition or magical thinking to believe that the common good is best served thru extreme, individualistic selfishness

A longer message unintentionally deleted. You can look up conspiracy theories about Gates and vaccines. Probably less googleable is how they connect with rightwing, reactionary orientations, linked in US history with Christian fundamentalism., and antisemitism here and in Nazi Europe.

Notions of billionaire villains, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, billionaire super-heroes are two sides of the same coin, in that they focus on personalities.

The actual issue, generally, is social systems, though dysfunction within those systems can allow deranged people into positions of power, as you know.
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That said, most harm results from the emergent properties of the flaws in political, economic, and cultural systems, not from extraordinarily malevolent people.

Most of us are in the middle of the bell curve along a continuum of kindness and love vs cruelty, hate, and indifference, irrespective of our socioeconomic status, gender, religion, race…etc.

Much more harm results from indifference than from hate, especially regarding human impacts on nonhuman life.

Hence the ongoing need to improve economic, political, and cultural systems.