Forget Q-Anon with its outrageous conspiracy theories that no matter how bizarre people will believe. Most of us hear Q-Anon and switch our brains off.
But a headline, “Bridge tragedy spurs conspiracists,” on an editorial from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch caught my eye.
“The message emanating from across the political right in the days after the tragic collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore could be summarized as: Wokeness did it!” the Dispatch noted.
“Yes, populist politicians and right-wing media figures have really, truly suggested that the deadly bridge collapse was somehow the result of racial diversity, the Biden administration’s immigration policies and (figure this one out) its increased infrastructure spending. As the satirist Dave Barry likes to say, we are not making this up.”
Of course the usual Looney-Toons like Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested it might be an “intentional attack” before anyone knew anything about the incident.
It didn’t take long for other right-wingers to bring DEI — diversity, equity, inclusion — to the forefront, in the mold of Critical Race Theory.
“DEI did this,” tweeted Florida Congressional candidate Anthony Sabatini. Say what? Say how?
According to the Post-Dispatch, Utah gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman, currently a Republican state legislator tweeted “DEI = DIE,” his rationale being one of the port’s six commissioners happens to be a Black woman whose biography mentions her support of DEI policies.
“This is what happens when you have governors who prioritize diversity over the well-being of citizens,” his campaign tweeted.
Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo noted “The potential for wrongdoing or the potential for foul play given the wide-open border.”
For American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp it was whether the collision could have been caused by unqualified workers due to COVID lockdowns.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., said wasteful federal spending was to blame, especially from Biden’s infrastructure and climate reform package.
“We’re not spending it on roads and bridges … it was mostly Green New Deal,” she said, “instead of things that are the government’s purpose, just like this.”
Two problems: One, the Biden package (which Mace voted against, before returning to her home state to take credit for the resulting projects) has in fact added some $110 billion to road and bridge infrastructure and another $17 billion specifically to port infrastructure — this after the Trump administration’s utter failure to achieve any of its stated goals on infrastructure.
“And two, there’s been no indication there was anything structurally wrong with the bridge before it was struck by a 100,000-ton ship.”
Unsaid by the Post-Dispatch but floating around nonetheless was the suggestion it was the fault of the Black mayor and state governor.
Apparently, it just wouldn’t have happened if white guys were running things.
I was on Facebook the day the collision occurred and already there were conspiracy theories popping up on the forum.
One person suggested the ship should have turned away from the supporting structure. OK, there’s a thing called steerage speed. Below that speed, a vessel can’t turn as it makes forward progress. If the MV Davi was under steerage speed, there was no turning possible.
There was talk of a terrorist attack. Another popped up with the idea that it was all part of crippling the economy as part of the takeover by the New World Order, described by Wikipedia this way “The New World Order (NWO) is a term used in several conspiracy theories which hypothesize a secretly emerging totalitarian world government.
The common theme in conspiracy theories about a New World Order is that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually achieve world domination and rule the world through an authoritarian one-world government — which will replace sovereign nation-states — and an all-encompassing propaganda whose ideology hails the establishment of the New World Order as the culmination of history’s progress.”
OK, folks, listen up.
At 75 years old I’ve heard for years about the New World Order and the one-world government it would bring.
It hasn’t happened. Nothing close to it has happened.
Which leads me to a couple conclusions — the New World Order doesn’t exist, or it is the most inefficient and inconsequential movement in history.
Doesn’t matter — it had nothing to do with a ship hitting a bridge in Maryland.
— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Kendall Stanley: Oh puleeeeze!