Paul Osgerby
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We all have a little conspiratorial appetite inside that we must feed from time to time. I, however, have quite the voracious hunger. It came to my attention this week when some sort of hyperactive documentary by small-filmmaker T. Patrick Murray surfaced one of the most heated conspiracies.
Fifteen years after his death, the acclaimed film director Stanley Kubrick somewhow admitted to faking the NASA Moon landing on July 20, 1969, in a studio somewhere in the desert. No matter how frenetic the narrative is, Kubrick (somewhat) plainly said it on tape — so how could it be false?
Another great one I stumbled upon: Our very own Gov. Terry Branstad has dementia. Why else would he forget to fund Iowa schools $55 million and opt for voicing his favor of heated sidewalks? And it fits perfectly in line with the grooming techniques he and his staff are on fashioning Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds into Branstad’s political doppelgänger. (The vanity.)
The best one I heard this week? Reported even internationally, Republican hopeful with the most controversial head of hair Donald Trump is the pawn of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. He’s her ploy to incite pandemonium in the GOP landscape.
It might seem just like some sort of satirical narrative in the election, like those of The Onion (the most credible news source in America). But this may just be a foolproof concoction of evidence.
Trump is no stranger to falsifying his own wealth, as Forbes pointed out. But what money really is to his name has no boundaries to the pools it funds, such as Clinton’s Senatorial campaigns. Meanwhile, both Bill and Hillary Clinton have been guests at Trump’s exclusive soirées — none more elite than his own wedding. Furthermore, there are records indicating Trump and Bill Clinton had a secret chat over the phone a month before Trump jumped in the presidential ring (looks like both Clintons are subject to obfuscated communications).
On the surface, Ole Donny may just seem the Republican firebrand of the nativist outcry from xenophobic Americans. He’s a stallion, with a political record of hopscotch from Republican to pro-choice to his newest model: populist. Republicans need a candidate frothing to push back the party’s strategic goals in 2013 to appeal to a diverse population, where (cue gasps) white people are no longer the ethnic majority in some of the largest cities, such as Atlanta or Baltimore or even the nation’s capital, according to the American Community Survey of 2013’s Herfindahl-Hirschman Index.
The GOP must be tired of bona fide candidates, such as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., whose voting record corroborates his xenophobic platform (what a drag it is, getting old). Even with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, usurping the celebrity’s Republican throne in Iowa, recently passing by him in polls, Trump surely won’t sputter because he has quite a sly tactic.
Every political jab the tycoon makes come on the heels of Democratic shortcomings; take, for instance, his hawking of Clinton’s email scandal as well as his border claims against Muslims one day after the White House address on ISIS. It’s the perfect coupling, really. This is particularly so, given Clinton may just as well be a Republican in the Democratic field with her “centrist” views.
She defended her support of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act back when Bill Clinton was commander in chief. She’s also a known friend of Wall Street, where Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has raised funds for her. Only after both her contenders voiced support of legalizing marijuana did she hop on the bandwagon. Clinton’s candidacy merely harks a 1990s neoliberal fantasy, and her instigator of chaos, Trump, only alleviates pressure from the far right.
