We are just weeks away from another contentious American election, which means we are just weeks away from roughly half of the American population savoring a great victory and the other half suffering a great loss. This being the case, we are, in all likelihood, just weeks away from the birth of new conspiracy theories. Why? Because conspiracy theories are for losers.<\/p>\n
I suppose I\u2019d better explain that. I\u2019ll do so by way of a few building blocks.<\/p>\n
First, conspiracy theories are about power. Specifically, they are about the use and abuse of power\u2014how power is used to benefit a small number of people at the expense of many others. Whether the theories prove to be true (e.g. Watergate) or false (e.g. Protocols of the Elders of Zion<\/em>) they are either meant to expose how powerful people are misusing power or to unveil the individuals who secretly hold the reins of power.<\/p>\n Second, because conspiracy theories concern power, they tend to be political in nature. Whether or not their proponents actually know and admit it, such theories usually advance some kind of a political agenda. The \u201ctruther\u201d theories around 9\/11 were meant to discredit President Bush while<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We are just weeks away from another contentious American election, which means we are just weeks away from roughly half of the American population savoring a great victory and the other half suffering a great loss. This being the case, we are, in all likelihood, just weeks away from the birth of new conspiracy theories. Why? Because conspiracy theories are for losers. I suppose I\u2019d better explain that. I\u2019ll do so by way of a few building blocks. First, conspiracy \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":25547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[303,3167,1376],"class_list":["post-25544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tim-challies","tag-articles","tag-conspiracy-theory","tag-politics","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/shutterstock_1192132651-1-1.jpg?fit=910%2C320&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25544"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25549,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25544\/revisions\/25549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}