By Barley Lewis-McCabe

I started my day as I do every day, by looking at my phone in bed-a dangerous and self destructive habit. I would be better off vaping and doming myself at 7 in the morning. I instantly watched alt right lego man  Tucker Carlson host former house representative, and alleged 9/11 whistleblower Curt Weldon. I watched minute long intervals of them discussing 9/11 conspiracy theories. I further researched what they were saying, and spent the first hour of my morning reading about Able Danger, George Bush, and Mohamed Atta. At the end of my hour long intro to the alt right pipeline I realized something, not the truth about 9/11, but that this was a horrible way to start my day. 

My grandparents wake up with the sun, go into the living room, sit on their recliners and watch Fox News. No plans for the day, just wandering around and polluting the quiet with inverse entertainment “news”, media that provides an escape from our world to one of more fear and division, where your neighbor has 1 more gun than you, and is going to use it to kill you. So you’d better get 2 more guns just in case. 

 Everyone knows Fox is unreliable, and exists to manipulate the elderly, but to what extent. To spend so much of your day consuming a never ending stream of hateful theories wears on the soul. It leads a person to dark places. 

I don’t trust the government, but I don’t need to hear it from an off-brand Zyn salesman. How is it that people see him pretend to be a journalist for a brief stint and forget that he is fundamentally a grifter. Tucker Carlson covers himself in layers of flannel and talks about Montana so the impressionable masses don’t look at his Florida mansion, or hear about his childhood home overlooking the La Jolla tennis club. 

You shouldn’t have to be told not to trust the government, you find it out yourself when you see your tax dollars explode in a fiery wreckage of former hospitals while our own citizens disappear in the night, or sleep under crooked benches in the glow of AI IPA billboards. Someone going on your screen and telling you to focus on the disappearing Epstein list and a supposed deep state/permanent government is just trying to alter your mind and distract you from something more sinister. Maybe its Alligator Alcatraz, the continuing genocide in Gaza, Ice parades in MacArthur Park, or even Grok.

A lot of people have money tied up in americans fearing scarecrows, when they reduce you to a mess of fear and bigotry you’ll buy whatever they sell you, raw milk, nicotine pouches, online workshops, what a disgrace.

The infectious power of the alt right is multigenerational. We have a bludgeoning generation of brain dead nazis, kids who aren’t getting their fix from Joe Rogan and want something stronger. You’d buy what they’re selling you, anything to remove this fear Its not just old people. I know folks who cant drink but consume the same brainwashing slop as the worst uncle. We need to do what we can to cut off the snakes head.

One morning of a conspiracy theory deep dive made me angry, it made me fear the world. Until I sat outside and read my book. Imagine what happens if that’s all you do, from the moment you wake up to when you go to sleep you listen to men in toupees and women from utah overwhelm you with manufactured hatred. when the only thing that would truly fix it is changing the channel.