Donald Trump has predictably resorted to insinuation to mask his deficiencies. Speaking to reporters after the first presidential debate, he said: 'They gave me a defective mic. Did you notice that? My mic was defective within the room. I wonder, was that on purpose?'
It is hilarious until you realise how it would be received by supporters. Two days on, one theory making the rounds is that Hillary Clinton was making coded gestures to debate moderator Lester Holt. There is also speculation that she was fed questions beforehand. It is not hard to miss the set-up for #riggedelection.
It captures something of contemporary politics, where the line between conspiracy theory and legitimate anti-establishment criticism is more smudged than ever. A deficit of trust is one thing; an active detachment from truth is something else.
Sometimes I miss the days when conspiracy theories were cuter, like Area 51 cover-ups of aliens, the fake moon landing and Jesuits being a global, shadow government. It can be fun to speculate, as long as we don't fall into the trap of taking what we don't know too seriously. That is the way of superstition and paranoia.
Demogorgons — sorry, I mean demagogues — thrive on such disorientations, hauling people into murkier versions of reality. If we drew a Venn diagram of subscribers to intrigue, we would probably find an overlap inhabited by climate change denialists, men's rights activists, the halal-phobic, and people who believe in a queer agenda.
We all know someone who ticks more than one of these boxes. We can tell by the degree to which they bend reality to their worldview. When a power blackout gripped South Australia this week, Senator Malcolm Roberts was quick to tweet, 'I call on South Australia and the country to urgently exit all climate change policies that are the direct cause of this huge mess in SA.'
Severe weather, which affected infrastructure in Port Augusta, which led to a protective shut-down, which might have tripped up the system due to a voltage drop, which might have been exacerbated by insufficient alternate transmission lines, which may have nothing to do with interconnectors to Victoria — that is too much electrical engineering to deal with. Ergo, the blackout is due to climate change policy.
It is to be expected. Roberts recently said in parliament that the atmosphere cannot possibly warm the earth's surface. In order for anyone to say that, they would have to