The Atlantic's Shadowland Series

Debunked

Part 4:

The Teenage Conspiracy Theorist

Known as Ellen Cushing

 

Part 1 of 9: Debunked "Shadowland" The Power and Danger of Conspiracies

Part 2 of 9: Debunked The Birther Issue

Part 3 of 9: Debunked The American Civil War Conspiracy

Part 4 of 9: Debunked The Teenage Conspiracy Theorist known as Ellen Cushing

Part 5 of 9: Debunked The Conspiracy Theorists are Winning

Part 6 of 9: Debunked QAnon, the Pro-Trump Conspiracy Religion

Part 7 of 9: Debunked Paranoia in American Entertainment

Part 8 of 9: Debunked One America News, Trump's Favorite TV Network

Part 9 of 9: Debunked The 5G Radiation Conspiracy

 

By: Shawn Alli
Posted: June 20, 2020

Copyright Pixabay

* All individuals and organizations receive 3 full days of pre-publication notice to respond to questions.

 

And we move onto Ellen Cushing's article "I Was a Teenage Conspiracy Theorist." I can already guess that writing it is an attempt at dealing with her shame/guilt for being part of the movement.

 

But even without reading the article yet, the title alone is enough to begin the debunking process. Forgive the harshness but no one cares about what you thought as a child/young adult.

 

Why not? Because you're under 18 and your thoughts aren't legally your own. Even though you make choices as a child, legally you're not really making those choices. Your parents are "allowing" you to make your choices. The illusion of choice. And if they've done a good job, you resent them a bit and give them recycled gifts at Christmas. But if they've done a shit job and you ended up stripping, or got into porn or prostitution, you're free to swim in all the money you made while crying yourself to sleep.

 

Hmm...I think my articles are getting darker in terms of my sense of humor. Is that for your benefit or mine? Unknown, but you gotta roll the dice to keep moving in the game. So...off we go into Ellen Cushing's 14 page conspiracy article.

 

A teacher taught you about the illuminati conspiracy with a straight face when you were 14? Wow. Clearly, he had tenure and didn't give a f*ck. It happened a bit after 9/11 and the invasion of the Middle East? Exciting times for the so called "deep state."

 

"The truth is, at 14, I did not yet really understand that teachers could be wrong, or how to separate good information from bad."

 

And that's where the bad liberal parenting pops up. A more rational parent would have conditioned their child (from a young age) not to accept everything a teacher taught you as factual. But then again, your parents were the baby boomer generation, conditioned to believe that everything taught in schools was correct and that the government and police had your best interests in mind.

 

As we all know today, that's completely false.

 

Cushing now gets into unfalsifiable theories of child psychology and the developing brain. Lovely. We'll skip that garbage.

 

"Conspiracy thinking is incredibly compelling. It promises an answer to problems as small as expired light bulbs and as big as our radical aloneness in the universe. It is self-sealing in its logic, and self-soothing in its effect..."

 

Yah...no.

 

I'm sure that you were referring to religion. I have a few friends that have fallen into the religion trap and will most likely never get out...by choice.

 

Sigh.

 

The deeper down the rabbit hole you go, the more lost you get in the world of conspiracies. If you don't have a strong foundation, you'll most likely live a short life. Start moving into Crowley occultism and you'll get a taste of some real dark sh*t. Suffice it to say, I don't recommend amateurs going down that rabbit hole.

 

But when you become...initiated as a conspiracy theorist, like when a girl says:

 

You're conspiracies are too weird for me. I'm out.

 

...that's when you've become an initiated member in the world of conspiracies. And contrary to what Ellen Cushing from the Atlantic says...it's hell. There are no "conclusive" answers. Each question only begets more questions. Questions that you'll never be able to confirm in your lifetime. You'll forever be suspicious of every person you meet and everyone close to you, wondering if they've been turned. Wondering if they've been compromised. And then one day you wake up and realize that you haven't accomplished anything of value and you're too old to do something new so you continue to stay in a a game that you love to hate. Why? Because you prefer reality...or seeking reality...rather than living in your illusions of how the world works.

 

Cushing, like many liberal journalists and academics, romanticizes the world of conspiracy theories. As a beginner sure, it's wild. But the deeper you go, the more you realize that it's worse than you thought. And though you want to look away, you choose to look at the truth and know that you'll never be the same again.

 

That may sound overdramatic, but it's actually pretty accurate.

 

Getting back to the article, Cushing repeats the usual liberal dogma on conspiracy theories. The brain latches onto it, with some people being more vulnerable than others because of their personality traits, satisfying their psychological needs...blah blah blah. I already wrote about the stigma of being a conspiracy theorist. See The Stigma of Being a Conspiracy Theorist.

 

I'm sure that Cushing would push the junk science of different brain states for various groups. The liberal brain, the conservative brain, the criminal brain, the conspiracy brain...all junk science with unfalsifiable theories.

 

Cushing doubles down on her delusional claims about conspiracy theorists.

 

"If you feel that you have knowledge that other people don't have, then you can feel a sense of superiority over those people."

 

Maybe for beginners or egotistical assholes, but mature conspiracy theorists take no pleasure in knowing more than you. Personally, I feel that I'm getting dumber every day. The more knowledge I realize that exists, the more stupid I feel for not knowing it. While that may sound humble, it's not actually a good feeling. The fact that I'll never understand all knowledge on the Earth and throughout the universe usually leaves me sad. Which is my cue to drown my pain in chicken from Popeye's. Everyone has their coping mechanisms.

 

Like I said, the path of a conspiracy theorist isn't necessarily a good one. But if liberal journalists and academics could stop analyzing us, I’d appreciate it.

 

"Conspiracism makes for a convenient way to blame other people for the ills of the world, and offers the added bonus of making the conspiracist feel smart."

 

I've never felt smart a day in my life. But according to the pictures, I was a happy baby. I'll stick with that illusion.

 

But the interesting thing about the above quote is the "blaming of others." In reality, liberal atheists blame others because they don’t believe that they're responsible for their actions.

 

Evolution is in control.

 

We have no control over our brain and hormones.

 

Everything is random and meaningless.

 

We have no agency.

 

Applying this principle to the the recent protests, the guilt from White liberals is merely an evolutionary feeling in order to empathize with others.

 

A false illusion created by evolution to serve the whole.

 

Teenagers believe they have no control over their feelings? Ah, the good days of being young. In reality, rational adults have control over their feelings. Just because liberals don't have control, doesn't mean that you don't have control over your feelings. Stupidity is universal as well. But it doesn't mean that you have to play the role of the idiot.

 

"But over time, the idea just seemed less and less believable, as did the fact that nobody except this one teacher would know about it. My stint as an Illuminati true believer ended in much the same way my Spice Girls superfandom had years earlier: Slowly, an obsession that had organized my life just slipped away, before I could notice it was leaving me."

 

As an adult, your ideologies (whether you're aware of them or not) control you. It's your responsibility to reflect on those past and current ideologies and decide what to put in your mind and what to toss in the garbage. Stop playing the role of the idiot victim and take control of your life and your perception of it.

 

But if you're not sure where to begin, I humbly suggest my book. Philosophy Reborn Part I: Purpose.

 

And what else do we see from the above quotation? The fact that the conspiracy theory is...wait for it...powerless. It's so powerless that it simply "fades away," like the thickness of my once rich hair fading away, becoming thinner with each day.

 

This is contradictory to the central claim by the Atlantic Shadowland journalists, that the conspiracy theory movement is "dangerous" and "very powerful." In reality, it's not strong enough to hold the attention of teenager.

 

Oh...it's so powerful and dangerous.

 

We'll leave out the fact that ideologies don't have intentions themselves and has zero power on its own. Only the user can give it power.

 

At least Cushing is nice enough to throw out the checkmarks for conspiracy theorists in terms of Watergate, MKULTRA, and COINTELPRO. All staunchly denied at first. Lies that were perpetuated by liberal media outlets as well.

 

"A conspiracy theorist had killed 77 people on a summer day in Norway in order to draw attention to a purported globalist-Arab plot to Islamize Europe."

 

No, an abused racist killed people to draw attention to Muslim toxicity. Painting him as a conspiracy theorist is a cop-out for unintelligent liberal journalists who can't think outside their ideological bubble.

 

"The tragedy of conspiracism isn’t that it is the absence of thinking, but the misapplication of it."

 

When you live in a dystopian future where your thoughts are surveilled, think back to Ellen Cushing's conspiracy article.

 

"All those people all around the world, connecting dots and searching for patterns where none exists. All the noise, all the never-ending rabbit holes, all the misdirected interrogation. All that wasted imagination."

 

Let people do what they want (within ethics of course). Stop acting like a pompous know-it-all telling people what they should or shouldn't be doing.

 

I always wonder if liberals will ever tire of being wrong about their ideologies.

 

I wonder if they'll ever get tired of reinterpreting their past experiences.

 

I wonder if they'll ever get tired of re-writing history.

 

I highly doubt it.