Free Republic

Welcome to Infomercial America, or, if you prefer, the United States of Spam. Whenever political conspiracy theories break out into the open, pundits and intellectuals name-check the brilliant but flawed essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" by Richard Hofstadter. Under President George W. Bush, the "9/11 Truthers" were the poster boys and girls of the paranoid style. Others hinted that the flooding of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina might have been deliberate. Under President Obama, it was the "Birthers." A related theory was that Obama is a secret Muslim. A generation before that, it was the John Birch Society...

There are quite a few rumors floating around in social media about Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz. Americans are used to the mainstream media lying about Ted Cruz (see here, here & here for just some examples.) But it is particularly painful when the lies come from supposed truth-tellers. The largest culprits starting and perpetuating anti-Cruz falsehoods are sundance of the Conservative Treehouse and Dianne Marshall of the Marshall Report. They blatantly lie, or tell cherry-picked half truths, which are promptly disseminated in social media by an army of bullies who are seemingly not interested in civil debate. Why create false...