Over the past seven years or so — say since Donald Trump decided in 2015 that he was running for president — we’ve been bombarded with one absurd, fact-free, idiotic conspiracy theory after another, some of which came from Trump, others from Republicans and nutjob right-wingers who were once kept mostly in the shadows.
Consider just a few of the viral conspiracy theories that have circulated during that time, most of which did indeed originate with Trump:
- Barack Obama was born in a foreign country
- Ted Cruz’s father played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy
- Windmills cause cancer
- Climate change was created by China to destroy the United States
And yet somehow all of those pale in comparison to the one making the rounds in GOP circles involving reports that thousands of cows have died this summer as a result of extreme heat, according to The Daily Beast:
Republicans have seized on the deaths of thousands of cattle in a Kansas heat wave as the latest proof of a baseless conspiracy theory that saboteurs ranging from the mega-wealthy to the government are out to destroy the national food supply.
That hoax has been circulating on the right for months, but received new energy after thousands of cattle in Kansas died in a June heatwave in which temperatures topped 104 degrees. A viral video that showed what appeared to be hundreds of dead cattle was cited by as proof that someone—the Biden administration, liberal billionaires, or an unnamed elite cabal—was behind the deaths.
Here we go again. Grab your tinfoil hat and get ready for the mind-numbing craziness that has been unleashed thanks to some deceased bovine.
Let’s start with Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), who thankfully lost his primary election in May and will not be returning to the House of Representatives:
In a speech on the House floor, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) said Americans have “every right to be skeptical” about the food-supply incidents, including the cattle deaths and the baby formula shortage. Cawthorn described the incidents as a “seemly unexplainable series of food industry accidents” being ignored by the media.
“Does no one care that children are starving you and your colleagues feast at Le Diplomate?” Cawthorn said, referring to the French restaurant popular with Washington politicos.
Hey, Madison, doesn’t one of your relatives need his face humped? Shouldn’t you go tend to that and leave politics to the non-loonified?
Or perhaps Tennessee House candidate Robby Starbuck is more in tune with the mass hysteria which has overtaken the GOP in recent years:
“They did not die of extreme heat,” Starbuck tweeted. “I talked to multiple ranchers since I saw this video (one from Kansas) and they all say this needs to be investigated ASAP to get to the bottom of this because there’s no way heat caused 10,000+ cattle to drop dead. This is not normal.”
Are cows supposed to be immune to extreme heat? If it gets hot enough, any animal (the human animal included) can collapse and die. That’s medical and scientific fact. But since when do conservatives believe in facts?
Personally, I’m waiting for the rumor to start that deceased humans are being converted into food and sold back to us in the form of say…beef jerky or green tea smoothies. Only when that can be proven will we all be able to stand on our front porches and cry out in anguish, “Soylent Green is people!”
