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Originally Posted by Skybird
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Yea there are a lot of outlandish and dangerous conspiracy theories out there. There was one that was wholly embraced by Democrat politicians, Never Trumpers and prominent members of the legacy media. I guess gullability doesn't depend on education or high level employment. It just needs a cause to pursue.
The Rise and Fall of the ‘Steele Dossier’
A case study in mass hysteria and media credulity.
https://www.thenation.com/article/po...teele-dossier/
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Despite its outlandish assertions and partisan provenance, Steele’s work product somehow became a road map for Democratic leaders, media outlets, and, most egregiously, intelligence officials carrying out the Russia investigation.
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If the Steele dossier’s far-fetched claims were not enough reason to dismiss it with ridicule, another obvious marker should have set off alarms. Reading the Steele dossier chronologically, a glaring pattern emerges: Steele has no advance knowledge of anything that later proved to be true, and, just as tellingly, many of his most explosive claims appear only after some approximate prediction has come out in public form.
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It was a joke played on a partisan and gullible group of people who should have known better. They did far more to sully their reputations than a few Q Anon nut jobs. These people made absolutly no attempt to verify what Steele was saying. So much for investigative journalism. The list of Democrat politicians who swore by Steele's work is to long to list here.
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While the Steele affair has triggered at least some government-level contrition and nominal reforms, the same cannot be said about the prominent media and political figures who promoted his ludicrous claims with equal credulity.
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When we now see MAGA followers consumed by their own election conspiracy theories, it behooves us to remember that, while there is no equivalence to the “Stop the Steal” mob violence, many liberals were misled in their own way for Trump’s entire four years. Beyond our mutual proclivity for embracing comforting delusions, we might acknowledge that we share something else with Trump supporters: party elites, Democrats and Republicans alike, who have turned to deranged, xenophobic fantasies rather than taking responsibility for their own election failures.
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