When no one’s word is authoritative, any crank is as credible as the next person. It is the irony at the heart of conspiracy thinking: You can’t trus… - Pete Buttigieg

But I was admittedly frustrated after Iowa. The conspiracies multiplied. Someone noticed that our campaign had purchased software from the same software company that made the flawed app in Iowa — enough to send the Twittersphere into a tailspin. A staff member on my campaign was married to someone who ran a company that invested in the company that made the app — clear evidence! No one really took the trouble to explain what all these tidbits were supposed to amount to, but then, conspiracy thinking is not obliged to answer questions; it merely asks them, insinuating.

"It had been on my mind ever since allowing myself to call President Trump a "draft-dodging chickenhawk" during on of the DNC forums. While true, that statement was not in keeping which how I publicly speak about political figures, or anyone else, and afterward I reflected that this president was inspiring a loss of decency not just in his supporters but also in those of us who opposed him. It was another way of looking at the moral stakes of politics as it filters through to millions of lives: that we might all be growing into harder and perhaps worse people, as a consequence of political leadership that has failed to call us to our highest values."

Doubt is our product,” said the memo, “since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the best means for establishing a controversy.”2