I love a good conspiracy theory. I've been following them for years. I've learned something that I call drinking the proverbial kool-aid.
'Drinking the kool-aid' goes back to the Jim Jones mass suicide where people drank the liquid laced with poison. However, in my experience, anyone who buys into a theory so strongly, is doing exactly that. They buy into a falsehood or a partial truth, as which all falsehoods are based, so much that it affects them in a negative manner. I use the term proverbial, because it means that while you bought into it, it shouldn't have affected you to begin with.
With the Clinton v. Trump election, I can tell you that many people are experiencing this. They've been experiencing it for months, and it may never ever go away.
So, the symptom of this is fear. Now most fear is based in one's sense of mortality. Fear can be helpful in this regard, because it gives us a sense of caution. However, that's not the fear that I am talking about.
Instead it's a fear that things are going to be so wrong, that the world will be drastically changed forever and ruin whatever life you think you are living. Unfortunately, this fear is a rather irrational one. It's only purpose is to blind you from your perspective and your ability to see beyond the trivial.
In simpler terms, you have been fed a lie. A lie that's designed to make you think in a certain direction and to experience an emotion that is baseless in regards to actual fact.
In many years of conspiracy theory, I drank the kool-aid many times. It was only by separating myself from all of the information that the irrational thoughts and impending doom would eventually dissipate.
So let's look at the facts here. Most people voted against things like hatred, racism, elitism, and sexism. However, this is where the problem begins, because the information about those things changed depending on the source of the information, and those sources made it their job to force those items into their spotlights. It got to the point where each candidate was blaming the sources where this came from. You could call these two sources The Mainstream Media and the Alt Right, but this oversimplifies the issue.
To be properly objective, you have to cultivate information from multiple/many sources and have backing information to go with those sources. You have to be able to acknowledge where the information came from and what it is saying. To not take these things into consideration or to only cultivate from a single source is exactly what causes the proverbial kool-aid to take hold of you.
To say this is the first time that the masses have drank the proverbial kool-aid would be a lie. We just experienced this in 2008 when many gun owners were in perpetual fear of the removal of the 2nd amendment and the rise of the police state underneath martial law.
Were the people wrong about it? Well 8 years later and only 2 months left of the current administration, it appears to not be true. "Yes, it's different this time", but yet, the fact that you drank the proverbial kool-aid remains the same.
If you are in fear, it's because you bought into the idea that things are just going to end up horribly and nothing will ever be the same. But reality shows that there are themes that replicate in all parts of life. Things change, some changes happen, but many remain the same. We resist change, and that's understandable, but we do so out of the rational fears that we have.
We also know this. Sometimes we lose, but other times we win. Things usually work out in the end.
So, you must always look into your fears. Why you have those fears is so important. If you find that your fear is based in something that may be irrational, you must step back and reassess the current moment you are in. Look to what is good in your life and work on that for awhile, and then come back to that fear you were having. Chances are, that fear is gone and replaced with something else. Hopefully it's found as a newfound strength, because when we confront our fears we should always find ourselves becoming stronger.
Whoever won this election really didn't matter in the biggest picture. Each had their soul crushing flaws (sorry, but the real truth is they ALL had them), but unless you haven't paid attention to history or civics, you should know that things have a way of balancing themselves out. That fear from the proverbial kool-aid will always be there, but until you realize that, it is nothing more than the irrational, feeding it.
It is like a cornered animal that gets aggressive and lashes back. The best way to deal with this is to step back and move away from it. Otherwise, it will still be there.
I trust that all things balance out, always. It's the nature of the universe. It's embodied in a term called entropy. It's where I found the rational perspective. It's why I can say that no matter what happens, things are going to be okay.
Unless you drank the proverbial kool-aid.
