Silliest Conspiracy Theory this week!

The dumbest conspiracy theory of the week started (of course) by right wing conspiracy crazies; but sadly, a few left wing election cycle watchers fell for it too.

The conspiracy theory is that Helen Purcell, the Maricopa, Arizona county recorder, the woman who so badly botched up the elections there that calls have been made for federal investigation and prosecution.  Right wingers have tried to float this as some Clinton conspiracy to steal the AZ primary, asserting that Helen Purcell was the wife of the Lt. Governor Joe Purcell, under Bill Clinton.

Except that nothing could be further from the truth.  It appears that Helen Purcell, the County Recorder, is not the widow of Joe Purcell of Arkansas.  She was, per her official county biography, born in Kansas, and lived the rest of her life entirely in Arizona - as a Republican.  I can find no evidence that she is or was married, or that Purcell is not her maiden name either.  Further the details of her professional life indicate a separate career of her own that is inconsistent with a life in Arkansas at the same time.

Don't be a dummy; don't uncritically accept silly stories without asking questions and doing at least minimal fact checking.  Only the most gullible fail to consider that there easily can be more than one person with the same or a similar sounding name.  That's grade school level knowledge.

For those who want to see it for themselves, here is the bio link for the Maricopa, Arizona County Recorder, Helen Purcell.

RED ALERT ~ Adam Kokesh armed march on Washington SCAM

I have to admit some curiosity about what might be the motive for Adam Kokesh's March on Washington, DC.  It seems he was once a War Protestor who managed to get a spot on Russia Today, but was too weird for even RT.

And then I found this:



 Anyway, this find comes on top of reading this blog post.

"Oh, that Mr. Hitler couldn't mean all the things he says in Mein Kampf about the Jews.  Anyway, what could he do?  Try and kill us all?"

I guess we can add to that line of thinking: "Well, we have guns this time".

As N. A. Browne said in The Myth of Nazi Gun Control:

A more farfetched question is the hypothetical proposition of armed Jewish resistance. First, they were not commonly armed even prior to the 1928 Law. Second, Jews had seen pogroms before and had survived them, though not without suffering. They would expect that this one would, as had the past ones, eventually subside and permit a return to normalcy. Many considered themselves “patriotic Germans” for their service in the first World War. These simply were not people prepared to stage violent resistance. Nor were they alone in this mode of appeasement. The defiance of “never again” is not so much a warning to potential oppressors as it is a challenge to Jews to reject the passive response to pogrom. Third, it hardly seems conceivable that armed resistance by Jews (or any other target group) would have led to any weakening of Nazi rule, let alone a full scale popular rebellion; on the contrary, it seems more likely it would have strengthened the support the Nazis already had. Their foul lies about Jewish perfidy would have been given a grain of substance. To project backward and speculate thus is to fail to learn the lesson history has so painfully provided.

in short, those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.