Conspiracy Theories Cause and Effect

Name: Professor’s Name: Course: Due Date: Conspiracy Theories Cause and Effect Every government in the world has its secrets and these are often kept away from the citizens. In democratic states, the idea is that the government is by the people, for the people, and of the people. However, the many secrets in the governments today can force one to question the democratic principles of the same governments. The U.S. government, for example, has been marred with a lot of issues many of which began during the Cold War era. During the Cold War, many stories emerged about the United States and how the country was working with aliens to speed its development agenda. While these could be interpreted as propaganda, no one is yet to come from the government and speak on these things which has further heightened the belief and unbelief in conspiracy theories. Currently, many people believe the U.S. is being ruled by people who are behind the scenes. It is believed that these people have a say in who becomes the president as well as all that happens in the country. No one knows the truthfulness or lack thereof of these stories but one thing is certain and that is that these stories lead to a society that does not trust each other. No one is ready to believe that the U.S. government does not have a secret or two up on its sleeve. So, this papers seeks to showcase that conspiracy theories only help to heighten tension, enhance mistrust in the society, give room for more conspiracy theories, and give room for the growth of anti-government sentiments. Tension is the result of disagreements between two factions with neither willing to accept the position of the other. With regards to conspiracy theories, they have indeed led to mistrust between the electorate and the government which has heightened the tension. While there may be no obvious indicators of the tension like protests, one can consider the mistrust in the society today or the people’s mistrust of the government today. In his 2018 article, Friedman asked “when truth itself feels uncertain, how can a democracy be sustained?” He continues to write that the people’s trust in the government has continued to fall and as of the writing of the article, only “a third of Americans now trust their government.” While the above ...