It’s irresponsible of elected leaders to entertain wild conspiracy theories

If “belief” alone is enough now, do you also feel a responsibility to represent the concerns of the millions of Americans who believe all these conspiracies? Is a congressional investigation of lizard people forthcoming? How about a deep dive into chem trails and the existence of Bigfoot?

In trying to justify his attempt to overturn the 2020 election for President Donald Trump, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said his constituents back home had been “loud and clear” that they believed Trump had been cheated. Hawley claimed it was therefore his responsibility to act on their concerns.

Let’s translate that: In the absence of evidence of widespread voter fraud, Hawley and his GOP colleagues are acting on the feelings of their voters about false claims of vote rigging. That’s right, just on feelings, nothing more. They feel bad about their guy losing, so we’ll throw democracy in the blender because they can’t believe it happened.

Well, if that’s the case, then surely Hawley and the gang that is lining up with him to challenge the Electoral College outcome will also want to act on any number of other insane conspiracy theories that millions of Americans believe.

Sadly, our friends, neighbors and fellow voters enjoy peculiar ideas that have no basis in reality. And there are a lot of them. This is what defunding public education for decades gets you.

As shown in polling in recent years, those theories include:

■ A Daily Kos/civiqs poll in Septemn ber showed that 56% of Republican voters believe in either all or part of the Qanon theory — that America’s politics and media are being controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring, kill children and drink their blood. Given that about 30% of all Americans identify as Republicans, or about 99 million total, that means 55.4 million Americans feel the completely baseless Qanon theory is valid.

■ A survey by Harvard scientists in 2017 showed that as many as 40% of Americans believe the “chem trail” theory is either completely or partially true. That translates to some 132 million people who are receptive to the bizarre theory — that the contrails of aircraft are actually evidence of a government plot to seed the sky to control the climate or poison people on the ground.

■ A 2014 Washington Post poll showed that about 20% of Americans — 66 million — think Bigfoot is real.

■ outcome of several polls suggests that about 6% of Americans believe the moon landings were faked. In other words, just shy of 20 million think the landings didn’t really happen.

■ A 2013 survey by Public Policy Polling showed that 15% of Americans believe the government or media uses mind-controlling technology in TV broadcast signals. That translates to nearly 50 million people. Among other results, the survey also showed that 22% of Mitt Romney voters (or 13.4 million people) believed former President Barack Obama was the Antichrist; 9% of Americans (28.2 million people) believed fluoride was dangerous; 14% of Americans (46 million) believed the CIA was responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic; a whopping 28% (92 million) believe in the New World Order theory of elitists working to establish a global authoritarian government; and 4% (12 million) believed an alien race of lizard people controlled world politics. (According to news reports, the man who detonated the Nashville bomb on Christmas Day also believed this theory.) Paging Sen. Hawley: We need the lizard people rulers investigated, stat! And if you don’t investigate, we know you’re one of them …

■ A 2014 survey led by the University of Tennessee showed that about one-third of Americans thought the Food and Drug Administration was deliberately keeping cures for cancer off of the market due to pressure from pharmaceutical companies. That’s 109 million people.

So to Mr. Hawley and his GOP counterparts, we’d ask: If “belief” alone is enough now, do you also feel a responsibility to represent the concerns of the millions of Americans who believe all these conspiracies? Is a congressional investigation of lizard people forthcoming? How about a deep dive into chem trails and the existence of Bigfoot? How long before you start rooting out the New World Order and start working to debunk the moon landings?

This is why leaders should base their actions of evidence, not beliefs or feelings of their constituents. It also speaks to the responsibility of all Americans to educate themselves — inoculate, if you will — against this silliness that threatens our democracy, which in the end requires citizens to demand much better from their elected representatives.

Let’s be clear: There is less evidence of the election being stolen from Trump than there is of Bigfoot. The GOP has had weeks to bring it to the table, and there’s still nothing — just unsubstantiated claims of ballots being miscounted, enormous numbers of dead people voting, etc., that are so nuts even the president’s attorney won’t bring evidence to court.

The good news is that several congressional GOP leaders have spoken out against Hawley, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and the rest of the cabal that is trying to pull off a simpleton coup for a simpleton president.

But it’s disturbing that this gang of Republicans is moving forward anyway, in a ploy that will do nothing but diminish Americans’ trust in democracy and further tribalize our society.

At least there is this: At last we have settled proof that lizard people do prowl the halls of power in Washington. It’s Hawley and his band of slithering senators.