Florida politics unsettled by conspiracy theory crazies

The moment it was revealed that Joe Biden had substituted a bullet-riddled body double for Osama bin Laden, then covered up the deception by murdering members of SEAL Team Six (an impressive workload for a 77-year-old), I knew the Dems were in trouble.

If this election comes down to which party disseminates the most outlandish conspiracy theories to the most wildeyed believers, Democrats will be buried beneath a big red mudslide. Republican social media influencers may reside in Bizarro-world, but they possess the skills to convert unhinged imaginings into political currency.

Consider how they’ve managed to transform doddering old Joe Biden into a stone-cold killer of the Navy’s most feared warriors. A fellow who, in his spare time, masterminds a worldwide conglomeration of pedophile politicians with a penchant for pizza. After Biden and Hillary and George Soros and Barack Obama and their fellow travelers have their way with their young sex slaves, they kill the kiddies and extract anti-aging hormones from their blood.

All this accomplished, apparently, without attracting attention from either law enforcement or the children’s parents.

Joe (who has cleverly disguised the restorative effects of his anti-aging hormone injections with an old man’s face) has accomplished all this nefarious stuff during a rather busy presidential campaign. And to think that Donald Trump called this guy “low-energy Sleepy Joe.”

While we’re at it: What about Obama’s birth certificate? How the hell did JFK Jr. — back from the dead — become entangled in these rightwing tableaus? And the question that has stumped philosophers for as long as I can remember (about four years, on a good day): What about Hillary’s emails?

The 2020 election has become a test of a new kind of political strategy. A few days from now, we’ll find out if insanity works.

Joe Biden has built what would seem to be a formidable lead heading into the final days of the presidential campaign. (FiveThirtyEight.com reported Thursday that Biden leads in the national polls by an average of 9.9 percentage points, which explains why down-ticket Republican candidates are suddenly having trouble remembering the president’s name.) But Trump has a clear lead in the subterranean netherworld where dark fantasies supplant mundane truths. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll released Tuesday found 50 percent of Trump supporters surveyed said that they believe Democrats are running child sex-trafficking rings.

The Sun Sentinel reported this week that the all-important Hispanic vote in South Florida, usually a dependable chunk of the region’s Democratic coalition, has been roiled by far-right conspiracy theories disseminated by Spanish-language media. Voters have been deluged with fanciful disinformation borrowed from Russian internet trolls or from our unhinged homeboy whackos (inspired by mischief-makers posting on the infamous Qanon website.)

“Is Bill Gates the antichrist? You’ll be shocked.” Not as shocked, I suspect, as

Bill Gates. Though Gates lately has lost his place in the villain hierarchy to the diabolical Anthony Fauci, who, according to conspiracy theory mongers, loosed the COVID-19 virus upon America to ensure an election victory for Joe Biden, a fellow member of the dreaded Illuminati.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that a popular Miami Spanish-language radio host and Twitter influencer has been warning followers that leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement practiced brujería or witchcraft. “So you ask yourself, ‘Why are they destructive?’” Carinés A. Moncada mused on her radio show (according to the Times’ report). “Because they are vibrating with the devil. They are vibrating with negativity. They are vibrating with the dark. And whoever votes for Biden, unfortunately, is supporting that,” she concluded.

Pollsters can hardly measure the effect this stuff might have on the electorate, but Democrats should be vibrating with fear. They have no comparable weapons.

The left and their never-Trumper allies from the pre-Donald Republican Party have tried to make do with fact-based allegations, informing voters how Trump failed to devise a coherent policy against COVID19, disparaged the military, assaulted women, cavorted with strippers, mocked the disabled, exploited the presidency to drum up business for his hotels and golf resorts, and paid only $750 in income tax for two successive years. Any other campaign, against any other opponent, such an unseemly record might convince his supporters to rethink their choice.

Not in 2020. Lefties clearly need to dispense with truth, test the depths of human gullibility and invent their own set of wild-eyed whoppers. All they need is a bit of imagination and maybe a boost from the (shudder) deep state.

Fred Grimm, a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976. Reach him by email at leogrimm@gmail.com or on Twitter: @ grimm_fred