‘Just Asking Questions’ Is A Dangerous Tool In The Hands Of Grifters

Laura Loomer recently had a change of heart. Whereas she previously cast herself as a skeptic of America’s support for the ongoing war in Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal noted, she’s now undergone a miraculous conversion experience. And all it took was a trip out to Ukraine that was paid for by “private donors” and an exclusive meeting with the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. “After a trip to war-torn Ukraine this week, and a sit-down with Zelensky, Loomer now says she was duped by misinformation coming out of Moscow,” WSJ reported. She described Zelensky as a “wartime leader” and claimed that Ukraine is “an essential ally” (though a certain other country Loomer also supports might get a little jealous about that designation). And what was the cause of this sudden transition? Apparently it had more to do with the fact that pro-Russia accounts on X were boosting posts from other content creators with whom Loomer has engaged in a tiresome beef over Israel. In other words, she has become Ukraine’s new champion because of Twitter drama. “I started to really examine a lot of the content that was coming out of Russia Today. … And I realized, holy sh—, there’s like a full-blown foreign-interference operation happening, and Russia’s propaganda channels are leading the way,” she said, according to WSJ. But she also uttered the magic question: “What else are we being lied to about?” It’s the question that absolves every asinine take on 9/11, the moon landing, the JFK assassination, and everything in between. It’s the question that has launched a thousand podcasts. It’s the last gasp of political has-beens desperately trying to claw their way back into the limelight by being edgy. That question, the clarion call of the modern online grift master, has created an absolute plague in the American political arena. In fact, “What else are we being lied to about?” has to be the most damaging sentence of the decade so far for public discourse. Questioning everything all the time has seemingly become a national pastime for a large portion of the population. Nothing can be trusted, especially if someone in authority is saying it. The “official narrative” is always one of deception and manipulation, designed to hide the secret, nefarious, and always overly complicated plans of the global elite, or so the question-askers claim. Granted, the powers that be have not given the ordinary citizenry much of a reason to trust in government “experts” or other traditional sources of authority. Covid-19 represents the prime example. This week’s release of Anthony Fauci’s diary, the ultimate exercise in narcissistic self-indulgence, confirmed in his own words two things we’ve all known to be true for the last six years: 1. he’s a scummy little worm and 2. he knowingly and repeatedly lied to the American people about practically every facet of the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, there’s an important distinction between the skepticism the American people showed toward the Covid tyrants and “just asking questions” about the American government supposedly discovering giants in Afghanistan or whether Hitler was the misunderstood secret good guy of World War II trying to protect the world from the Rothschilds. With Covid, people looked at the available facts about Covid’s origins and how it spread and came to the most logical conclusion (which turned out to be correct), despite the protestations of the “official narrative.” The virus most likely originated in a lab, masking and social distancing were largely ineffective, and that an alliance of Big Tech and the government would use this crisis to impose tyrannical censorship. Though we certainly got damning revelations later down the line, enough of these facts were available early on in the outbreak for normal, rational people to come to the correct conclusion and then disbelieve the government bureaucrats when they demanded that the civilian population stop believing their lying eyes. Overall, there was ample evidence in plain sight to justify questioning the official narrative on Covid. The same cannot be said for favorite subjects of the “just asking questions” crowd. With the bad faith conspiracies, their proponents twist facts and shred context in order to make those facts fit their preconceived theory. Take the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The leading theory is that Tyler Robinson, who was involved with a trans-identifying man and had gradually succumbed to radical leftist ideology, decided to kill one of the leading voices against the transgender madness with an old hunting rifle. All the available evidence appears to back up this theory. Robinson was seen on surveillance video on campus the day of the assassination, there’s DNA evidence linking him to the murder weapon, and he allegedly wrote a note to his romantic interest confessing to the crime. The alternative theories that have taken over corners of the internet are too numerous and convoluted to detail here, but they all share one thing in common: They require an unnatural bending of reality and a ludicrous suspension of simple common sense in order to be believable. Take a look at any of the conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s death and just think for a moment how many leaps of logic you have to make to arrive at any of them. Put more simply, it’s insane to say that Erika Kirk is a fed-sponsored evil mastermind who conspired with Israel, Egypt, and whoever else to kill her husband. It’s not insane to say that a novel coronavirus matching the description of viruses being worked on in a nearby virology lab in Wuhan, which had received funds to study said coronaviruses, probably originated from that lab. This reflexive urge to immediately question every major world event and see conspiracy in everything comes not from a genuine desire to seek the truth, but from a deep, and totally understandable, bitterness toward our ruling classes and the string of betrayals that they’ve inflicted on the American people. Some people’s hatred for this country’s elites — again, understandable — causes them to seek out an ulterior motive in everything. But in so doing, they often leave reality and good common sense behind, delving ever deeper into a tangled web of secret plots. The “What else are we being lied to about?” line has produced three disastrous consequences for the American public and civic discourse in this country. First, it has eroded people’s ability to think clearly about important issues by blurring the lines between objective truth and wishful thinking. “Just asking questions” grifting is the conservative commentary equivalent of AI slop. It preys on the short attention spans that have developed as a terrible side effect of our digital age — providing cheap, momentary thrills but absolutely nothing of substance. Paranoiacs who see conspiracy in anything and everything can’t control themselves and their thoughts, and therefore they can’t operate within a republic that relies on self-government. It has also provided an ecosystem for dishonest conspiracy peddlers to thrive. It conveniently allows professional grifters to change their skin like a chameleon, affecting an effortless metamorphosis to align with whichever set of principles comes with the highest dollar value this week. These people have no principles and have no qualms about lying, day after day, to their audiences for no other reason than to sow discord and get rich doing it. Perhaps most importantly, it diverts attention away from real, actionable issues and goals. Again, take the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Instead of uniting the right against the deadly threat of the insane gender ideology that apparently inspired Kirk’s alleged killer, the conspiracy-mongers have splintered the right into a hundred warring factions and squandered any momentum that was gained in the aftermath of Kirk’s death. Conservatives can’t afford to miss chances to turn momentum into victories. Every opportunity we waste with dumb infighting allows the left to regroup and prepare for their next assault on American civilization. “What else are we being lied to about?” and its variant “I’m just asking questions” have become the bywords of charlatans. It’s easy to blackpill and believe that everything is controlled by nefarious puppetmasters. It absolves the questioner of any agency and responsibility. “What am I supposed to do? What difference does it make? Everything is rigged, anyway.” But within that kind of complacency — and it is complacency no matter how many times you post angrily about it on X — lies the ultimate destruction of Western civilization. Those now warring against America are evil enough without attributing godlike omnipotence to them. But we can only defeat them if we have clear minds and a unity of purpose. The last few decades of manipulation and deception have utterly destroyed the credibility of so-called “experts” and once-revered institutions, but they haven’t destroyed truth. And if we lose sight of that in favor of the modern equivalent of superstitious fearmongering, then we’ve lost the whole thing. Hayden Daniel is a staff editor at The Federalist. He previously worked as an editor at The Daily Wire and as deputy editor/opinion editor at The Daily Caller. He received his B.A. in European History from Washington and Lee University with minors in Philosophy and Classics. Follow him on Twitter at @HaydenWDaniel Anthony FauciCharlie KirkCharlie Kirk assassinationconspiracy theoriesCOVIDCovid-19griftersRussiaTyler RobinsonUkraineVolodymyr Zelensky