Special Agent Fox Mulder told us, “The truth is out there.” 

Well, Retired Maj. David Grusch might not be a real-life Fox Mulder, but during a recent House Oversight Committee hearing he sounded awfully similar to the fictional FBI agent. When asked by Republican Nancy Mace about the government’s supposed possession of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), Grusch testified that the U.S. has recovered non-human “biologics” from alleged UFO crash sites over the years. 

One can only imagine the questions Harry Reid would have had for Grusch. 

Combined with recent UFO sightings in Las Vegas, the long-standing rumors about Area 51 and a recent push to declassify information regarding the government’s documentation of UAPs, there has been plenty of fodder to keep UFO conspiracists busy in recent years. Heck, even skeptics — those of us who still aren’t convinced there’s some “Men in Black” organizational effort afoot within government’s alphabet agencies — have reason to describe recent UFO news as “weird.” 

To be sure, indulging in at least some conspiratorial beliefs is somewhat understandable, given the government’s less-than-stellar record of transparency and disclosure. As the comedian Ron Funches pointed out, it’s pretty difficult to believe the government is “batting a thousand at telling us the whole truth” about everything it does. 

Unfortunately, in today’s world, conspiracy theories aren’t relegated merely to the notion that the world’s most well-known “secret” military facility — located north of Las Vegas near state Route 375 — houses an alien lifeform and a time-traveling blue box. As it turns out, conspiracy theories are a prolific part of many people’s worldview — with some theories doing far more damage to our cultural discourse than the relatively benign belief that our government has some little green men on ice in an underground bunker. 

From election deniers to an exploding anti-vax movement, it seems easier than ever to find examples of conspiracy theories now going “mainstream” that would have once been considered fringe beliefs. However, given the massive decline in trust that Americans have for the media, our government and even each other, the proliferation of such fictions shouldn’t be completely surprising. According to Pew Research Center, Americans are showing near-record low levels of trust in our government institutions — which would explain the rise of conspiratorial thinking among a populace that is no longer willing to believe what it is being told by “the authorities.” 

And to be fair, much of the distrust consuming the American public has been well earned by institutions and the political tribes in charge of running them. 

For example, the rise of the “infotainment” industry has wreaked havoc on Americans’ trust of journalism in general. For decades the line between editorial spin and “news” coverage has been increasingly blurred by organizations that found profitability in pandering to niche audiences — a business model that has only become more common as social media rewards politically-oriented and outrage-driven clickbait with ever larger engaged audiences.

To put it simply: straight facts don’t sell as well as biased narratives and there’s plenty of profit to be made by indulging people’s natural tribalist instincts. The result has been a seemingly unending increase in agenda-driven editorials masquerading as informative reports from media conglomerates that are more obsessed with audience engagement than accuracy or context. 

(Thank heavens for local non-profit journalism outlets that strive for objective reporting… You should consider donating to keep this one going.) 

Certainly, driving much of this post-truth form of “infotainment” is our absurdly crippled political culture. American politics abandoned the practice of actually trying to solve problems long ago — instead focusing on irresolvable cultural wedges that pit voters against each other for the benefit of partisan grifters. The days of “big tent politicking” have given way to a political system run by the most fringe elements of increasingly unrepresentative parties that are hellbent on controlling the lives of those with whom they disagree. 

In such an environment, intolerance and prejudice are the pillars upon which political narratives are built — driven largely by a profound sense that “the other side” is, literally, set upon ruining our nation. Given the ease with which one can find “facts” to confirm such suspicions, is it any surprise we’ve seen a rise in conspiratorial nonsense going mainstream? 

After all, most of the nonsense invading our daily social media feeds isn’t loudly proclaiming the existence of little green men from space, insisting the moon landings were faked or declaring that our earth is actually flat. Instead, the overwhelming majority of it is political half-truths and intentionally misrepresented controversies designed to feed our partisan disdain for each other — “fake news” that quickly becomes central to the way we view those who don’t think like us.  

No wonder a recent study found that Americans are most likely to believe conspiracy theories that implicate their ideological opponents in some sort of wrongdoing. The gullibility of staunch political partisans transcends party lines, apparently, with both conservatives and progressives eager to believe nasty things — even untrue things — about “the other side.” 

Forget about some clandestine government operative who chain smokes Morley cigarettes standing in our way of discovering the “truth”. Often, the primary obstacle to uncovering objective facts about the world around us is our own willingness to believe false narratives simply because they comport with our preconceived worldview. 

In other words, it’s easier than ever to be a “conspiracy theorist” in our era of misinformation, cherry-picked statistics and political dysfunction — and you don’t even have to believe the real-life X-Files currently being discussed in congress to qualify. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him at SchausCreative.com or on Twitter at @schausmichael.