I’m not a believer in conspiracy theories. Donald Trump won the 2016 election without Russian collusion, and he lost the 2020 election without massive fraud. Vaccines are wildly effective at preventing deaths and hospitalizations from the coronavirus. Jeffery Epstein did kill himself — well, probably.

But honestly, the Pizzagate weirdos and QAnon basement dwellers have a point. Not that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta drink the blood of babies, or that Trump and Robert Mueller are planning the mass execution of Democratic pedophiles. Rather, the baseline assumption undergirding these conspiracies, namely that the wealthy and powerful elite traffic children for their own sick sexual desires, exists for a reason.