I don’t think anyone is accusing Trump of being behind a flouridation conspiracy.
Sure. I’m simply noting that whipping people up into a frenzy or panic is an age old technique for controlling large populations.
It demonstrates rather that angry morons are rather easy to point at the government
Or at this or that ethnic group or religious sect or ideological cohort, sure. You don’t even have to be particularly conservative for this technique to work. Liberals fall for the Immigrant Caravan Invasion and Crime Wave panic stories and Pending Federal Bankruptcy and Communist Invasion stories as easily as any moderate Republican.
the government probably doesn’t want a bunch of angry morons to rule
They do, if they want to export that violence overseas or inflict it on minority groups and women, as a means of social control.
And it isn’t as though state officials are even all that rational. Certainly, Joe Biden’s had no problem perpetuating a genocide overseas, despite his policy whipping up a bonfire of opposition at home and in neighboring regions. Neither do Vladimir Putin or MBS or Narendra Modi seem shy about stoking the fires of bigotry in their own countries, as a means of mobilizing large groups of people into parades of support for their rule.
Angry morons are a great source of cheap activist labor, whether you’re storming the capital on Jan 6th or rallying Hindu nationalists to tear down a 600-year-old mosque in Delhi.