Conspiracy theorists like Jones prey on people for personal aggrandizement and profit, which is understandable if awful. The conspiracy-theory mindset is harder to grasp.

Years ago, my business partner told me his brother had bought into the flat-earth conspiracy theory. We were both baffled, and we spent months talking to his brother, then doing experiments with him, working through math with him, educating ourselves in the process while doing what we thought would convince him to break out of his conspiracy mindset.

We failed.

His brother doesn't lack intelligence or education. He is perfectly capable of understanding the work the three of us did together. He was able to duplicate much of it on his own. (It's not all that hard, by the way. The ancient Greeks measured the circumference of the earth fairly accurately well over 2,000 years ago. Any amateur with sufficient interest can do it even more easily today.)

But this guy was just too caught up in the conspiracy mindset. He was following the leader, kind of like people follow Alex Jones, by consuming endless series of YouTube videos purporting to prove the Earth is flat.

There's no huge harm in that, of course. Whatever this guy believes about the shape of the earth is irrelevant to his daily life, and really doesn't matter to anybody else either. He's a kind, loving family man with never a bad word to say about anybody.

So, no harm no foul. Right?

That's what I thought too, until one day he walked up to me and said, "You know those parents who say their children were shot to death at that school are lying, right?"

I didn't even try to answer him.

But my "no harm, no foul" concept got turned on its head that day.

Because how do you run a modern liberal democracy when a significant and growing percentage of people behave as if facts and reason don't matter?