Einstein was also known to say, similar to your quote of Baldwin, 'things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.'

The paranoic will go from supposition to theory and back again, through a dozen easily disprovable scenarios, all the while maintaining the underlying narrative of fear, distrust, anger and helplessness. Such as that is what is going on here: the narrative that is believed, or wished to be believed, is fed again and again, and the fear, distrust, anger, and helplessness stoked to a fare-thee-well. This has been going on since before the Civil War.

It is not, in fact, a 'marketplace' of ideas, because the ideas have no worth. They are as easily abandoned as they are adopted, in so far as they feed the narrative and only so long as they do so...