https://www.everand.com/blog/tartarian-empire-conspiracy-ph…

Greetings from Tartaria!
Colin Dickey’s Everand Original, Land of Delusion, takes a deep dive into the bizarre world of conspiracy theories. Dickey introduces readers to the Tartarian Empire, which sprang from Russia and spread across the globe, only to be destroyed by evil schemers — the same dark powers behind Covid vaccines and our reliance on fossil fuels.
Or so the theorists would have you believe.
In his fun yet unsettling story, Dickey examines the reasons why people turn to conspiracy theories, and makes the case that even the nuttiest beliefs can lead to dangerous political and cultural consequences. (This is proven by another Everand Original, comedian Jesse Joyce’s Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln, which you can learn more about here.)
In this post, Dickey shares photos of supposed Tartarian buildings and other remnants of Tartarian civilization from his visits to two of the Tartarian Empire’s most famous sights, known to the unenlightened as the Chicago and San Francisco World’s Fairs.
My arrival in Chicago was not entirely auspicious. This extremely strange mural was painted on the wall above my bed. I suppose management figured this kind of imagery would be pleasant or relaxing to sleep under?
The next morning, I headed down to Jackson Park, on the city’s South Side, where the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 was held. For some (rather fringe) conspiracy theorists, archival images of the Chicago Expo are considered proof positive there once existed a great civilization known as the Tartarian Empire. Not only was this supposed empire destroyed, but its existence was wiped from history books; old photographs are all that remain. The story of the World’s Fairs (in Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, and elsewhere) was made up after the fact to explain these photographs of the erased Tartarian Empire.
The only building left from the Expo is the Palace of Fine Arts, which has largely been rebuilt and now houses the Museum of Scienc…