Why do I see so many people using the word "conflate" lately? It's not a real word. Judging by the context people are using it in, they intend to use a word that means "confuse". If so, they should say "confuse" because confuse is a real word, but conflate isn't.

I looked in the dictionary. "Conflate" isn't in there. What is in the dictionary is this word:

conflation - n. a combining or fusing together, esp. of two variant readings of a text

Keep this in mind. You can have a conflation, but you cannot "conflate", and even if you could conflate, it would not mean "confuse".