They are doing the right thing in Maine.

According to this piece in CNN, Maine is now the fourth state to do the sensible thing and prohibit people from opting out of immunizations on religious and philosophical grounds. 

Good for Maine!

Of course, I am almost tempted to take some credit for this. I almost want to claim that I called a meeting at the Jersey City headquarters of the American branch of the Illuminati and gave the order to my minions—just as I had done when I ordered the measles outbreak up in New York, according to the State of the Nation website—but it would be really dishonest of me to do so.

In all seriousness, this is a step in the right direction. But it’s also staggering to consider that in 2019 only three other states—California, West Virginia, and Mississippi—have ended religious exemptions to life-saving vaccinations. As I have written before, are we completely committed to returning to the Dark Ages where we are willing to let people suffer and die out of superstitious fear when the power to prevent diseases exist? When it has existed for decades and has saved lived for decades? 

This issue is so frustrating because we see the political power of people so ignorant as to not realize that the religious liberties guaranteed by the Constitution are not without boundaries. Your rights to practice the worship of your invisible magical beings does not outweigh others’ rights to their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. People are not allowed to infect others, to spread death and disease out of religious liberties. Saying that people ought to be allowed to opt out of vaccinations on religious grounds is like saying that I had visions where my deity commands me to drink a half a bottle of whiskey every Friday night, then get in a car and drive it as fast as I can, and I must be allowed to do so by law enforcement lest my religious liberties be trampled upon.

The First Amendment rightly protects people’s consciences and allows them to believe as they choose or not to believe as they choose. But it does not give them the right to force their beliefs on others and it certainly does not give them the right to put others’ lives in danger because of religious belief.

So now the rest of the states need to do the right thing, too, and they must protect the lives of their citizens. There must be no exemptions to vaccinations allowed for anything other than medical reasons.

No, you should NOT have the right to do your own research and make a choice!

This is an interesting article from a couple of weeks ago that was just brought to my attention. It’s a piece by Jennifer Reich, a sociologist and author of the book “Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines,” condensing the topic of her book. Both the book and the article give a glimpse of the complex decision-making processes of people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. 

Reich especially focuses on the kind of damage unvaccinated children can do to herd immunity, or the way measles epidemics can spread when a large enough segment of a population is not immunized. Parents refuse to consider the greater, herd immunity factor because, as Reich argues, of a cultural atmosphere of hyper-individualized parenting. Parents who have come to believe that vaccines are harmful to their children will quickly and readily ignore the greater good in an effort to protect their own children from a perceived threat.

This complete and total disregard for the greater social good is as infuriating as the fact that somehow at the start of the twenty-first century so much of the world, even parts of the so-called developed world like the U.S. and Europe, is slipping into a new Dark Age of superstition, ignorance, and beliefs in unsubstantiated pseudoscientific crap being shoveled all over the internet by charlatans and conspiracy theorists. And remember what I wrote in several of my posts here: I’m a libertarian and I am all for individuality. I am passionate about forms of government that allow their citizens as much individuality as possible. But I am also passionate about empirical scientific facts, about reason and rationality. Vaccines work! Period! This is a fact that has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. We know that vaccines work just like we know that that Earth is round. Vaccines DO NOT cause autism!! This, too, has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. And vaccines are not a New World Order/Illuminati/Satanist plot to depopulate the world, or whatever deranged fantasies predators and nightcrawlers like Alex Jones, State of the Nation, The Millennium Report, and the rest of the festering moral cesspool that is the “truther” community keeps propagating for attention and profit.

Reich’s article also points out the other frustrating aspect of the hyper-individualistic parents; the parents who want to have the “right to do their own research and make up their minds about vaccines.” Is this sort of behavior not want to make you test which is harder, your head or the nearest concrete wall? Is this not the height of the most toxic sort of hubris, the most insane form of solipsistic behavior? I definitely think so. And, remember, I’m the individualist libertarian! However, facts are facts. Consider the following: if any of these concerned parents suddenly heard a banging and wheezing noise come out of their car’s engine just a moment before said car sputtered to a stop and died on the side of the road, what would they do? Would they pop the hood, roll up their sleeves and go to work trying to fix it right then and there? Would they whip out their smart phones and Google “how to fix dead engine?” Of course, not! They would call a tow truck and have that car taken to an expert to fix the problem. So sorry, folks, but this is why I have no patience and sympathy for the let-the-parents-do-the-research-and-make-up-their-own-minds crowd. The average Middle American soccer mom does not have the ability to research the issue on her own and come to accurate conclusions. Unless that soccer mom has medical training and is a physician, she has no business making decisions about whether or not to vaccinate! This is also why I am once again being uncharacteristically un-libertarian in favoring very tough punitive legal measures against people who refuse to vaccinate their children.

Now I do agree with Reich’s argument—and the arguments of many other dismayed doctors and scientists—that the real villains in the recent measles outbreaks are not necessarily the parents themselves. The parents are merely gullible and ignorant of scientific and medical data. And, of course, they are also fearful. I completely understand the kind of dread fear any parent might have over the thought of their child becoming sick, disabled for life, or dying. I am completely sympathetic to the fact that any decent parent will always fear for their child’s health and welfare. But the real villains are the ones who feed on this fear, who exploit it, who tell parents lies.

The real villains are the anti-vaccination activists, the conspiracy-peddling vampires like Jones, the State of the Nation editorial staff, The Millennium Report web page, the Call for an Uprising YouTube channel and the rest of their sociopathic ilk.

Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

Well, the folks over at State of the Nation seem to have an incredibly high of opinion of me! They just blamed me for starting a massive "false flag" measles outbreak up in Rockland County, New York. I'm not kidding. Check out this delirious rant about me from a few days ago.

I almost missed the article since they weren't insulting me in the title.

They claim that my blogging about my frustration with parents who refuse to vaccinate their children was immediately followed by the measles outbreak in New York. It was suspiciously too soon after I blogged, SOTN claims. My post apparently was the command for the New World Order conspirators to infect people with measles so that New York authorities could respond by banning those infected from public places.

So SOTN is now making me out to be some kind of a Bondian super villain, sitting in my lair in Jersey City and issuing false flag orders to all of my NWO minions as a part of my diabolical plan...TO RULE ZA VORLD!!! MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Seriously! Read the article. It sounds exactly like the rantings of a hopelessly deranged mind.

However, if you're running the SOTN web page and you actually take seriously what you write, shouldn't you be asking yourself one very important question right now? If Donovan is so powerful that he can just order a measles outbreak at will, what's to stop him from sending a black helicopter full of Illuminati assassins after you for attempting to foil his grand plans for global domination?

Not sure if I should laugh or cry.

So here's a link to YET ANOTHER major study verifying what the scientific community has known for a long time: there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest that measles vaccines cause autism. Case closed!

Except given the state our modern world is in - and not just America society, but many other countries in the world where we've been seeing measles outbreaks - will this make much of a difference to an ever-growing segment of the population that likes to make up its own facts and create its own belief systems completely unconnected to any empirical evidence? I fear that the answer to that might be..."not likely."

I'm as pessimistic as I am because I recently watched a fascinating, hilarious, frightening, absurd, disheartening documentary on Netflix called "Behind the Curve." It focuses on that other great modern derangement I've been writing about here, the flat Earth movement. The documentary is quite fair to the flat Earthers, actually, as it lets them tell their story in their own words. We see some of the thought-leaders of the flat Earth movement as they explain their beliefs and why they came to believe what they do.

Now the idea that the Earth is flat I will just leave in the same category as the "Pizzagate" conspiracy and the Qanon conspiracy. It is so staggeringly absurd that it's not worth spending the time addressing all of its claims.

What makes the documentary especially fascinating, though, is when we see how this monumental foolishness serves as a magnet, a community, and a surrogate family for people who are and always have been, for whatever reason, completely alienated from consensus reality and any organization or institution of expertise. We see these people congregate in online communities - when they don't get together at actual conventions - and spin their wild yarns of a massive, world-wide conspiracy to hide the truth about the real shape of the Earth. We also see how the people who make up this zany movement already have a propensity for paranoia and for living in their own self-made fantasy worlds. The stars, if you will, of the flat Earth movement profiled in "Behind the Curve," people like Patricia Steere or Mark Sargent, are also staunch believers in vast collection of other conspiracies, everything from 9/11 trutherism to flase-flag-attack theories and all the way to the vaccine conspiracy theories.

But a really sad part of this documentary is when we see people who take their kids to the flat Earth conventions, who teach them to believe in this archaic, utterly unrealistic load of demented nonsense. In my eyes, the behavior of those parents borders on child abuse. It borders on child abuse as much as the behavior of parents who refuse to give their children vaccines. It makes me want to scream that if children can be removed by authorities from families where they are beaten, starved, and tortured, why shouldn't they be taken away from parents who refuse to vaccinate them? Or who indoctrinate them in idiocy like the flat Earth beliefs. That, of course, will never happen. But sometimes it really makes me wish!

So what about our new study debunking the vaccines/autism link yet again? Is there reason to believe it will change minds?

I hope so.

But, then again, when we still have flat Earthers despite all the evidence...

There's still hope for the future!

Check out this article about the vaccination issue for a very heartening turn of events! It's one of several where we see kids actually being smarter than their parents. A couple of these articles have appeared recently about teenagers getting vaccinated in defiance of their "anti-vaxxer" parents. The kids, it seems, are able to understand such things as logic and evidence-based reasoning. That, of course, is unlike their parents who keep clinging to completely discredited myths and conspiracy theories about "Big Pharma" and "Big government" and big this and big that knowingly poisoning people with MMR vaccine for whatever nefarious reason that make sense only to the minds of conspiracy theorists. In the meantime, of course, we have had measles epidemics breaking out in...wait for it!!...population clusters where parents are refusing to vaccinate their kids. Quite a coincidence, isn't it?

But it is great hearing that young people are capable of understanding science and are willing to reject the dangerous conspiracy fantasies of their misguided parents. This is the power of education at work.

I just hope that when I am teaching my students about the myths and logical fallacies of all the major conspiracy theories, I can have this sort of impact on them as well.

My big reveal!!

So I need to take the opportunity on the public forum to finally reveal my true identity to the world. I am the Antichrist!

Yes! And that is why I took the role of a college professor when I came to Earth. This is the profession that gives me the greatest opportunity to corrupt the most minds. Young, innocent, impressionable minds!

OK, so I’m kidding. But this is actually part of my introduction to the Do It Yourself Conspiracy exercise in my Conspiracy Films class. Through the reverse scientific process, by cherry-picking facts, making spurious connections, anyone can “prove” that just about any event in the world is but a part of a massive conspiracy. Even the most ridiculous of the supernatural, Antichrist and Satanic conspiracy theories can be proven true through the deceptive presentation of actual facts. The exercise is designed to help students develop critical thinking skills and help them understand how unethical communicators can manipulate the into believing the most patently absurd claims. In the age of fake news spreading through the internet and YouTube channels claiming to prove that the Earth is flat and that all entertainers are Satanic Illuminati conspirators plotting to take over the world (completely nuts, isn’t it? The only Satanic Illuminati conspirators around are teaching on college campuses) through the use of chemtrails and tainted vaccines that cause autism, I do believe that this is one of the most important exercises I give any of my classes.

But here is the proof that Barna William Donovan is the Antichrist himself:

The name! “William Donovan” was the founder of the CIA, the organization behind the biggest conspiracies of the late twentieth century. Assassination – from JFK to RFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lennon, Tupac Shakur, Princess Diana, and Michael Jackson – coverups from the Moon landing to the Roswell crash. And 9/11 anyone? Who but the CIA could have pulled that off?

Take a look at my books! Doesn’t all that violent imagery make you wonder? Blood? Guns? Testosterone? “A thirst for violence?” Who but the Antichrist would write such things?

Look at my blog posts arguing that there is no connection between media violence and real world violence? Is that not part of the most vile of Satanic deceptions??

Check out all the positive references to Lucifer, Satanists, and Baphomet. The work of the great deceiver himself!

Then let’s check out the fact that I teach at a Jesuit university. The Jesuits have also been accused of some of the biggest conspiracies in history. Check out this link to Jesuit conspiracies.

And let us not forget that Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati, was trained by…wait for it…the Jesuits!!

And how about the location where I teach? Saint Peter’s University is on John F. Kennedy boulevard in Jersey City.  So a link between the CIA, the Jesuits, and JFK? Coincidence, right? Well, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn if you believe that!

And how about the Satanic numerology of Saint Peter’s University’s location. You, I’m sure, are familiar with the oft-proven Satanic symbolism of the number 13. So guess where Saint Peter’s University is located…?

2641, John F. Kennedy boulevard!

And 2641 adds up to…13!!!!

So can any of this really be a coincidence?

Of course it can. This is a simple parlor trick that can be used to prove anything anyone wants to prove. Some of my students have “proven” that they had relatives who took part in the JFK assassination. 

And hopefully they all walked away from the class wiser to the ways of all the deception spreading through the Internet and social media today like a malignant virus.

Yes, the threat is real! From conspiracy theorists!

OK, so the time I had to devote to posting on this blog might have been limited over the last couple of weeks, but the recent feedback I have been getting keeps proving the point I have been making and the point in my new novel. And yes, I have been keeping an eye on the constant, downward-spiraling insanity that is the current phase of conspiracy theorizing in America.

And please, go ahead and scroll through the feedback my last couple of posts have been receiving to understand what I am talking about. Please look at the astonishingly repulsive, asinine, and cruel comments about the Catherine Oxenberg book in the previous post.  

I don’t delete any comments from this blog, even if I don’t have the time to always reply and even if I don’t agree with what they have to say. But I will criticize as loudly as I can.

Conspiracy theories are among the biggest threats this culture is facing today. It is time for intellectuals, for academics, for the sciences to start pushing back. The conspiracy community today are NOT alternative thinkers who dare to be critical. They are not offering legitimate challenges to the status quo. They are malignant, dangerous threat to rationality, the downward slide of society into the new dark ages where superstition and unprovable claims demand (and often get) as much credence as empirical facts. 

As an educator in communication and media studies, I am able to do my part in combating this by teaching skills in the true critical analysis of media messages. Are the claims being made in the mass media, in the alternative media like the various social media and Internet forums, provable beyond a shadow of a doubt or not? If they are not, they are true fake news.

Plus, when I teach my course on conspiracy theories and entertainment, I do my damnedest to make sure that no one leaves that class ever again thinking that Alex Jones is a reliable source of information, that the Illuminati might be working on setting up a new world order, that lizard aliens are running the world and keeping everyone asleep with chemtrails spread by Devil-worshipping airline pilots flying out of Denver International Airport.

In a world where people still argue that the world is flat and put children’s lives at risk by refusing to vaccinate, it might be the most important thing I am doing.

And hey, here’s a bit of not so hidden knowledge…the Illuminati, this oh-so dangerous secret society our conspiracy-obsessed subculture of paranoia is so frightened of believed in such threatening ideas as the separation of church and state, representative government, equal rights for women, and the primacy of reason and rationality in life. 

That sounds pretty good to me!

Seriously! I think I’d like to join the Illuminati if they really exist. Where I can get a get a hold of the application paperwork? Can I download it from a website?

Seriously! If the Illuminati admissions department is reading this, let’s talk…

I can totally keep any secrets about where Hitler’s cloned brain is hidden in the Bohemian Grove! For reals!!!

Foolishness is deadly...

…and it’s apparently contagious, too, spreading absurd belief systems around the world. After seeing a story on NBC news about recent cases of measles in the U.S., I ran across this article about what are purported to be record high numbers across Europe. Now according to the CDC, the number of measles cases in the U.S. is about the same as last year and within the expected range of infections—about 124. 

Europeans, however, are concerned with what they are calling record high numbers in 2018 so far, or around 41,000. This is almost double the numbers from 2017. And the most disturbing statistic, though, is that in 2016 there were 5,273 cases.

The World Health Organization is now calling on European countries to take action on this matter. As well they should, obviously, as the high volume of global travel now makes the spread of diseases so much faster. According to the CDC, many of the American cases of measles can be traced to travel to foreign countries.

But the underlying problem in this matter, according to both the CDC and the WHO, is the growing number of people who are refusing vaccinations. And all of this is still tied to one 20-year-old paper by a discredited and de-licensed British physician named Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield claimed to have found a causal connection between autism and the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine. Although, again, discredited, withdrawn and disowned by Wakefield’s co-authors, the effects of this one paper just don’t want to die. It gave rise to an ever-more aggressive anti-vaccination movement around the world and their elaborate, paranoid conspiracy theories about a dark, sinister collusion between drug companies, scientists, governments, and the media. 

So when a friend of mine recently asked me about why I feel so strongly that conspiracy theorists need to be recast in the popular imagination from principled – if goofy and eccentric – outsider heroes to dangerous cranks and charlatans, I find few better examples for my argument than the vaccination controversy. These numbers out of Europe are a travesty. We are talking about a disease that had been all but eradicated. And now it’s spreading in record numbers around the world! What’s going to be next? The return of small pox? Polio outbreaks? Are we indeed heading back to the Dark Ages in the 21^stcentury? Measles is making a comeback and we have regular conventions (around the U.S. at least) dedicated to the belief that the Earth is flat. 

These types of conspiratorial fantasies, this attitude that there is no consensus reality, that each and every person has to right to create their own reality and to reject the notion of empirical facts and truths need to be treated as a dangerous epidemic. Yes, scientists and academic journals need to do their absolute best to present only reliable, well-proven, peer-reviewed data. But the rest of the educational establishment needs to do its part as well in ingraining in students from a very early age that facts matter, that there is a truth with a capital “T,” and not all opinions are equally valid. As the late science fiction author Harlan Ellison once said, “no, you are not entitled to your opinion! You are entitled to your informed opinion.”

I usually start the semesters of my class on conspiracy theories with that quote from Ellison. Hopefully by the end of the class there will be fewer anti-vaxxers, “crisis actor” believers, and 9/11 truthers out there.

So yes, I am after the minds of young people and I’m trying to influence them!!