Like I said, one of the best things on the Internet...

If you’re stressed out and need some pure gut-busting laughter, I can’t recommend the Sci Man Dan flat-earth-fail compilation videos strongly enough. I had written about the Sci Man Dan YouTube channel before, but for very concise distillations of flat Earth lunacy, do check out the channel’s compilation of the stupidest, most inane arguments made by those who believe the Earth is flat. Here is a link to one such compilation video.

In fact, these compilations are giving me ideas for this blog, as well as possible exercises for my future classes on conspiracy theorists. Wouldn’t it be just as funny to start a compilation of the most shockingly stupid anti-vaxxer or 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

Hmm…although I don’t know if funny would be the right word here. Especially when it comes to vaccines. With the flat Earthers you are merely watching the mindless, uniformed ramblings of the hilariously ignorant. They might be stupid, but they hardly cause any damage in the world. 

Anti-vaxxers, on the other hand, get people sick, or worse. 

The flat Earthers are like the performers in old-time freak shows. They are intellectual grotesqueries you can stare at and laugh at and feel superior.

The anti-vaccination activists make you wish that a law could be passed to keep people whose IQ’s are below a certain level from voting. That way we could be sure that no one who actually believes the anti-vaxxer drivel will ever be able to cast a ballot in any election.

The anti-vaxxer terror movement

A couple of recent articles here and here give an overview of the mistake that had been made in the New Jersey State Senate in December which will hopefully be corrected when the legislature reconvenes in February. In a development that helps make New Jersey an embarrassment, a bill to bar all religious exemptions to vaccination requirements was defeated in the senate, thanks to the concerted thuggery and propaganda campaigns of anti-vaxxers, fringe religious zealots, and conspiracy theorists.

I just realized what the anti-vaccination movement and its vocal activists remind me of. They make me think of several recent criminal cases where people who encouraged their depressed friends to commit suicide. Take the Conrad Roy case, for example, where the troubled teenager was coerced into killing himself by his girlfriend through a series of texts and phone calls. Then there was the case of Boston College student Alexander Urtula who was allegedly (the case has not gone to trial as of this writing) harassed, demeaned, and goaded by his girlfriend through a series of some 47,000 text messages into killing himself. 

The anti-vaccination movement similarly preys on the fears and insecurities of parents, bombarding them through a twisted cyber network of blogs, web pages, and social media sites with deceptive and destructive messages that wind up leading those parents to harm their own children. Telling parents not to vaccinate their children, propagating the lies and fabricated conspiracy theories of Internet charlatans is no different than pressuring someone who is depressed or struggling with various forms of mental illness into committing suicide. There is absolutely no credible scientific evidence to suggest that childhood vaccines are dangerous. Read this op-ed about the issue of vaccine safety and this story about yet another major study that proves no connection between vaccines and autism for a detailed discussion about vaccines and science for more details. And, again, telling a worried parent to the contrary is akin to pressuring and goading a dangerously depressed person into harming themselves. In fact, the woman who had allegedly sent her boyfriend 47,000 texts telling him to kill himself looks like an amateur when compared to the sewage of lies and distortions that flood the internet from the anti-vaccination movement every day. As the Globe and Times articles point out, the New Jersey legislature was basically caught off guard by the sheer size and organization of the anti-vaxxer extremists and the power their deception has over people who are scared, who have to medical training, who are alienated from institutions of expertise and authority. Unfortunately this reprehensible, destructive movement has the power to pressure and intimidate lawmakers as well, intelligent individuals who should know better.

So how frustrating is the defeat of the religious exemption bill in light of the fact that New Jersey’s Lakewood community was hit with a measles outbreak in 2019? It’s frustrating enough to make me wish that anti-vaxxers who encourage parents not to vaccinate their children be treated exactly the same way by the law as the people who manipulate others into committing suicide. Yes, I am most often a knee-jerk, free-speech, staunch libertarian, but cases like these shake the very foundation of some of my beliefs. It almost makes me wish that the purveyors of the anti-vaccination propaganda and the conspiracy theories they are founded on would not be protected by the First Amendment. We can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, after all. Moreover, religious liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment are not absolute either. For example, if your religion tells you to commit human sacrifice, the law would certainly take issue with you. And no, parents do not—and should not—have absolute authority over every aspect of their children’s lives. You DON’T have the right to do anything to your children and be free of government interference. You can’t beat your children, for example, and you can’t sexually abuse them either. So you also shouldn’t be allowed exemptions from vaccines based on your religious and philosophical beliefs.

Last year, in fact, I was glad to see the stories about the FBI memo suggesting that some circles of today’s conspiracy community should be viewed as a new form of domestic terrorism. I had written about that on this blog, and it was energizing to see that society is opening its eyes at last to the destructive threat people like the Alex Jones crowd, the Millennium Report, State of the Nation extremists and the rest of their ilk pose to this country. The anti-vaccination movement should be added to this new domestic terror list.

So let’s hope that New Jersey’s elected representatives come to their senses in February and reject the lies, fearmongering, and (what should be criminal) manipulations of the anti-vaxxer terror movement.

No, the Earth is not flat. You're just a moron!

So this appears to be a thing now…every reference to space and the space program gets an automatic reply by the flat Earth believers, as in this article about pictures of the Earth taken from the International Space Station. The piece quickly triggered a set of mental defectives to trot out their conspiracy theories about doctored photos that only create the illusion of a curved Earth.

Now a story like this is probably run in this paper to illicit the incredulous chuckles from readers. It could lead to several head-shakes and jokes about the silliness a of a few people who still believe in nonsense like a flat Earth. As the article details, the Earth was know to be a sphere over 2000 years ago. Simple calculations have been able to prove it.

So I guess I might be in a slightly surly mood right now, but I’m not getting the urge to chuckle at this. Even one flat Earth believer in the world in 2020 is too many. As a growing body of psychological research in conspiracy beliefs is demonstrating, people who believe in idiocy like this are the alienated, the mentally unfit, clinical paranoids, and the sufferers of various mental and personality disorders. They are the antisocial misfits, the inept outsiders who are so alienated from the rest of society that they need to concoct narratives of vast evil cabals that are responsible for all of society’s ills. The creation of these fantasies by these chronic misfits lets them feel like the heroes of their own private universe. It lets them feel like heroic crusaders saving the world from conspiracies no one else is smart enough to see. These conspiracy beliefs are the ultimate ego trip.

Or, in plain English, people who believe in the Earth being flat - or the anti-vaccination agenda, for that matter, or the faking of the Moon landing, or mass shootings being perpetrated by "crisis actors" - are a collection of frigging morons who should be committed to mental asylums against their will. It would certainly be for the betterment of society. 

Damn, that's stupid!

When it comes to the wild and zany world of special-interest groups attempting to protect “America’s families” from all the so-called “filth” and “trash” of the mass media, a special prize needs to go out to the One Million Moms organization. An adjunct organization of the American Family Association—a rabidly anti-gay evangelical group that had once been correctly labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center—it’s a collection of nutty extremists who have somehow managed to make headlines recently for the various (spectacularly) failed attempts at influencing popular entertainment. 

Their latest attempt at imposing their bizarre value system on mainstream culture is their call to boycott Burger King for their use of the word “damn” in a new Impossible Whopper ad. You can check out one of the stories on the kerfuffle right here. Apparently they seem to believe that “damn” is a curse word that will corrupt “impressionable” young children. How exactly the corruption will happen is not explained. What form the “corruption” will take is not explained either. So an impressionable youngster saying the word “damn” will lead exactly to what? Will that impressionable little tyke now turn into an ax-murderer? Maybe he’ll join a gang? Become a drug dealer? Not certain, and the million moms don’t seem to have any clear answers among them. I mean, maybe one or two of those million moms might have been able to elaborate.

Now these people seem to be gluttons for public punishment. Some might recall that just before Christmas the Million Moms called for a boycott of the Hallmark Channel for airing an ad that featured a lesbian couple’s wedding and their kiss. Although the Hallmark Channel at first cravenly caved to these yoyos, the channel soon realized that their ratings and business would be hurt much more severely by the backlash from…well, normal, tolerant, decent human beings who, luckily, make up a greater percentage of the American population than the members of homophobic fringe religious fanatics do. So then if the Hallmark Channel boycott wasn’t an embarrassing enough failure for the Moms, they now move on to something as idiotic as this Burger King “damn” boycott.

So I’m certain that Burger King will not lose too much sleep over the angry Moms and not give in to this silly request to change their commercial…that is if they know what’s good for their business. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to be known as the second business to cave in to the demands of cultural terrorists.

Oh, and one more note on the issue of cursing and its effects. What research exists on the subject seems to suggest that those who curse regularly in order to vent their frustrations in a stressful situation might actually possess a higher level of intelligence. Check out this article right here. This doesn’t surprise me since cultural conservative extremists like the American Family Association, One Million Moms, or the Parents Television Council appear to have IQs that make Flat Earth believers look like MENSA members.

New Book Announcement: THE CEDAR VALLEY COVENANT

I recently participated in science fiction literature conventions like the World Fantasy Convention in Los Angeles and the Philcon in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where I have been making an announcement at various panels, readings, and book-signing sessions (like the one above at in L.A.). So it’s about time I should let the world know here as well!

In 2020, my second novel, THE CEDAR VALLEY COVENANT, will be published by World Castle Publishing. If a combination of science fiction, horror, mystery, and action/adventure excite you – and how can they not? – then you’ll need to put this book on your reading list. Trust me!

Aliens on the radio!

I was interviewed by Lisa Valentine Clark on her podcast a few weeks ago and my segment can be heard right here. We were discussing all things extraterrestrial with an overview of some of the major topics in UFOlogy, spanning from ancient astronaut theories to abductions, Roswell, and the Men in Black. It's a topic I am endlessly fascinated by, both as a sociological phenomenon and in the big "what if" question. Some 7 to 10 percent of UFO sightings around the world are unexplained, so it's intriguing to ponder just what if the phenomenon really could be the manifestation of something extraterrestrial or interdimensional.

The Neo-Nazi core of the 9/11 "truther" movement

 

During the recent anniversary of the September 11 attacks, I spent a few days perusing the (all too many) 9/11 “truther” sites and their latest claims of conspiracies and coverups. Now I know what you’re thinking: what do 9/11 conspiracy theorists have to do with the truth. And you’re absolutely right. The inhabitants of the “alternate news” funny-farm have nothing to do with the truth. But just go with me. I did put the word truth in quotes to signify sarcasm.

But I digress from something serious. Perhaps the loudest and dumbest of the “truther”/”alternate news”/conspiracy-theory is no longer even attempting to hide the fact that at the core of this movement is a malignant culture of bigotry and anti-Semitism. So how did you guess that I am writing about the State of the Nation? Although originally the 9/11 conspiracy movement had its fair share of crackpots from the far left—the Bush and Chaney and Haliburton and the military/industrial-complex were behind it all crowd—they had eventually become outnumbered by the anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli far-right Neo-Nazi lunatics. These are the people who believe that the attacks were staged to start wars against Arab nations at the behest of Israel. This is the crowd that used to advance the thoroughly discredited, baseless assertion that Jewish employees of the World Trade towers were told to stay home from work on 9/11.

State of the Nation, of course, still advances this theory, along with every other theory about Jewish cabals, world-wide Zionist subversion, and so on and so on. In fact, if you visit this website, you’ll find a massive, putrid electronic garbage dump of alt-right talking points and links to various Holocaust denying Neo-Nazi sites.

For a closer look, scroll through the archives of SOTN on the right side of their page and look for the following links:

“The real 9/11 perps outed – yes, it’s all the usual suspects!”  Spoiler alert: the usual suspects the article talks about are Jews.

“Dr. John Dee: Occultist Behind the British Empire and Judaic New World Order”

“Here’s how the Israeli puppet masters coerce PM Netanyahu to steal Palestinian land in order to stay out of prison.”

“Was Bolton fired to make room for another rabid Neocon Zionist and confirmed Muslim hater?”

“Israel stages F35 Saudi attack after Putin’s smackdown of Netanyahu over Syria.”

“Conspiracy for total world domination exposed by religious proponents of scheme”

“The dancing Israelis and Mossad: How did they have foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks?”

“Why has this crazy tribe been kicked out of every country on Earth?”

Perhaps the most repugnant of these links is the last one above, the “crazy tribe” piece. It originates from a virulently anti-Semitic site full of more links to Holocaust-denying books and various sundry bits of fascist propaganda.

And do pay close attention of the content in the “crazy tribe” article. At first, of course, you will notice the grotesque caricature of a Jew. With the large, hooked nose, its sneer, it looks exactly like it could have been lifted from an anti-Semitic propaganda poster in Nazi Germany. But then you must understand the article’s content. It lists incidents throughout history where Jews had been oppressed and expelled from lands as a matter of official state policy. The title of the piece implies, of course, that the “crazy tribe” must somehow have deserved these pogroms. They must obviously be at fault if they had been oppressed so often.

So yes, the legacy of 9/11 must include a quest for the truth. The real truth is that a barbaric attack on the United States by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorists is being exploited by hate mongers and home-grown Nazis. Another enemy is attacking the U.S. now and they are called conspiracy theorists, “truthers,” and the purveyors of “alternative news.” These people need to be exposed, opposed, and, as the FBI correctly stated not too long ago, called the terrorists they are.