VIEWPOINT

From page A4

in the face of all of the evidence?

Let’s take something a little more tangible than Plato’s Cace. There are people who truly believe the world is flat. I thought it was a joke when I first heard of the Flat Earth Society. I assumed it was some sort of ironic little group, but nope. These are real people with jobs and kids and access to heavy machinery who are walking and talking and living among us and really believe that our planet is just a flat disc that I suppose you might actually (in their minds) be able to fall off. We’re not talking about medieval peasants who simply didn’t understand. We’re talking about people in the 21st century who know we have airplanes and satellites and space telescopes that all very clearly show a round planet. There’s even a line on their official web site that boasts “We have members all across the globe.”

And I’ll let you figure out why that statement is both funny and a little sad.

You can giggle all you want, but it’s truly what they believe. And for every conspiracy out there, there are people who truly believe it.

I don’t mean people who just want to stir up a little controversy on the internet for fun or whatever, I mean they really, truly believe that 5G cell phone towers are spreading the coronavirus or aurtism, or that the U.S. government “did 9/11” or that there’s a group of political (probably Democrat) pedophiles running a child sex ring out of a Washington pizza parlor.

I don’t even mean somewhat plausible ideas like fraud in the 2020 election or that COVID-19 was made in a lab. I mean stuff like lizard people and the Illuminati and JFK is coming back to make Trump president again. It all sounds funny, but would sound funnier if some of these weird ideas weren’t being presented as fact for people to absorb and regurgitate on their Facebook profiles because they truly believe. And that, my friends, is no joke.