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The past decade in general, and the past six months in particular, have seen a rise in conspiracy theories that spread with such ease that by the time you’ve fully understood them, the believers have moved on.

At the same time, it’s also a bonanza for the revival and repurposing of older conspiracy theories. Since they all build on each other in a ladder of grift and paranoia, understanding the older ones is often a key to understanding the newer ones. In an example I wrote about in The Storm is Upon Us, the crackpot Omega Trust scam begat the even more crackpot NESARA scam, which begat the Iraqi dinar scam – and all three are both the building blocks of QAnon and still possession small sects of believers today.

In this way, conspiracy theories take on an evolutionary feel – some evolve into more advanced forms, while also continuing to exist in some way. It’s why “if humans evolved from apes, why do apes still exist” is such a dumb creationist argument. This is how evolution works, it’s not a transformation, it’s a growth that some members of the genus exhibit and others don’t.

Ergo, chemtrails can be a conspiracy theory with decades-old roots that has been debunked time and time again, while also finding new adherents and ways to spread on social media.

Like a volcano of stupid, chemtrails mostly lay dormant as a conspiracy theory until suddenly being picked up as a cause by members of Donald Trump’s orbit. Just in the last few months, HHS Secretary and professional antivaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed the defense research agency DARPA was spraying chemicals on the American population through jet fuel, bathroom gadfly and sometime politician Nancy Mace claimed she would ban chemtrails if elected governor of South Carolina, and eight other states have actually taken some legal steps to ban them.

Like banning dragons, time portals, or a Bears quarterback throwing for 4,000 yards; banning chemtrails is impossible. None of these things exist. Chemtrails are not real. The government is not using jet planes to spray anything on anyone, and despite nearly 30 years of conspiracy theories about them, not a single chemtrail has ever been proven to exist.

Of course, airplane contrails are real, and have been photographed since the early 1940’s. Fleets of Allied bombers left the sky full of contrails behind them, and Londoners with the courage to go outside during the Battle of Britain could see the sky full of the condensation trails left by fighters and bombers going after each other. They are the natural result of hot exhaust from engines hitting cold air and instantly freezing. If you go outside on a cold day and breathe, you will create steam – essentially an unfrozen contrail. You are not a government chemical experiment, you are a person engaged in basic science. Congratulations!

Contrails have nothing to do with mind control, earthquakes, fires, mass shootings, brainwashing, transgender people, or any of the other ridiculous things people blame them for – because they are just lines of frozen water vapor. Chemtrails also don’t have anything to do with these things – because they don’t exist.

I have no idea whether the politicians touting their tough-on-chemtrail records know they aren’t real. But they know that their constituents believe they’re real. This is the only meaningful currency in conspiracism – knowing whether people will believe something or not. And chemtrails have many believers. I saw this firsthand when I made a simple post about Mace’s “chemtrail ban” proposal and got thousands of responses.

Conspiracist responses to my simple, absolutely true statement essentially fell into four overlapping categories:

1. “oh, so you’re saying cloud seeding/weather modification isn’t real?”
2. “I saw them, so they’re real”
3. “If they’re not real, why not ban them?”
4. “shut up, Jew”

Obviously, these are all bad responses, but they’re bad for different reasons. If I debated conspiracy theorists, which I don’t, this is what I might say back:

1. Mace didn’t mention cloud seeding or weather modification, both of which are real, but fairly limited in use and application. She mentioned chemtrails – specifically that, and only that. Defending something that someone didn’t say is like a reverse strawman argument, and has no relevance. Nancy Mace likely knows little about the complex history of weather modification, but she knows that when she says “chemtrails” her fans will start foaming at the mouth.
2. Claiming that “I know what I saw” is a classic crackpot crutch, and is usually followed with “are you calling me a liar?” No, I’m saying you’re wrong. What you are seeing is either a contrail or a cloud. They have existed for a long time, and just because they look sinister or mysterious doesn’t mean they are. We are gullible and fallible, particularly in regards to seeing something we don’t understand and thinking we do.
3. Because laws that ban things that aren’t real based on conspiracy theories and bad science are not only useless, but potentially harmful. They waste time, money, effort, and can be applied in any number of ways that might cause pain to other people. Remember when conservatives wanted fewer laws? It wasn’t that long ago. Laws against things that don’t exist can be warped and twisted to use against things that do. What if a “chemtrail ban” was used to justify bans on flying in general? Or research on weather or climate change? Things that aren’t real don’t need to have laws applied to them like they are.
4. You’d be surprised (or not) how many conspiracist arguments just start and end with the person making them being Jewish. Judaism and airplane contrails have nothing to do with one another. And yet, I got dozens of responses saying as such, or just declaring that I can’t be trusted because I’m “a Rothschild.” I wrote a book about that.

The real questions about chemtrails aren’t “what are they spraying” but “after 80+ years of contrails, why has nobody proven they’re actually chemicals?”

We should be asking believers for proof. For actual video of chemicals being loaded into planes – or some idea what these chemicals even are. We should demand scientific answers as to how a thin trail of something 35,000 feet up in the air can have any effect on anyone on the ground. We should ask for testimony or depositions or notarized statements from pilots who have sprayed chemtrails, ground crews that loaded them, or chemtrail bosses who ordered them to be sprayed. Believers should know exactly what it is they’re claiming is happening, how it works, who is doing it, and why. These are fairly simple questions that believers should be desperate to answer.

But they don’t want answers, they want fear. None of it is real, and those who tout chemtrails as a tool of globalist control don’t want to hear the reasons they’re being lied to by their gurus.

Politicians looking for easy wins with conspiracy theorist voters will keep trotting this nonsense out, knowing few people have the time or interest to really go up against it. And knowing that some people will always be scared of things they don’t understand but can see happening in front of them.

Chemtrails aren’t real. But sadly, the pointless fear of them is.