I wrote this in the online Comments section of the Globe and Mail in response to an article the tells how US Tea Party Candidate Michelle Bachmann believes that the HPV vaccine causes "mental retardation."
If I don't sound too puffed up with myself, I think it bears repeating...
The United States (and Canada) is now caught up in a whirlwind of irrationality where our worst nightmares happen: vaccines make us sick; President Obama isn't an American; 9-11 was an inside job; global warming isn't human caused or isn't happening and is itself a conspiracy; we didn't land on the moon; the Illuminati and their brethren secretly rule the world through such organizations as Skull and Bones and the Bhomenian Grove; little grey aliens are working with the Hidden Government to produce human/alien hybrids; chemtrails and HARRP are secret weapons designed to depopulate the planet and much, much more...
Such irrationality is bred out of our insecurities and fears where we try to find explanations - conspiracy theories - that satisfy ourselves by "connecting the dots" and disregarding all evidence to the contrary. Sometimes this is done to an extreme, almost fanatical, level. Sometimes that evidence is even twisted around to be used in support of the theory. However, for all their sound and fury, seldom are these conspiracy theories correct. As Jung once said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
Or something like that.
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