People Should Start Dropping Dead Any Minute Now
And Happy Holidays
Programming Note: I’m gonna take a couple weeks off for the holidays, so this will be the last I write until some time in January (unless I die, but we’ll get to that). Enjoy the season, and thank you for reading this year!
Happy Holidays! If, in fact, any of us survive the holidays.
See, most people have probably forgotten about the doomsday prediction that is set to go BOOM any day now. Sane, ordinary folks forget these things, which is exactly why it is important to remember them. Since I am not a sane, ordinary folk, I have not forgotten. We should remember all the doomsday predictions not in spite of them being wrong, but precisely because they are wrong. If everyone remembered this nonsense maybe fewer people would be primed to believe the next one.
The current doomsday prediction, the one that predicts folks should start dropping dead any minute now, is about COVID vaccines. See, when the vaccine first came out, people who couldn’t even spell mRNA pretended like they were experts in this massive medical advancement. To be honest, I don’t even know what it is, and I’m not going to pretend I do. I have heard it explained as something similar to sending coding instructions to our bodies. That’s something I can relate to because I do a lot of statistical coding for my real job. I don’t know how accurate that explanation is, but since I code, that makes it easy for me to “understand”, even though I really don’t understand.
What I do know is that this medical breakthrough has been so spectacular it is now being deployed to treat cancer. Not just cancer in the broad sense of the term. mRNA can be used to treat individual cancers by specifically targeting a single human’s variant of disease.
Even cancer treatments just scratch the surface of the mRNA miracle. Other deadly viruses that plague Africa, like Ebola and Malaria, may also soon have mRNA vaccines to contend with. Imagine, for all the billions Bill Gates has admirably spent fighting Malaria, he may soon be able to provide Malaria vaccines for roughly the same cost as mosquito nets—currently one of the most effective ways to fight Malaria.
This is a literal medical miracle. And I do in fact mean “miracle” in the religious sense of the word.
My brilliant wife had a really interesting observation a few years ago. The church she belongs to asked all members worldwide to fast and pray for God to help lift the pandemic. Since I have gotten positive feedback when I write about religion, I suppose most of you already know that fasting is the choice to forgo food and water for a period of time. The idea is that the faster’s choice to deprive themselves will show God just how badly they want/need the thing they are praying for, and that they are willing to give up important things to get it.
But here is the interesting kick.
The church my wife belongs to, the one that was asking people to fast for God to intervene in humanity’s favor during the pandemic, is (like many American churches) overwhelmingly dominated by old, white, conservative men. Not that this is, in and of itself, a problem. Churches are like any competitive market. If there is sufficient demand among old, white, conservatives for this sort of church to exist, then it should exist. I only point this out because, as you might recall, conservative Christians were exactly the demographic of people who most adamantly refused to take public safety measures during the pandemic. For whatever reason they thought the Bible told them masks and social distancing were satanic, but ventilators and death were…good? or something. I confess, I don’t really know. This was never a line of thought that I could trace down, so it always confused me.
Anyway, back to my brilliant wife.
Whereas I, being my cynical self, had a hard time not laughing at people when they asked why God hadn’t intervened to help humans who refused to do anything to help themselves, my wife had a much different take. mRNA was not a completely new technology, the breakthrough had existed for several years. What was a breakthrough was using this technology to create a vaccine, and doing so so quickly that it shattered all expectations for the timeframe of vaccine development. My wife’s insight was that perhaps this sudden medical miracle came as an answer to people’s fasting and prayers. The more I think about it, the more I like this idea.
You may recall that, after God possibly intervened and helped/inspired the development of the vaccine, the same people who were fasting and praying for this very event were also far more likely than the general population to think the vaccine was satanic…or something. It wasn’t long before vaccine conspiracies started popping up. They converted new followers at such a rapid pace Christianity itself had to be jealous of their success. Soon, people were thumping their conspiracies even harder than they were thumping their Bibles.
One such conspiracy was that mRNA was a ticking time bomb. The vaccines, folks insisted, were going to kill people exactly two years after they were administered. The conspiracists even claimed they had a Nobel Prize winner who made the discovery of this ticking time bomb (obviously, they had no such person).
Well, guess what, folks? This holiday season marks two years since the vaccine came out. So, be prepared for Grandma to kick the bucket in the middle of all your festivities this year. Even I should become worm food fairly soon. When the vaccines were released I was teaching classes at a large university that served as the largest distribution hub for vaccines in the state. The school was pretty adamant that everyone teaching get vaccinated yesterday. I couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to get vaccinated anyway, so I jumped on board.
Now I’m scheduled for termination any day.
If I, in my scientific arrogance, am wrong, and the vaccine does kill people, I give every unvaccinated person full permission to dance about on my grave singing hallelujah. In fact, you should turn it into a yearly holiday festivity and make it one heck of a good party.
But, since I’m gonna be writing to you again in January, I just wanted to point out that this conspiracy existed—because I think most people, even those who believed it, have already forgotten about it.
We should not forget about these conspiracy theories and doomsday predictions. I think we should remember every. single. one. The fact that they are invariably wrong should be instructive to anyone who is willing to give genuine thought about the world or their own beliefs. So, in honor of the season and the 12 days of Christmas, I’m going to leave you with a countdown of my 12 favorite conspiracy theories from just my lifetime.
These conspiracy theories—all conspiracy theories for that matter—should be remembered because they have all been wrong. Putting them in the rearview mirror just makes the widespread acceptance of the next one more likely. Remember them, and remember just how wrong these people have been.
Y2K
What a classic. I was a kid when the world was supposed to end. Me and my friends started playing football at about 11:30. I guess we sort of figured we might as well go out having fun.
Mayan Calendar
This one was always interesting. The Mayans never actually predicted the end of the world, it was just a calendar reset that only takes place only every 5,000 or so years. Mayans used more than just the solar cycle to track dates, so their resets didn’t happen often. But in the end, all this doomsday event really turned out to be was the first ever Mayan calendar rollover. And yet, we have parties to celebrate our own Gregorian calendar roll over every December 31st.
Benghazi
Nothing conspiratorial about this event. People died, and it was tragic. The conspiracy was that somehow, Clinton knew about this and chose not to stop it. After millions of dollars and many—SO MANY—investigations that all cleared Clinton of wrongdoing, Republicans finally admitted they were just trying to hurt her political prospects.
Voter Fraud
This isn’t in reference to any specific accusation. Yes, Trump is the most famous voter fraud wolf cryer, but he is far from the only one. Trumpists have rightly pointed at liberal icon Stacey Abrams for her talk about a stolen election. Truth is, voter fraud is really rare—as in, it almost never happens. It is so rare that I consider it a conspiracy theory because anyone talking about it almost always does so in a way that suggests it can change elections. In reality, voter fraud is never more than a handful of votes here or there—not enough to swing elections.
Obama is a Kenyan born Muslim
Conspiracy theories often say more about the people who believe them than they do about the thing they are aimed at. This is one of the best examples. For starters, Obama was clearly not born in Kenya, but the more interesting thing to me is why people would be so up in arms about a Muslim (which wasn’t Obama’s faith anyway) being president? Like I said; says more about them than it does about Obama.
The Muslim Brotherhood
's Jonathan V. Last likes to say: Projection is the sincerest form of Trumpism.
To be honest, this whole list could probably consist of Obama-specific conspiracy theories, but most of them were so lazy and unimaginative that they don’t crack my top 12. The Muslim Brotherhood definitely exists, but remember when people were so sure that Obama was stacking the federal government full of them? They were implanted sleeper cells waiting for Obama’s signal, then they would take over the country and terminate the Constitution? Strange how Obama gave up power so willingly and with no violence when he had all these folks stashed away waiting for his command. As
9/11 Inside Job
This one always made me laugh. Lest people think I’m only picking on conservatives with this list, I will point out the Bush haters loved to push this crackpot idea too. Looney Lefty Rosie O’Donnell loved to say that fire doesn’t melt steel. How on Earth do people like this think we get steel? Do we just pull it straight out of the ground, and get lucky when it happens to be in exactly the right shape and thickness to fit a building’s blueprint? On top of this it clearly identified people who have no blue collar experience at all. Steel doesn’t need to melt to lose its rigidity. Simply heating it up makes it bend like a wet noodle, even though it still holds its shape. But, then again, nobody who believes these things ever actually does their homework.
Bob Mueller Sexual Assault
This flew under the radar even when it happened, probably because the people behind it were so stupid, and had failed at this sort of thing before. Anyway, expecting the Mueller report would likely detail some pretty bad stuff Trump did (they were right), some folks fabricated sexual assault allegations against Mueller. I’m chuckling as a type this because I still don’t know what they thought they might accomplish here.
Democrat Pedophile Rings
From Qanon to Pizzagate to Frazzle Drip stuff, these theories have been everywhere. What I find so funny about them is that everyone was so sure Trump would crack down on all pedophiles in one fell swoop and we’d be free from this evil. But there is really no good way to measure the data on this and find any evidence that Trump was better on sex trafficking than any other president. These same people love to point to Jeffrey Epstein as their proof but completely forget that one of the many women who accused Trump of sexual assault was an underage girl at an Epstein party. They also forget that Cindy Yang was rubbing elbows with Republican Elites pretty regularly, including the Trumps. They also forget about Matt Gaetz’ legal troubles around this exact issue. They also forget about Roy Moore. That’s enough to make my point. I’ll stop now.
Many conspiracy theories involve gray areas. It could technically be true that Bush helped with 9/11 even though he didn’t set it all up (to be clear, this is not true). The Mayan calendar restarting could possibly be interpreted as a world ending event, after all, it hadn’t happened before. This ambiguity is built in by design—when the theories inevitably fall apart, people can emphasize the gray area to save face. The final three on the list have no gray area, which makes them all the more fascinating.
Jade Helm
Remember in 2015 when Obama was going to use the military to take over several southwestern states? Don’t laugh. People honestly believed there would be a literal military invasion—American troops invading American states, killing American citizens. When this obviously never happened (it was always just planned military training exercises) people just completely memory holed it. This really could be a standin for all the times Russia, or China, or Venezuela, or some scary Muslim country was going to definitely invade, or there would be some New World Order if a Democrat won the election. All of these things were and are false, and there is no gray area to fall back on, yet people still believe these time after time.
Vaccines
I suppose this might not be a conspiracy. Maybe the earliest vaccine takers are dropping dead right now. Maybe I’m gonna drop dead in the next couple weeks. Maybe we’ll all turn into walking dead type zombies because of it. YOU DON’T KNOW!!! IT COULD STILL HAPPEN!!!!!
The Second Coming of Jesus
This seems like an odd thing to call a conspiracy, especially since I’ve been open in my writing about being a Christian. As such, I do think Jesus will be coming back at some point, but I also think that good biblical scholarship makes it clear it won’t be in the way conspiracists expect it to be. So, this takes the top spot in my conspiracy theory countdown because it’s one I agree with in principle, but still find so much that is wrong, factually and morally. Yes, I see the irony.
So many people have put a definitive date on Jesus’ return, and they have all been wrong. Not only this, but every single generation since Paul started preaching just a few years after Jesus died have been so certain that they were the last generation, and Jesus was definitely coming back in the very near future. It amazes me how many people fall for this despite Jesus himself saying that even Jesus doesn’t know when he is coming back. This “of course I am important and special enough that I have to be the final generation” mentality leads people to do some crazy stuff. I have written about this before, but there is a Christian group that literally thinks they can force Jesus to come back by starting nuclear war with Iran. Nuclear. War.
Yes, I do believe that Jesus is going to come back. But, it won’t be some videogame type Armageddon fantasy, and I definitely don’t think I’m special enough to insist it will be in my lifetime—or even in the next thousand years. Jesus said nobody knows, and the fact that so many people ignore him and act like they know is why this is my favorite conspiracy theory of all time.
Happy holidays, everyone. I’ll see you next year?
Thanks for reading The Constituent. If you’d like to support the newsletter, here are a few options.
-Thanks,
