We got an insert in our local paper last Friday. We don’t subscribe, but pick it up at the supermarket while shopping. It was a full-color, two-sided, information-dense, letter-sized advertisement. What was being advertised was not a product. It was much better.

It explained everything.

It was certainly less predictable than a religious tract. And certainly much more sophisticated than the lowest of the low, the political mailers. This stuff was not only equally serious but at least as plausible.

Bible enthusiasts provide good reading material, it is usually logically sound if you accept the basic (absurd) premises. The stuff from your government representatives is laughably simplistic, and the voter propaganda on propositions is borderline dangerous. This fellow—and it appears to be one fellow—focuses on stuff you can really see.

Contrails. Or, I should say, chemtrails. You know, the stuff that the big ol’ jet airliners spew out. Condensation is of course a natural consequence of combustion. Just check your breath on a cold day, that’s the combustion of last night’s enchiladas. And there’s no doubt that burning fossil fuels makes air pollution. So it is safe to say that the air transport sector is responsible for spewing bad stuff into the atmosphere. Hey, join the club. We the people do our best to spew bad stuff into the atmosphere every day, what with our impossible energy demands. All those trips in the car, all that hot water and A/C and everything else. Air pollution is like farting, we all do it.

Seems this fellow who shared his wisdom with us via the newspaper insert is concerned that contrails/chemtrails aren’t just air pollution from jets. They are a deliberate government geo-engineering plan to change the earth’s climate. From the insert:

Covert global climate engineering programs are wreaking havoc with Earth’s life support systems and human health . . .

Our noble leaders and other power elites have, for decades, used the jets criss-crossing our skies to dump particular chemicals into the air in order to mess with the weather. The goal, it seems, is to cause catastrophic global warming in order to, and this part I’m not sure about, subjugate the citizenry under the guise of saving it. Natural disasters are the perfect time for the government to move in and take over. Evacuations, in particular, are great opportunities to seize control.

At least that’s what it seems, reading this stuff over. It is all very science-y and ties in lots of environmental issues that appeal to people all over the political spectrum, everything from carcinogens in the water and honeybee die-offs to severe droughts and catastrophic forest fires.

In order to have a workable conspiracy theory you have to have nuggets of truth. We’ve all seen the jets overhead spewing their exhausts. Since most of us probably don’t think about jet exhaust, having someone come along and break it down for us is very appealing. Everybody likes a good explanation. I used to provide explanations for a living, I understand their appeal. Life is complicated and when you think about more global issues, like ecological disasters, it is easy to feel despair and helplessness. Having it all tied together with a clear set of reasons is nice. Global warming aka climate change is a popular topic these days and to present it as the result of a high-level conspiracy is brilliant. Humans are indeed responsible for global warming, just not the way the scientists say! Scientists, lately, have about as much credibility as the mainstream media. One consequence of the internet is that now everyone is an expert and has their own soapbox. Or at least you can find one to better suit you if you don’t like what you are currently hearing!

Here’s more:

Any and all entities/individuals that are in any way associated with the illegal geoengineering operations must be fully exposed. Once exposed, all such entities/individuals must be held legally and morally accountable for their part in the climate engineering atrocities.

Moral outrage is very appealing as well. Our ideologies give us plenty of stuff to get pissed off about. If you want to gather people to your cause then get their dander up about something. I also like the smug, we-are-all-in-the-know-here attitude. All the stupid people out there, the drones going about their daily lives, are too zombied-out to be properly angry about the “atrocities” going on around them. But we here at fill-in-the-blank will keep you informed with THE TRUTH.

In the end it is all about THE TRUTH. We all want it. We all seek it. The trouble with science is that it can only provide truths with a lowercase-t and not Truth with the reassuring gravitas of an uppercase-T, let alone the screaming fury of ALL CAPS.

I’m not sure what this fellow gets out of his propaganda. I suppose it is rude of me to call it that. He probably believes it with a religious fervor. And you can’t really argue with that kind of thing. I don’t have religious fervor so I can’t really say how it feels or what it’s like. I imagine it gives you an authenticity that is hard to fake. That’s the flip side, the guy could be a complete fake, the whole geo-engineering kerfuffle a giant con. But confidence games are generally money-making schemes. I don’t see a lot of money-making potential here. Sure, he sells books and DVDs but that’s actually a hard way to get rich. There’s a lot of competition out there. And there are no ads on his website, but there is a donate button.

In a capitalist economy lots of things are for sale. Even supposedly non-profit enterprises like churches and charities are in the sales business. This fellow is another in the great American tradition of salesmen. From the tragic Willy Loman to the comic Cal Worthington salesmen are part-and-parcel of our Constitutionally-protected pursuit of happiness. Now I’m not buying what he’s selling, mind you, but it’s way more fun than the usual stuff like the hardware store ads.