Why are people still stupid enough to believe this "chemtrail" bullshit?

[enki23]

102. Jesus, this one is obvious: because people act on what they believe.

And not always only in simple, obvious ways. Chemtrails nuttery is the belief that the government of our nation, the United States of America, is actively spraying poisons/drugs/whatever indiscriminately on its citizens in order to harm/control/whatever them.

This is every bit as nutty, and every bit as dangerous as the fucking nutbags who believe the UN is going to invade any day now. Maybe worse, because it's *directed at their own, (at least somewhat) democratically elected government*. Do they believe President Obama is okay with this? Do they think the some rogue elements of the government are actually able to pull of a *massive* conspiracy involving untold thousands of passenger jet planes somehow fitted with sprayers to spread enormous amounts of some unknown liquid chemical over the United States? (Do you have any idea what the dilution factor would be, considering the volume of air they are allegedly spraying into? What fucking magic evil are we to think they're carrying in those tanks?)

If you actually believed that, what would you do about it? How would you vote? How would you present yourself politically? How likely would you be to believe that there was a massive program to sterilize poor people through vaccinations? How likely would you be to believe that the ATF/whomever was going to grab everyone's guns sometime soon, to cement the control over the populace? How much more likely would you be to believe that the cop who pulled you over was a member of the conspiracy who read that thing you posted, and is coming to silence you?

People who believe patently bullshit stories of vast and shadowy official persecution are fucking dangerous to *someone*. If there is actually a vast, shadowy persecution, they are dangerous to the persecutors.

But there isn't. So they're dangerous to everybody fucking else.

And probably the main damage they do, the main danger they pose, is to convince other susceptible people that their crazy bullshit is real. And groups of people can actually get shit done, for both better and worse. When the stuff they get done is based on crazy bullshit, then crazy bullshit is what they'll get done. None of this is in any way controversial or hard to understand.