– Conspiracy theories | Opinion | webstercountycitizen.com

Not this time.

The term “conspiracy theory” can cover innumerable topics and most times can’t be proven or disproven.

The big three of conspiracy theories are probably the Illuminati and the foundation of the United States, Freemasonry (I’ve been a Master Mason in the Marshfield Lodge for nearly 40 years, so I must have missed out on the meeting that covered Masons taking over the world) and the Bilderberg Group, where “global elites” from Europe and North America get together once a year to allegedly determine worldwide control of economies and people.

A few conspiracy theory favorites of mine include the Clintons’ death count. Can you believe how many people Bill and Hillary know who commit suicide or die in aircraft crashes?

Another entertaining theory is the Denver airport, where it’s claimed examples of the New World Order are everywhere, and there is a huge underground complex to house global elites when the world starts falling apart.

One conspiracy theory you don’t hear much about anymore is “Chemtrails.” This theory is that secret government policies direct aircraft to spray chemicals in what appears to be regular jet-aircraft contrails.

Personally, I’d never seen the “tic-tac-toe” patterns of contrails until after I’d retired from the U.S. Air Force and returned to Missouri from Hawaii. I thought it was odd, to say the least, that 26 years of my life had been spent around or flying on jet aircraft, and I’d never seen engine contrails like those.

I’m not agreeing with conspiracy theorists on this, but it seemed the weird contrails in the skies only started after the terrorist attacks on 9-11.

Another interesting observation: Think how long it’s been since you saw the tic-tac-toe pattern of contrails in the sky?

I have to wonder during the pandemic if aircraft will again start playing tic-tac-toe in our skies?

The list of conspiracies can go on and on: John F. Kennedy’s assassination, black helicopters, whether Barack Obama was born in Kenya or the U.S., what’s called “false flag” operations that conspiracy theorists claim are staged mass shootings by the government to convince Americans to ban firearms and abolish the 2nd Amendment, even the tired old argument against fluoride added to drinking water.

However, I digress from the main topic of this column.

That’s the conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic.

Probably everyone has heard the virus started because people in Wuhan, China, were eating bats.

Next came the theory that a biological-warfare laboratory in Wuhan allowed the virus to escape from the lab. The Chinese communist government then stonewalled information to the world that might have helped mitigate the disastrous effects the pandemic has caused.

One thing I did realize while researching this column was that the conspiracy theory surrounding installation of 5G computer networks spreading the virus probably started because the city of Wuhan was the first city in China to get this technological upgrade, and it went into service at the same time the crematoriums in Wuhan were operating around the clock.

One thing I’ve figured out is that none of the “experts” on contagious diseases seem to be too “expert” when it comes to this virus. A survey of one conspiracy theory that we should take serious was conducted by the prestigious Pew Research Center.

During a June survey, the Pew Center found that most Americans, about 71 percent, had heard of a conspiracy theory online that powerful people planned the pandemic to “weed out” the world’s population of the old, infirmed and undesirables.

Surprisingly, the survey showed that 5 percent of people said the conspiracy theory was “definitively planned.”

Even more disturbing is that 20 percent of those surveyed think the COVID-19 pandemic “was planned.”

That comes to a quarter of Americans surveyed who believe this pandemic was intentionally spread around the world.

It’s scary that so many people believe this “fake news.”

I hope people that read about this conspiracy theory online know that it’s ridiculous.

The best place to put this conspiracy theory is in the “trash bin” on your computer’s desktop; along with any of those outrageous claims the terrorist attacks on 9-11, which killed nearly 3,000 Americans, were conducted by our government so we could start the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to keep funding the military-industrial complex.

In the real world, an operation like destroying the World Trade Center in New York City, along with the strike on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., could never be kept secret.

Just look back to recent history for precedent on whistleblowing.

The New York Times published the “Pentagon Papers,” leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, during the Vietnam War to expose the secret bombing by the U.S. in Cambodia. This information helped change public support for the war and increased demands to bring U.S. troops home.

I’ve learned the only way to keep a secret is if just one person knows about it.

Fred Spriggs is the former news editor of the Webster County Citizen, a position he held for nearly 15 years and where he won dozens of national and state awards for journalism excellence. He now lives in rural Stone County.