Hicks: Lines in the sky conveniently point away from South Carolina’s real problem

There’s a conspiracy against the people of South Carolina, and some state senators have finally exposed it.

But it may not be the one they meant to reveal.

As The Post and Courier’s Nick Reynolds reports, Upstate Sen. Rex Rice is pushing one of several legislative proposals to ban “chemtrails,” which refers to the alleged practice of nefarious agents releasing chemicals into the state’s airspace via aircraft for “the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of sunlight.”

That old chestnut.

Now, most people will tell you those white lines in the sky left behind by jets are actually “contrails” — short for condensation trails. It’s the plane’s very hot exhaust reacting to very cold air thousands of feet above the ground.

You know how it’s always cold on Mount Everest? Well, it’s that way at 30,000 feet everywhere in Earth’s atmosphere.

But a conspiracy theory about that has been around a while and has ratcheted up with our growing national paranoia … and declining education levels. See, some people think those lines in the sky are actually either a) the government or b) elites (which are one in the same these days) releasing chemical agents into the air to either a) control the weather, or b) poison people.

What, by giving them the measles? Oh wait, wrong conspiracy … and column.

Now, scientists have repeatedly debunked the egregiously facile misunderstanding of basic science that led to the “chemtrails” conspiracy … for all the good that does.

We have more information and technology in our pockets these days than the folks at NASA had when they sent men to the moon (or did they?), yet some people choose to believe only the most, uh, unscientific claims out there.

Why believe experts who do, you know, actual testing and research, when a guy with a blog and a Twitter account whose professional resume includes being fired from Walmart tells folks exactly what they want to hear … while selling magnesium elixirs?

Now, maybe this conspiracy is a ruse to stop the inflow of tourists and new businesses crowding our state. Because banning airplanes (the only actual way to avoid white streaks across the sky) would certainly shut down all of that … not to mention South Carolina’s burgeoning aviation industry. Seeing as how all airplanes have exhaust systems.

It would also, you know, wreck the economy. But somehow that would be Joe Biden’s fault.

But no, the real conspiracy here is evident from all the elected officials tripping over each other to file legislation like this “chemtrails” malarkey, then advancing said lunacy out of subcommittee to keep the debate and misinformation rolling.

It’s cynical behavior designed to win and keep the support of low-information voters by giving credence to the most ridiculous ideas … ideas that the descendants of the folks who brought you the Salem witch trials cling to these days.

For cowardly, uncreative elected officials, peddling conspiracies to the effortlessly manipulated is much easier than, say, fixing South Carolina roads, schools or any of the myriad real problems afflicting the state.

Those problems require political backbone, original thought and sometimes (gasp) cost money. Which interferes with the only actual real policy the General Assembly has any collective interest in tackling: cutting taxes.

So, instead of doing the hard work for which they are elected, they make up stories about kids “identifying” as cats and using litter boxes in classrooms, call themselves “pro life” while encouraging the perpetually duped to avoid vaccinations that save lives and, yes, only debate problems that do not exist.

And which, conveniently, can’t be disproven.

You know, like pointing out lines in the sky that any Gomer can see (but not explain) and claiming it’s proof that “someone” is manipulating the weather.

A normal person might ask the obvious: Since your team is in charge of every facet of the state and federal government, who exactly is perpetuating this secret crime against humanity?

But such details are conveniently, and studiously, ignored. Logic never enters some people’s airspace.

And that’s the real conspiracy: A bunch of politicians are persuading people to vote against their own interests by peddling completely made-up baloney, claiming such nonsense is the real problem here, the real reason South Carolina lags behind other states by just about any measurable metric.

That nothing, of course, is the fault of the uninformed electing the unserious.

The only lingering question about this conspiracy is whether these elected officials actually believe all this hogwash. Because the state lawmakers chasing white lines in the sky are either a) really dumb or b) think that many South Carolina voters are.

Of course, the scariest thing here is that both can be true.