What if we lived in a world without nukes or pandemics or earth killing asteroids?

welcome to flat earth, where none of the big fears are even real. the globe being fake is just the beginning.

This is the Flat Earth Report for 11-16-2020.  11/16, btw, is a very 9/11y number if you flip it upside down.

COVID IS FLAT.

0) A new trend is to link lockdown protesters and anti-vaxers as “flat earthers”, which the public takes to mean “anti science”, which is paradoxically countered with demands to “believe the experts”, as though appeals to authority and other logical fallacies should be required to prove a fact-based proposition.

Recently Mayor Lightfoot of Chicago had a bad dream that the world went flat because nobody believed the science anymore:

“Thank God, science is back baby,” she said with her hand on her forehand. The music becomes more upbeat and Lightfoot pats a globe of the Earth, saying “And the Earth is round, not flat.”

Spain’s Health Minister criticized anti-vaxxers and coronavirus deniers. “If someone wants to keep insisting that the Earth is flat or that humans did not get to the Moon, go ahead, but anti-scientific attitudes are intolerable because they lie,” he said. “Vaccines save lives, this has been widely proven. Vaccination is nothing new in Spain, every year 10 million people get immunized.”

1)  The Deftones guitarist continues to be attacked for his non-belief in establishment science. which is what flat earthers are guilty of. not believing partisan science or unscientific claims dressed up as science.

“Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter outs himself as a flat-earther” By Metal Hammer

Vaccines don’t work, space doesn’t exist and there are no nuclear weapons – Deftones’ Stephen Carpenter reveals some ‘interesting’ theories

Stephen Carpenter is many things: guitarist and co-founder of Deftones, unorthodox riff machine, a committed weed smoker. And, it turns out, a flat-earther.

Carpenter unveiled his ‘maverick’ worldview in a remarkable interview on the Tin Foil Hat With Sam Tripoli podcast (the clue’s in the title). In it, the guitarist opted to fly in the face of decades, if not centuries, of scientific fact, claiming that space doesn‘t exist, there are no such things as nuclear weapons 

..so here’s a trigger warning to those threatened by good news..he also said vaccines don’t work but he doesn’t seem to believe in covid so….

2) He has received blowback for his unorthodox opinions

“Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter’s ‘flat Earth’ nonsense is the last thing we need” 
By
Mark Beaumont 

Musicians often get a free pass on outlandish opinions and bizarre beliefs, but in an age intent on sewing confusion and discontent, we must be more vigilant

(Mark attacks the Flat Earth with all the usual invalid arguments, valiantly setting another defenseless flat earth straw man ablaze:) 

This can all be debunked in a single word: ‘seasons’. Not to mention ‘eclipses’, ‘sunsets’, ‘constellations’, ‘time zones’, mountains appearing to rise out of the ocean as you sail towards them and the fact that, despite being just 3,000 miles away, we can’t see the sun shining on the ‘day’ zone at night, as we would the light from a spotlight in a theatre.

Believing only the evidence of their own eyes also means that flat Earthers have to dismiss the slightly more complicated evidence of their own eyes. It also relies on the sworn secrecy, for no real reason, of the makers of millions of rigged aviation GPS devices, and on NASA having bought off Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Galileo, Francis Drake and Yuri Gagarin. 

(Right, because there’s no way Santa Claus can be fake; look how many people would have to be in on it)

Ostensibly, Carpenter’s views seem cranky but harmless. Historically, musicians have had a free pass on outlandish opinion and bizarre beliefs; we’ve reveled in their UFO sightings, ghostly encounters and exotic acid spiritualities. 

(Drugs, DMT, SAFE conspiracies get a pass)

“But when they start to align with dangerous trends in anti-scientific misinformation, they stop being hyper-real communication nodes with the supernatural and start becoming mouthpieces for an age intent on sowing confusion and discontent by undermining clear, apparent truths and virtues: astronomy, biology, democracy. In uncertain times, music fans look to the bands they love for some level of sense and guidance; this isn’t the time to help tilt the planet into chaos.”

3) McDermott: Can democracy survive when almost half the country won’t accept facts?
Kevin McDermott 

But how is it possible that, according to a poll last week, 70% of the nation’s Republicans believe the election was tainted? Almost three-quarters of the members of a major party, buying into the political equivalent of flat-earth theory. Seven in 10 of them, grievously slandering our democracy without one iota of evidence.

Trump and his followers are on the ‘crazy train’ with unhinged election conspiracies, Republican congressman says

Jon Ward·Senior Political Correspondent

4) 

Trump and his followers are on the ‘crazy train’ with unhinged election conspiracies, Republican congressman says Jon Ward.

As President Trump’s claims of election cheating fall apart in court filings, he is taking his followers down a path of increasingly unhinged conspiracies about millions of votes being altered by mysterious forces manipulating computer systems and voting machines.

“That really is, really, I think, the Island of the Misfit Toys at that point. You have crossed the Rubicon, you jumped on the crazy train and you’re headed into the cliffs that guard the flat earth at that time, brother,” said Rep. Denver Riggleman, a Republican congressman from Virginia, in an interview.

In closing, I have a few questions: 

Even a non-conformist of avant-garde performance artist is being walked back from the edge. So what is it about flat earth that threatens the establishment the most? Could it be Flat Earthers are the only Neos in the Matrix?