My latest: the Super Bowl for nutbars

ST. ELIZABETH PARISH, JAMAICA – Jamaica wasn’t really the best place to see the eclipse on Monday.

For one thing, it’s way too far from what the scientists were calling “the totality,” which has an unsettling end-times feel to it (we’ll get back to that in an minute).  For another thing, nobody around here seemed to care.  No one was scrambling to find solar-eclipse-safe glasses on Amazon (where “Solar-Powered Adaptive 0.1s Photochromic Sports Polarized Sunglasses for Men” were available, in a limited offer, for $59.97).

But the nutbars sure cared, didn’t they?  Hoo boy.  It was the Super Bowl for conspiracy theorists, said Wired magazine, and it was.

On the Left and Right, too.  Conspiracy theorists are found at every stop on the ideological spectrum. The solar eclipse was a conspiracy theory bonanza for the Lefty and Righty crazies.

Here’s a sampling on the Right:

•    Sarah Huckabee Sanders (who used to work for Donald Trump, to the surprise of absolutely no one) is now the Governor of Arkansas (to the surprise of pretty much everyone).  She declared a state of emergency in the State of Arkansas because, well, we’re not sure.  Huckabee Sanders issued her executive order to make thousands available under the Governor’s Disaster Response and Recovery Fund.  “To defray program and administrative costs,” Huckabee Sanders’ government said.  She also put state crews on “standby,” because the moon was going in front of the sun for a couple minutes, and perhaps she expected some liberalism to break out.
•    Marjorie Taylor Greene, the MAGA Republican who previously opined on “Jewish space lasers” (more on them in a minute, too), said that the solar eclipse was a sign from God that America needed to repent. The eclipse and the recent mini-earthquake in New York State were “strong signs” of the need to atone for our sins, she wrote on X.  “I pray that our country listens.” At this point, we could point out that Taylor Greene’s husband filed for divorce citing her “multiple affairs,” but that would be mean, so we won’t.
•    Alex Jones, who is a pile of garbage disguised as a human, held an event on X Spaces to chat about “what the globalists have planned for the imminent total solar eclipse”. The word “globalists” is the word far-Rightists like Jones often use to refer to Jews.  In that vein, he went on, noting that the solar eclipse fell on a date on the Hebrew calendar where energy can be pushed into the new year to do “evil things.” That’s not all, said Jones, headlining one clip: “Major Events Surrounding The April 8th Solar Eclipse – Masonic rituals planned worldwide to usher in New World Order.”  Rituals.  Gotcha.

No to be outdone, insane people on the Left were prognosticating about the big day, too:

•    The Waterloo Catholic District School Board, for one, decided to make the eclipse day a “Professional Activity Day,” which seems to be neither professional nor active.  Their public school counterparts, however, said they’d still be in class, because it’d be a great day to learn about science and whatnot.  Outraged, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario – Waterloo Region said: ”We disagree with the decision!” Why? Well, kids could look up and see it and go blind if it’s a school day.  Nobody pointed out that the kids can look up at the sun while at home, too.  Why bother with science? Making stuff up is more fun!
•    Over on Reddit, someone using the name “wefellinloveinnyc” noted that the line of the 2017 and 2024 solar eclipses form a giant “X” over the New Madrid Fault Line in the Southwestern United States.  That means “an earthquake on the New Madrid Fault Line could be up to 20 times larger than an earthquake with a SoCal epicenter.” Lots of fatalities, wrote the Reddit correspondent. Because…well, just because.

Anyway.  All of these conspiracy theorists are nuttier than a fruit cake, of course, but most of them can usually be traced back to one thing that is serious: anti-Semitism.  Thus the fulminations about “Jewish space lasers,“ “globalists” and Hebraic calendars: if something goes wrong, it’s the Jews’ fault, say the crazies.

In his amazing book about same, Jewish Space Lasers, Mike Rothschild – who is Jewish, yes, and whose surname is another anti-Jewish conspiracy theory, yes – writes: “Almost all conspiracy theories are rooted in anti-Semitism, and almost all anti-Semitism is rooted in conspiracy theories. Jewish people will always be scapegoats for some people…In many ways, the story of conspiracy theories is the story of modern anti-Semitism. That is how inseparable they are.”

And, when anti-Semitism is now worse than it has been in any time since the Holocaust, a conspiracy theory or two about a solar eclipse is just what the crazies ordered. It’s icing on the conspiracy cake.

But when it’s all said and done do you know what the solar eclipse really, truly is?

It’s the moon blocking out the sun for a few minutes.

You’re welcome.