Flu(erism) Season

There are a lot of nutty theories running wild across the internet these days. Truthers, Birthers, Tenthers, more Truthers, etc. but the one that -- hands down -- takes the cake for sheer enormity of lunacy are the "Fluers." Unfamiliar with these folks? Well, let's meet one.

Ol' Capt. Karl is a blogger from the Peshtigo area and certified Fluer. Not surprisingly, Karl is something of a Ron Paul groupie who espouses several other fringe beliefs like Birtherism and the a passionate dislike of the Federal Reserve, but lately he's putting aside those issues in favor something truly batshit insane: Fluerism.

What's Fluerism? Well, let's take this step-by-step because it's something of a wild ride.

Step 1: "the U.S. Government and the Corporations [have] developed an implantable H1N1 detector Positive I.D. RFID chips."

I know RFID technology sounds scary, but it's not very practical for keeping track of human beings. Besides, there's really no reason to implant chips under human skin when the government can just track someone with the cell phones that most of us carry on our persons these days. Cell phones, however, are good things that bring us convenience. Chip implantation is a scary bad thing -- much more suited for crazy ass conspiracy theories, but not very practical. If Capt. Karl were advocating everyone to throw away their cell phones, no one would listen. Oddly, when he talks about chip implantation, then he gets an audience. Go figure.

Step 2: "Unlike the old larger RFID chip shown in the video, nanites would flow around you body with your blood stream. They could not be removed like the RFID chip in the movie above because they would be racing around your whole body."

Ah, yes, nanotechnology: the conspiracy theorists gift from God -- too small to be seen with the human eye, but capable of just about anything.

Step 3: "Could the U.S. Government force you and your family to accept an injection of the RFID Positive I.D. Chip?"

Did you catch that? "RFID positive"? Makes it sound like the government is injecting people with AIDS...

The rest of the post is unreadable, a combination of poorly cited magazine articles, pharmaceutical industry press releases, and laws that are arranged in no easily discernible order. And this is likely by design: the author has absolutely no proof to back up his mad assertions so he hopes to cloud his reader with enough doubt to make his claims seem plausible. If you have the patience to soldier through it, you're a masochist.

The gist of the post this as follows: at some point in the coming Flu season, the federal government will declare a state of emergency that triggers a series of legal criteria that subsequently requires the vaccination of every citizen from the H1N1 virus.

But it gets better ... or stranger: Capt. Karl believes that those who refuse the vaccination will be rounded up by government, "shackled" with RFID bracelets and taken to "concentration camps" -- his words -- in an attempt to stifle dissent.

Got that?

Does any of that make any sense at all? Of course not, but that's not stopping Karl from putting the cherry on top of this shit sundae. The remaining big question is: why? Take it away, Karl:

We would further ask our readers, isn’t it strange that this so-called “pandemic” is happening, after all these decades of no pandemics, right at the same time The MATRIX (our economy based on Monopoly money that our minds have been programmed to believe is worth 100 cents, when in the ‘real’ world it factually is worth only 2 – 3 cents) is soon to collapse? Coincidence? I don’t know but I think the U.S. Government is trying to sell us a spare bridge.

So the Swine Flu is just a cover to enslave the entire U.S. population because our economy is largely based on credit.

Capt. Karl has no evidence for any of this whatsoever, of course. He's putting this whackjob tall tale together using some videos by anonymous vloggers that are wild-eyed and suspect on even their best days. I don't know how the hell he can say there have been "all these decades of no pandemics" when AIDS, SARS, and avian flu are all fresh in the memory.

I doubt we'll hear the last of Capt. Karl and his crazy Fluerism, and I'm sure this is going to be just the beginning of a long line of paranoid fantasies conjured up in the most fragile minds of the blogosphere. I'd love to live in a world wherein Capt Karl is exiled to the furthest reaches of Crazytown, but I don't plan on seeing that any time soon, which is too bad.

MORE: I can see that I'm going to have lot of fun playing with Capt. Karl in the future.

The ink was barely dry on this post (as it were) when good old Karl decided to chime in with some more "evidence" on the Evil Government Plot to Enslave us All (or EGPEA)!

Karl links to a video produced by Russia Today -- about one of the least credible news sources in the world (here's just one of many RT interviews with Lyndon LaRouche; note how seriously he's taken by the news readers).

It's type of shit like this that does far more harm than good.