So this morning, I read that RFK, Jr. thinks that jet fumes are a major cause for America’s subpar health. Yes, chemtrails, substances hidden in jet fuels for nefarious or other scientic purposes by government agencies, such as DOD’s DARPA, are indeed the cause of our problems. No matter that this theory has been debunked for years, and that there is no legitimate scientific evidence for it.

Then I read that Oklahoma (is this true? I saw it on a Bulwark post.) is changing its high school social studies curriculum to include a unit on how the 2020 presidential election results were manipulated to make Joe Biden the presumed winner, as opposed to the real winner, you know who.

Just last night, I finished reading Peter Partner’s The Knights Templar and their Myths. It is relevant to all of this. Let me explain:

The Knights Templar was a religious order founded during the Crusades to help protect travelers to the holy land during the approximately 100 year period that Christians held sway. Members were among the last military groups to hold the fort at Acre when the last Christians were kicked out of that territory.  In the meantime, the order obtained great wealth in land and resources, became the biggest ship owners in Europe and Europe’s first international bankers, supported by a high degree of papal privilege.

Then, in 1307, it all came tumbling down, the order destroyed, and many of its leaders tried and executed. The story is well known, and it’s one I have long been interested in.

And the story of the Templars did not end with the destruction of the Templars, but continues to this day, connected to freemasonry and various branches of esoteric knowledge. What Partner does, probably more thoroughly than anyone else, is separate history from myth, but citing evidence of one and origins of the other.

Partner died about ten years ago, so we can’t ask him to do the job. We need to find someone new, someone who can look at the pronouncements of Robert Kennedy Jr. and the contents of the Oklahoma social studies curriculum, and separate history, or fact, from mythology, or fiction. They need to be able to do it with the structure that Partner used. The first half of his book is “just the facts, ma’am”. The second half talks about the mythology. At no point does Partner mix up the two, at no point does he suggest that one might be the other, and when discussing the mythology, he is precise as to where each myth got started, how it was propagated, and who carried it along.

Current journalists don’t write this way. They combine fact and myth in the same paragraph, confusing that eeader as to what should be in one category and what shoukd be in another. Print journalists have to put everything into the first few paragraphs, knowing you probably won’t turn the page. Online journalists have to stretch things out, so you will scroll through all the ads to the end. Of  course, there are articles that deal with one or the other, but they are specialized, not general news articles, and they don’t normally do a side by side writeup.

Until then, we remain frustrated, confused, and in disbelief. But at least we have our wits about us.

(By the way, a shout out to East Coast Industrial Supply Company, whose large, ugly, noisy and dirty truck just came up our quiet(ish) street, stopped in front of my house, and then accelerated in a big cloud of gray smoke, which wafted over everything. Where are you when I need you, Bobby Junior? Chemtrails are shortening my life.)