Did I ever tell you about Dave? Dave's a guy I know who sincerely believes that the Earth is flat. You and I know that the Earth is actually spherical, but Dave can't be convinced. He's a Flat Earther! He's built his whole identity around the idea that his belief is true and that he's unfairly persecuted for believing in the truth. Dave has been bullied a lot for this belief, because bullies like to kick down at people they feel are safe targets. “Safe targets” include anyone who's different, because they're less likely to have anyone stick up for them.
I never approved of this bullying, and I've even
defended Dave from these bullies on occasion—not because I agree
with him about the Earth being flat, but just because I don't think
someone should be beaten up or mistreated for being wrong about
something stupid like that. Dave wasn't hurting anyone (or at least
that's what I thought at the time), so I didn't think it was fair for
anyone to hurt Dave. I still don't. Ideology isn't a thing to thump
somebody for. The bullies who beat up Dave called me a libtard and a
pancake lover for stopping them, as though those words were supposed
to hurt my feelings.
Along with believing that no one should
physically assault Dave for being a Flat Earther, I also think there
are other ways he should be protected. For example, Dr. Martin, the
town dentist where Dave lives, says that he won't work on Dave's
teeth. It's not clear what he thinks Flat Eartherism has to do with
dentistry, but he just doesn't like Flat Earthers, and so he doesn't
like Dave. He says nasty things about him and won't let him near his
dentistry office. I think that's pretty messed up. Dave should be
allowed to sue or something. Dave's teeth hurt, and there's not
another dentist for 40 miles. Dave didn't do anything to hurt Dr.
Martin, so Dr. Martin shouldn't be allowed to make Dave
suffer.
Dave's also had a hard time finding a landlord to rent
to him. Everyone in the village knows about Dave being a Flat Earther
(not least of all because he talks about it to anyone who holds still
long enough). They gossip and the consensus seems to be that nobody
wants to be associated with a Flat Earther.
“If he believes that, what other kind of crazy stuff might he believe? He's unpredictable! We can't take a chance of having someone like that messing up one of our rental units.”
Dave's even been homeless for a few weeks a couple times, just
because he couldn't find anyone who'd rent to him. Again, I think
this is wrong. It should be illegal to discriminate against Flat
Earthers when it comes to housing. Those bullies who like to beat up
Dave say Dave's bringing it all on himself. Maybe they're right about
that. I mean, Dave is entirely free to just drop all this nonsense
about the Earth being flat. He doesn't have to yak to the landlord about Flat Eartherism every time he checks out an apartment. But that still doesn't justify people
mistreating him. He's not hurting them.
But the thing is,
Dave's also...a little “dramatic.” He claims that anyone who
disagrees with him about the shape of the planet wants to “erase
his existence.” Like, he makes it sound as though simply believing
that the Earth is round is exactly the same thing as calling for him
to be murdered. It's very important to Dave for everyone to know
that he's a Flat Earther and agree with him about
the shape of the Earth. It's true that he has actually been bullied,
but he also claims that everyone who disagrees with him is just as
much a bully as the people who've actually punched him in the face.
To him, those are the same thing—disagreeing with him and punching
him in the face. Clearly, critical thinking is not Dave's strong
suit. He calls everyone who believes in a round Earth “terraphobic”
and says that “globularism” is a hate crime.
In order to
battle against this hate crime, Dave has made it his mission to
spread awareness about the “dangers of globularism” and to
normalize Flat Eartherism. He figures most adults are too entrenched
in their terraphobic bigotry, so he focuses on children, because he
sees them as more persuadable. He's had meetings with school
officials to get globes removed from classrooms and replaced them
with his flat Earth models. He wants teachers and Flat Earther guests
to come read books to children telling them that it's okay to be a
Flat Earther—not just okay, but actually way cooler. “Flat
Earthers are special!” proclaim the brightly colored posters in the
classrooms of the more progressive teachers. If he runs into any
resistance, he calls the critics Nazis and accuses them of promoting
book burnings and stifling free thought.
Dave's
also made a point of hiding all this from the school kids' parents as
much as he can. He's convinced the school counselor that there's a
crisis of parents abusing and abandoning their kids when they find
out that their kids are Flat Earthers, so not only does he want to
hide from parents the fact that highly suggestible children are being taught about Flat
Eartherism and how cool it is to be a Flat Earther, but he also
doesn't want teachers and other school staff to be allowed to say
anything to Flat Earther kids' parents about their children's new
identity.
I tried telling him, "Um, Dave? That sounds a little creepy. You shouldn't be preying on people's kids behind their backs like that." He screamed at me that I wanted to erase his existence and said that I was actually the one hurting kids by trying to hide the truth of Flat Eartherism from them. He says I'm stopping them from realizing The Authentic Truth. I think the whole thing sounds like a cult.
He and his Flat Earther buddies have also given
presentations at all the respected universities, preaching about the
need to stop the oppression of Flat Earthers. Medical
researchers at these schools are now experimenting with drugs and
surgeries that prevent people from seeing the curvature of the Earth.
See, there's been a problem among Flat Earthers. They build their
whole identity and community around this idea that the Earth is flat,
but then if they go to the beach and see boats sinking and rising
over the horizon, or they go on a cruise or up in a plane, and they
actually see the
curvature of the Earth with their own eyes, it blows their minds and
they can't deal with it. They see Flat Eartherism as who
they are, and when that's thrown
into question with evidence they can't deny, they often end up
freaking out and killing themselves. So Dave and his buddies have
convinced the medical establishment that this is a humanitarian crisis
in need of professional intervention.
The
only humane thing to do, according to them, is to perform highly
experimental treatments—new surgeries and off-label uses for
certain drugs with debilitating side-effects—that make Flat Earthers physically
incapable of seeing the curvature of the Earth. They say this is a
matter of life or death. “Would you rather have a live Flat Earther
or a dead globularist?” they ask parents of Flat Earther kids who
express concern about these treatments.
The Flat Earthers
insist that these treatments are all safe and entirely reversible,
but that's a lie meant to deflect opposition. Some kids got the
treatments, decided a few years later that they wanted to have the
procedure reversed, and then killed themselves after learning that
the procedure was irreversible. It turns out that while Flat Earthers
do have an alarmingly high rate of suicide, the treatments that are
touted as reducing the number of suicides actually don't. This is because the "treatments" never actually addressed the patients' underlying inability to cope with reality, but instead just tried to kick the can down the road by hiding the truth from them. But the
Flat Earthers make sure not to bring that up, and decry any mention
of it as “spreading terraphobic lies.”
If parents won't let their kids undergo the procedures, pediatricians will refer the kids instead to support groups where they can meet with other Flat Earther kids who tell them that they're right to believe the Earth is flat, and also that their parents hate them and that the kids should find a way to run away from home and cut off contact with their families.
“You don't need their toxicity in your
life. You should be allowed to live The Authentic Truth.”
Another
odd thing about Dave and his Flat Earther friends is that they
believe that since we “globularists” have our maps wrong, we've
actually got all the addresses wrong on our legal documents, including
vital records. Dave insists that his birth certificate, driver's
license, and everything else with his name on it should say that he's
actually from the gated community in the next town over. It turns out
they have a really swanky rec center with a heated pool and saunas and hot tubs and such, all clothing optional.
It's free to members of the community (well, included in their
membership, I should say), but they have a strict policy of not
allowing outsiders. Dave can't afford to actually buy a home there,
so instead, he's insisting that he's a native citizen of there, and
that the government is oppressing him with their round-Earth maps by
saying he's not.
The thing is, there are a fair number of legislators who graduated from the universities the Flat Earthers have been speaking at, and they're seriously considering letting Flat Earthers—and only Flat Earthers—list their birthplaces and addresses as whatever they want.
Most of the members of the gated community are not happy about that, let me tell you! Some have even said they'll move away if the HOA starts letting Flat Earthers who don't live there start skinny dipping in their hot tubs. (Terraphobic bigots.) The Flat Earthers describe this struggle by saying, “Flat Earther rights are human rights.” Yes, they really feel that not letting them use these other people's hot tubs is a violation of their human rights.
The
Flat Earthers' activism has put them in contact with other social justice
groups, and it's made for some strange bedfellows. They particularly
admire the progress that's been made by the gay rights groups, so
they sort of attached themselves to that movement, even though most
of them are straight. They've made themselves such a fixture among
the gay rights movement that the gays themselves have started using
the acronym LGBFE (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Flat Earther). They say
there's strength in solidarity and safety in numbers, so now if you
think Flat Earthers are kooks, you're also accused of being
homophobic. Granted, most of the people who punch Dave in the face
are homophobic, but it
still doesn't seem right to characterize people as such just for
insisting that the Earth isn't flat.
Weird as it seems for
the Flat Earthers to glom onto a completely unrelated group like that, it's paid
off for them. The gays have switched from flying a rainbow flag to
flying a flag depicting a rainbow stretching across a flat Earth.
States that have protections against homophobic discrimination also
say now that it's hate speech to say that the Earth is round. People have
been fired and deplatformed. Careers have ended. In a few other
countries, people have even gotten mild criminal sentences for saying
on social media that Flat Earthers are delusional. Now it's gotten to
where most progressives take it as an article of faith that the
planet is whatever shape anyone wants to believe it is. It's a
postmodernist take that says the Earth can simultaneously be many
different shapes all at once, but not round. Never round. That's
oppressive. Even most of the Trekkies have now decided that their god, Gene
Roddenberry, was the devil for depicting planets in Star Trek as
spherical.There are whole online communities just for Trekkies bashing Roddenberry for being terraphobic. Some have even gotten violent, encouraging their comrades to "punch a terraph." Mostly, they like to target women, because, as I said, bullies like to pick on easy targets.
