rebels without a clue

A few firm words of advice for the Moon landing conspiracy theorists who refuse to believe their own eyes.

While most of the world tries to reflect on the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing, it's hard not to point out that the memory is being marred by those who think the Apollo program was a fraud and evil government forces staged the whole thing merely to show off to the Soviet Union.

And if you're one of those people who really think that the Moon landings were staged, lean in closer and take my advice. Find yourself a hobby that doesn't require numbing your brain to the point where you just utter an endless stream of nonsense that's been debunked again and again, and stop defiling a great moment in human history with your pathologically paranoid inanities.

Astronauts walked on the Moon and countless experts have examined and confirmed every bit of evidence, from photographs, to lighting conditions, to footprints, to shots that simply couldn't be faked on Earth and kept secret. I know this totally ruins your vibe and your desire for a nefarious government keeping you enslaved in a Matrix-like alternate reality that only you and a privileged few have been able to pierce, but you're wrong.

Get over it. Do you have any idea of how many people would've had to be in on the scam? Do you know how many people would've had to build a realistic soundstage, space suits and props? Do you know how many people would've had to find a perfect place for the set, prepare it, clean it, light it and guard it? And not a single one of these people said a word in 40 years during an age when a scandal like that would make them instant millionaires? They were that patriotic and that selfless?

Plus, what about the Soviet Union? In a country which described America as a savage police state that blatantly exploited minorities for slave labor in their encyclopedias and used graphic photos from the protests of the civil rights movement to drive the point home into the late 1970s, why would anyone just accept the Moon landing as is?

The Soviet space program was easily a rival to NASA and they had the technology to independently verify the chatter between Apollo and mission control. And believe me, they were listening. If they even suspected that the signals bounced between Earth and a fake ship in orbit, they wouldn't have just pounced, they would've raised absolute hell. Should anyone have the proof that Apollo was nothing more than a political rouse, they would've been treated like heroes by the USSR and showered in money and gifts.

Add to this the immense amount of evidence that we really did land on the lunar surface and the huge volume of literature and filmed experiments which show that every claim by the hoaxers is nothing more than ignorance and paranoia, and it seems absurd to argue that the Moon landings were staged. So why do hoaxers keep at it? You can hear it in their pitifully condescending cliché of "you'll just believe anything the government tells you like a good sheep, huh?"

They see themselves as these profound, deep thinkers who figured out something important. They're rebels. In their own minds, they're the next great whistleblowers who through their dogged efforts and research uncovered a massive government cover-up. They want respect and attention. And in their quest for glory, they don't bother to actually educate themselves enough to know what they're talking about in the first place.

So my dear hoxers, you're not going to be heroes or respected researchers who blew the story of a 40 year conspiracy wide open. You're destined to remain desperate kooks who's only claims to fame are cultural vandalism and a DSM-IV worthy distrust of short-sighted government bureaucrats who can't even keep their personal indiscretions secret, much less something as big as this.

Your rhetorical games are no substitute for evidence and your insistence on continuously desecrating one of the greatest milestones of human history is both ignorant and pathetic. Maybe, just maybe, you could find something more useful to do with your lives than ambushing astronauts with Bibles and pretending to be engineers and astronomers?