A Lot of People Believe Bill Gates Wants to Microchip Them

This is . . . oh hell. I don’t know:

Be sure to read the question carefully. It literally asks people if they think Bill Gates wants to implant microchips in everyone.

But before we get too smug, I wonder what this poll would look like if instead of Bill Gates, the villain were Peter Thiel or Elon Musk or . . . Donald Trump. Maybe progressives wouldn’t look so good. After all, even with the saintly Bill Gates in the question, only half of Democrats are sure he has no plans to microchip people.

This whole thing is nuts. Anti-vaxxers make up only a few percent of the population, but somehow a huge number of people seem to have become deeply suspicious that the search for a COVID-19 vaccine is just a front for the Trilateral Commission or something. What makes it all especially bizarre is that Donald Trump doesn’t support this notion. In fact, he’s a big vaccine fan. Somehow, though, that’s not enough. In the same way that the Republican Party paved the way for Trump and now can’t control him, maybe Trump has paved the way for conspiracy theories even more bizarre than the ones he himself retails. Soon, perhaps, his supporters will abandon him in favor of Alex Jones or someone similar. If Trump can’t deliver the conspiracy goods, they’ll just find someone who can.

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, if Bill Gates did want to track you, do you really think he’d use something as primitive as microchips? Please. Microchips are for pet cats. He’d use nanobots in the vaccine, which would allow him to control your mind as well as to track your every move. Come on, sheeple.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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