Roses are red, birds are real…

Conspiracies again, what’s the deal?

Roses+are+red%2C+birds+are+real...

Xavier Sullivan, Staff Writer

Birds are a product of nature and evolution. This sort of thing is just common knowledge; however, the tinfoil hat wearers have begun to agree that they are a tool of the government, used to spy on the people.

Now believe me, I do love a good conspiracy theory, however, I don’t like stupid ones.

Things like how Australia doesn’t exist, and that all Australians are paid actors, despite the fact that Australia lies at the same latitude as South America, and Africa.

This article comes as an op-ed piece to a fellow staff writer of mine, Jenaro DelPrete, regarding his ‘Birds Aren’t Real’ article. Having started from a debate about how Australia doesn’t exist because ‘southern Africa has penguins, but Australia doesn’t and that the concept of Pangea and continental drift should indicate penguins on Australia, given its supposed break off from Antarctica. Having come back with a quick bit of research on how the Australian, New Zealand, and South American coastlines all have native species of penguins, as well as southern Africa.

DelPrete then gave the argument that then birds just aren’t real, and thus he began some research to prove his stance on the notion that they are simply products of the government. Though, it seems worthwhile to point out that “the government” is always pegged as the center of many conspiracy theories.

While this may or may not be true, birds outdate humans by millions of years. Birds appeared 251-199 million years ago, during the triassic period; however, the first human ancestors, such as the Homo erectus, appeared approximately 1.8-1.3 million years ago. Being that radiocarbon dating doesn’t lie, and that the very idea of government is a human invention, that puts birds before “the government” in the course of natural history.

There is even a website dedicated to the idea that birds aren’t real, called birdsarentreal.com that will sell you merchandise slapped with “birds aren’t real” for exorbitant amounts of money. There is even one sweatshirt that has a diagram of a bird’s “anatomy” on it, with labels pointing to the supposed components of the government robot. And to that, I respond simply with, “Have you ever seen a dead bird that got hit by a car”? Because you can see all of its organs and bodily matter leaking out onto the road next to it. Not to be grotesque, but let’s be real here.

Birdsarentreal.com also happens to have a Twitter page. Naturally, they also happen to have their own version of the “‘The Flat Earth Society has members all around the globe’ ’Say that again, but slowly’” meme. They have a tweet that says, “Haven’t seen a single ‘Bird’ since the government shutdown hm” that was retorted with a “Maybe because its winter.”

Haven’t seen a single ‘bird’ since the government shutdown

— @birdsarentreal

Birds migrate south for the winter. If birds really are surveillance drones commissioned by the government, then why would they willingly fly away from the place they survey over? And something like a secret surveillance drone would certainly come from the “deep state” people in the Pentagon’s basement, not from a department that could  easily be closed during the government shutdown. There are some birds that stay north during the winter months, however, they aren’t widespread enough to make any real impact if they were surveillance drones.

If the government were corrupt enough to have surveillance drones spy on people, why wouldn’t they just implant some kind of mind control chip into everyone’s heads? The level of corruption is a topic for another article, and so is the “deep state”, but if our government becomes stylistic of “George Orwell’s 1984”, then they wouldn’t need drones to spy on the people. They could just tap into personal electronic devices. Something that the National Security Agency already does from time to time on people that are on certain lists of theirs.

One might then argue that personal electronic devices didn’t exist  decades ago: however, as stated previously, birds outdate humans, which are the ones who designed the technology that goes into flying robots. DelPrete then gave an argument regarding a secret government plan entitled, “Operation: Water the Country” wherein 23 top officials of the CIA commissioned 20 B-12 bomber airplanes in 1959 to be built for the express purpose of delivering poison to billions of birds over the United States, though not to all birds. However, I could find absolutely no evidence confirming or denying that this operation ever took place.

Never did I think that I’d be writing an article about the existence of birds in the opinion section of the paper, and that made me chuckle a little. Society has gotten so paranoid to where it has begun to think that the nature around them is spying on them. However, don’t worry, it isn’t.

The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the GENESIS staff. Reach Xavier Sullivan at [email protected].