Comment by mrguyorama
2 days ago
America has a substantial fundamentalist christian population who was handed a conspiracy theory about ID cards being a sign of the antichrist as depicted in Revelations decades ago and just will maintain that conspiracy theory for eternity.
The minimum size of this population, people who are adamant that the world is 10k years old, that god created everything as it currently is within those past 10k years, and therefore that all of science is a conspiracy in league with satan to deceive you from god, is about 30 million people. That's the percentage of Americans that willingly state such a belief when an alternative survey option is "Earth is old but god is still real and meaningful and doing everything" ie the current Catholic Dogma.
That exact same cohort is the singular reason for the Satanic Panic back in the 80s, for every child that "wasn't allowed" to participate in Halloween, for kids that weren't allowed to read Harry Potter because it "promoted witchcraft". These people insist we are in a constant and active war against actual physical demons that have infiltrated much of society. They believe they are losing this "war". They believe they are following God's orders. They believe anything is permissible in this war
That's not a conspiracy theory. It's a cautionary tale in the same vein as Don't Create the Torment Nexus. Some people proceed to take it overly literally and engage in wild fantasy (ironic considering the typical views of that population on things like D&D).