My eyes were opened recently to a notion I’ve been unable to get out of my head. In adulthood, I’ve never been a religious person of any sort—if devout to anything, it’s nonbelief. Not a person of faith. But then I heard about the Reptilian Conspiracy.
It goes like this: All celebrities, all political leaders, business leaders, rich people of influence are reptiles. Literally. Giant reptiles. From outer space, most likely, but maybe they’ve been here all along, some kind of parallel high-cognitive (if you can say that of humanity) species evolving quietly alongside homo sapiens, but smarter, and now they’re secretly controlling everything about our lives.
It’s like The Matrix, only vaguely interesting!
I think the thing I like best about the Reptilian Conspiracy is the simplicity of it. I also like looking at famous people and imagining they’re giant lizards hiding under fake skin. For the metaphor alone, it’s very quickly become my favorite conspiracy theory. I mean, the U.S. government offing JFK only holds intrigue if you don’t think they secretly kill people every day—which I do; they also do it not so secretly (hello, Afghanistan!)—and all that “9/11 was an inside job” shit can take a hike. Who cares? Couldn’t be less interested. But you want to start telling me that John Boehner and Barack Obama and Kate Middleton and Ryan Reynolds and Steve Jobs and Derek Jeter are really giant lizards using mind control and superficial distraction to subdue the general populace? Now we’re talking.
What do they want? I don’t know. Maybe they’re harvesting organs, or just studying us the way we do rats in cages, using us for entertainment or cheap thrills. Hell, I read a news story the other day that said the entire universe is nothing more than an expanding bubble around an exploded fourth dimensional star. Everything we have ever known or will ever know, reduced to nothing more than the surging flame on a match head in 12-billion-year slow motion. So what does it matter if all our leaders are reptiles? What in the course of human history might’ve given you the belief that we could lead ourselves?
Frankly, we should be so lucky to have secret reptile overlords. Then at least there could be a reason why the course of our civilization seems to be irrevocably fucked. What’s a better scapegoat? “Well, it wasn’t us, it was our secret reptile overlords that invented female circumcision.” My secret reptile overlord ate my homework. Call me crazy, but that sounds way better to me than accepting responsibility for the myriad failures of humanity and/or putting ourselves on the hook for actually learning from them. No thanks! All hail the lizardmen!
And of all the conspiracy theories I’ve heard, from Paul Is Dead to chemtrails, I think this is the one I’d most like to see proven true. Say what you want about people, it’s a safe bet once it came out that everyone in charge is a reptilian, there’d be some interesting crap going on. Looting at very least. Plus you could have reptilian collaborators, betraying humanity for a taste of the good life. And Nicolas Cage could be the one man to save us all and then he could blow up whatever generator is on the reptilian mothership and destroy the life support that lets the reptiles breathe our air, thus saving us once and for all and proving to the rest of the galaxy that YOU DON’T MESS WITH ‘MERICA. USA! USA!
Except that would totally never happen because you know damn well if anyone’s a giant lizard disguised as a human being it’s Nicolas Cage.
As I said, I’m not a faithful person. And I acknowledge the likelihood that humanity is not in fact being controlled by lizard people to some nefarious purpose. But when I think about it, about how great it would be if our worst foe were so tangible and not, say, the crippling fear of our own mortality, I begin to understand why people want to believe in the first place.
JJ Koczan
jj@theaquarian.com
