Every idiot knows that the world is a globe. It’s so obvious - duh - it really doesn’t need explaining.
But you still want me to explain? Really??
OK, well let’s start with the basics. Do you remember how, when you were at school, your teacher had an actual model of the globe sitting on his - or, depending on your age - her desk? Do you honestly think a trusted authority figure like your teacher would have done that if globes weren’t real?
Now the BBC. For over fifty years now the BBC’s logo has been a globe. The BBC is a trusted news organisation which broadcasts to billions of people, every day, all over the world. Do you think an institution of such unimpeachable authority and augustness as the BBC would have allowed their logo to promulgate a lie for more than half a century? And do you think one of their vast teams of highly-trained fact-checkers wouldn’t have noticed?
And don’t get me started on the main theatre in early 17th century London where they put on the plays of the most famous playwright in history, William Shakespeare, who could barely write his own name but was definitely responsible for all the masterpieces attributed to him. No, not the Rose, you fool. I mean the other one. Yes. Blimey, you are slow. The Globe. Yes. The Globe!
I could, of course, go on with further unarguable proofs that the world is a spinning ball. But I feel I have done enough to make my case. The world is a spinning ball because, well it obviously just is.
Or is it?
The last time I broached this subject, about a year ago, I was more or less on the fence as to whether the world was a globe, or whether it was flat - or hollow or whatever.
https://delingpole.substack.com/p/some-of-the-cleverest-people-i-know
It’s not that I can prove for certain that the earth is flat. Just that I find that ‘spinning globe theory’ has rather too much in common with all the other theories we are taught at school as accepted fact - evolutionary theory; man-made global warming theory; contagion theory; etc - but which have turned out, on closer examination by those few who can be bothered to look, to be a busted flush.
I can’t remember now whether it’s Delingpole’s First Law or Delingpole’s Second Law, but whichever it is it goes like this: The more often They tell us something, the less likely it is that it is actually true.
So, for example, we know that dinosaurs never existed because small children, boys especially, are taught about little else. Kids can’t even escape these made-up beasts when they go to bed because they’re printed all over their pyjamas, on the wall posters they got from the Natural History Museum and probably on their pillowcases too.
Ditto space travel, which is the other thing children, small boys especially, get rammed down their throats almost from infancy. Buzz Lightyear, space rockets, Tintin Destination Moon, aliens, the Clangers, Star Trek, Star Wars, planets and stars on your bedroom ceiling that glow in the dark. And spaceman pyjamas - and pillowcases, obviously.
We know that the Titanic didn’t sink from hitting an iceberg because of A Night To Remember (1958), Raise The Titanic (1980) and Titanic (1997).
We know that airships were safe and effective because of The Hindenburg (1975).
We know that nuclear power is safe because of The China Syndrome (1979) and the 2019 miniseries Chernobyl.
We know that climate change is bollocks because they never stop talking about it.
I think we can apply the same rule, fairly comfortably, to the concept of ‘the globe’, don’t you?
It’s so ubiquitous that even though I now believe in spinning ball theory about as much as I do the notion that 9/11 was planned by a man in a cave, I still find it hard to exorcise it from my vocabulary. When you’re reaching for a synonym for ‘worldwide’ it’s ‘global’. When you’ve exhausted Planet Earth (not that it is a planet, I don’t think), it’s ‘the globe.’
Still, I’m aware that Delingpole’s Law will not be nearly enough to persuade die-hard globetards. If the earth is flat, they’re going to need hard evidence - and a lot more of it than anyone has presented so far.
But I don’t think, to be honest, they’re ever going to get it. Personally I find the Flat Earth evidence I’ve looked at so far pretty persuasive - the ultra-long lens photos refuting the supposed curvature; the ‘flat non rotating earth assumption’ used in aircraft navigation; emergency landings in places inconsistent with the globe model; etc. If you’re expecting anything stronger than that, though, let me put to you a question. Suppose, for a moment, that the Flat Earthers are right and that there has been a massive elite conspiracy since the 16th century to conceal the true shape of our dwelling place, a conspiracy which includes all the scientists, all the seats of learning, all the schools and all the conduits (books, TV, movies, newspapers, the internet) which dispense information. Do you not think, maybe, that such a long-standing, far-reaching conspiracy would take scrupulous care to render it all but impossible for you to acquire the kind of proof you are demanding?
Here, I would argue, is a much more sensible way for Awake types to approach the question.
It comes by kind courtesy of my latest podcast guest Steven Young, who shares my scepticism of the spinning globe model. Unlike me, Young has the benefit of a scientific background, which renders him proof to one of the charges commonly levelled at Flat Earthers by globetards: “You don’t understand basic science.”
Dr Young does very much understand the science. He has a PhD in theoretical physics and is fully capable of explaining abstruse concepts like Schrödinger’s Cat or the various bizarre contortions Newton went through in order to explain planetary motion while cramming in those important numerals 66. He just now happens to think it’s all made up bollocks.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/steven-young-124414767
What Young gets is that while individual elements in flat earth theory may have flaws - his claims about flight times from Capetown to Santiago in Chile, for example, took some flak in my Telegram channel - the overall picture points very much away from the globe theory model. [Young’s Substack is here by the way]
I would never expect a Normie to become a flat earther because they have too much baggage in the way, starting with the gigantic trunk marked “But why would they lie to us?” But I’m surprised by how much resistance there is to Flat Earth from some Awake people, given how generally aware Awake people are that everything they have been taught about the world is a lie.
If, for example, you know that the Moon Landings were all fake, then it hardly requires a giant leap to understand that NASA is a black budget project, that all the various unmanned missions we’ve sent to Mars are equally fake, and that Elon Musk’s rocket programme is fake. In fact, it has all started to look so embarrassingly fake of late - eg those dolphins greeting the escape capsule of the gammon-faced man and straggly haired woman who are supposed to have spent the last nine months trapped on the Space Station - that you wonder if they haven’t now given up even pretending to try to fool us and just simply want to laugh in our faces.
Once you’ve got to the point where you accept - as how could you not? - that our trusted authorities routinely and flagrantly lie to us about space, it hardly seems to me much of a stretch to deduce that they’ve been doing the same, for centuries, about the shape and nature of our ‘planet’.
Why would they lie to us about globe earth? Surely the more pertinent question is: Why would they not lie about globe earth? They lie about everything else, after all.