A conspiracy theory that just won't die
I live a few minutes outside Seattle. I see the stars regularly, except when there are clouds. And even with Boeing and at least four military bases in the Seattle-Tacoma corridor, we have no chemtrail conspiracy theories running amok up here.
Indeed, on those occasions that I come across the chemtrail conspiracy, I wonder why it hasn't died yet.
Like when I first encountered the idea over a decade ago, all I could think was, "Why?" I mean, okay, sure. So an airplane flies over leaving a contrail, and a couple days later someone finds what looks like a cross between fiberglass insulation and wet cotton candy in the dirt near a road. Two questions occur to me:
• How can we be sure the mysterious substance is the chemtrail?
• What is the purpose of a chemtrail?
The one has vaguely interesting implications, e.g., a particular laboratory could not identify the substance. But that doesn't mean it's actually the chemtrail.
The other, though, is a completely open question. I've never heard a useful answer to it.