“Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow.” – T.S. Eliot

Last week was a big week if you are a conspiracy theory guy or gal.

After a delay of a few weeks, President Donald Trump’s executive order to declassify any government documents relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy was carried out.

However, there have been no major revelatory findings from the documents so far. I doubt there will be. With most conspiracies the idea is way more exciting than the reality, and the more you buy in, the more you have to suspend reality to make all the dots connect.

If nothing of interest is found in the Kennedy documents, conspiracy theorists will only dig in deeper. Maybe some documents were not released or were destroyed. That could be possible, but I lose interest after chasing the rabbit down its hole to the point where we meet Alice and the Mad Hatter.

We used to snicker at folks who believed in conspiracies, but now proudly sporting your tin foil hat is almost chic, including the realm of lawmaking.

I typically try to focus my energy on legislation itself rather than the sponsor, but it is worth noting Rep. Mack Bulter, R-Rainbow City, is sponsoring both of the following bills in the Alabama State House of Representatives.

These bills may not get much traction among his colleagues in the legislature. However, both bills do have a few cosponsors attached to them.

The first would outlaw anyone from releasing anything into Alabama’s airspace, such as some kind of chemical compound, that could affect the weather “including temperature or the intensity of sunlight.”

There is nothing in the bill about how we would know this was happening or how to report it. AL.com’s Mike Cason reported Butler said he plans to update the bill to include a procedure for citizens to report what they believe are violations.

Cason’s article mentioned scientists have theorized it could be possible to release particles in the atmosphere that would lessen the intensity of the sun’s rays to weaken any effect of global warming, but nothing has ever been tested or appears to be in the works to test the theory.

The problem with bills that attempt to fix a problem that does not exist is these bills often create new, unanticipated problems. For example, if a lot of people reported the contrails from airplane exhaust was having some kind of effect on the weather, would airlines face penalties or would the airspace above Alabama be closed off from any airplane flight?

While that bill looks like it will be stuck on the runway for this year, Butler also has another bill he hopes will be cleared for takeoff.

House Bill 367 would prevent any state and county health department or related public agency from using any funds, even funds directly coming from the federal government, to promote the use of vaccines through advertising.

Alexander Willis, reporting for the Alabama Daily News, quoted Butler saying, “No taxpayer should be forced to subsidize big pharma’s marketing while these companies rake in billions in profit. This bill ensures that public money is used for the public good – not to boost corporate profits.”

Does “big pharma” profit from producing and selling vaccines? Sure. Yet, Alabama is not telling you to use a Pfizer vaccine instead of an AstraZeneca vaccine. There is business competition among these companies.

Alabama is only telling you to get your children vaccinated, so they do not have to be crippled from polio for the remainder of their lives.

The number one job of government is to protect you. Part of that is to let you know vaccines are safe and effective. When people hear about now debunked studies linking vaccines to autism, a theory Butler has referenced before, it is up to people who specialize in health to let us know there is currently no credible evidence to support it.

To follow what I believe to be Butler’s reasoning down the rabbit hole, we would have to believe the government is spending money to encourage people to receive unhelpful vaccinations while also purposefully discrediting information showing those vaccinations could cause autism in order to provide billions in profit to the major pharmaceutical companies.

Government is not going to do the right thing 100 percent of the time. Believe me, I know. But that is an awfully disturbing view of government and its motivations without much evidence to back it up.

Maybe we should go back to reviewing the Zapruder footage for the second gunman on the grassy knoll. It may not be productive, but at least it does not seem to hurt anybody.