Over the Edge

Look, I know it sucks to lose. But in the wake of November 6th, the sound of the loon is increasingly loud in the land. As Mother Jones reports:

On October 11, at a closed-door meeting of the Republican caucus convened by the body’s majority leader, Chip Rogers, a tea party activist told Republican lawmakers that Obama was mounting this most diabolical conspiracy. The event—captured on tape by a member of the Athens-based watchdog Better Georgia (who was removed from the room after 52 minutes)—had been billed as an information session on Agenda 21, a nonbinding UN agreement that commits member nations to promote sustainable development. In the eyes of conservative activists, Agenda 21 is a nefarious plot that includes forcibly relocating non-urban-dwellers and prescribing mandatory contraception as a means of curbing population growth. The invitation to the Georgia state Senate event noted the presentation would explain: “How pleasant sounding names are fostering a Socialist plan to change the way we live, eat, learn, and communicate to ‘save the earth.’”…

About 23 minutes into the briefing, Searcy explained how President Obama, aided by liberal organizations like the Center for American Progress and business groups like local chambers of commerce, are secretly using mind-control techniques to push their plan for forcible relocation on the gullible public…”

Ya gotta watch out for those commies from the Chamber of Commerce.

As a friend of mine remarked after hearing this lampooned by David Letterman, there have always been folks whose connection to reality is intermittent at best–the guy who used to hang around the barber shop spinning conspiracy theories, or your great-aunt Bertha who complained about the men peeking in her window. Today, the internet allows those people to do two things Aunt Bertha couldn’t: find each other, and amplify the crazy.

I have some sympathy for people who just can’t cope with the world as it is, the people who need a “real” explanation for events they find incomprehensible (like re-electing that black guy…or voting to approve same-sex marriage). I have considerably less patience for the people who enable them.

Convening a hearing to listen to paranoid fantasies is a bridge too far, even for Republicans in the Georgia Legislature.

This country desperately needs two responsible political parties. The last thing the Republicans should be doing in the wake of the November 6th reproof delivered by voters is encourage the residents of Neverland.