Back in the day, such a guy would have a small audience and his eccentric theories would be heard only by friends by and large, who give him a pass on it. Just a quirk of a guy who holds a real job and is normal, really.
But with the wonders of the Internet, such guys have a bigger audience than the local watering hole. And all can see their quirks:
I am now convinced, more than ever, that the Bush pirate crew is going to pull another 9-11 before the November elections. I think they are going to declare martial law. Then when the public hits the streets in protest, they are going to trot out these "active denial" microwave weapons for crowd control. And if anyone stands around too long they will be killed, just like is happening today in Iraq.
Wow. This guy is seriously arguing that the administration will slaughter Americans to keep control of Congress? Why an all-powerful government needs to even impose martial law when it could just manipulate the election results, I do not know. You'd think that an evil genius like Rove could pull off something a little more subtle than martial law, microwave weapons, and indiscriminate gunfire. But I'm not privy to the thinking that comes up with such plots.
I know that such lunatics are hardly representative of liberals--or even of the Left, really, no matter how much they despise the current government. Heck, I've had friends with some really strange ideas about the world so it is hardly limited to the Left. And we all know about how Clinton hatred twisted a lot on the Right in the 1990s. I was not one of those people and in my job I was the designated go-to guy for answering those perplexing questions about zip code conspiracies and gold fringe on flags. But nobody took them seriously and we could all roll our eyes at the mostly harmless paranoia out there (the exception was Oklahoma City, of course). And we had the advantage of being in the vacation from history after the Berlin Wall came down and before the Twin Towers were knocked down. The acceptance of ravings like this are far greater now than back then when the media actively rejected such thoughts; and so the impact of ravings like those this guy spouts are greater and given a little more respectability.
And such ravings sure do put the left side of the spectrum in a bad light. As I've mentioned before, I want two sane national parties to compete for power. Guys like this one who should have an audience of one make it tough to keep both parties in the sane and responsible category.
There's "active denial" going on, no doubt. And not even tinfoil hats can stop it.
