Bill's Notes

What to make of this? It was linked by Instapundit, and I think wrongly.

The Obama administration, including his czars and along with his closets Progressive supporters, are planning a manufactured insurgency against America. He is using the media to his advantage to garner both sympathy and support for his unfinished goals. He is desperately seeking a way to remain in office, even if it means the surreal prospect of an indefinite postponement of elections - if it can be pulled off. So far, he’s got the support of the majority of the DHS “brass” behind him, according to my source.

Read the whole thing. I don't link to it either to cast light on extremely far-right-wing paranoia or to agree with the substance. No, I want to talk about a couple of "tells" in CTs (conspiracy theories).

The first tell is a long windup. This draws you down a tunnel, and usually you find yourself feeling the world has gotten smaller somehow.

But the big tell is this one -- the cast of characters is all the usual suspects: Trilateral Commission, Bilderberger, "the Jews," one world government types. A good CT will usually find it irresistible to include all sorts of suspects, to include as wide a range of characters as possible.

A little like when World Nut Daily said the U.S. was to suffer a nuclear terroristic attack, the Islam-terrorist-acquired weapon from Russia was to be smuggled over our southern border by illegal Mexican immigrants who were to be given safe passage by the drug cartels. (I think a recent movie was based on this scenario, but the movie was much better.)

Or when the M-I complex used the CIA and funded by Texas-oilman to enlist Mob-connected anti-Castro Cubans to set up pro-Castro Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot JFK so the U.S. could have LBJ as president so he could enter the Vietnam War.

It just hits all the hot buttons.

Here's the real conspiracy: The devil wants our souls. He wants to sow discord, puff up our pride, flatter our vanity, dehumanize others, addict us to negativity and carnal desires, and finally to tear each other to pieces out of suspicion, hatred and delusion.

God wants to purchase you with the ransom He earned on the cross. He wants us to remember our common humanity and our home in Him, and to love one another, even those who wish us ill. Pray for our enemies and do good to him that harms you ... and all that. Love to the point of mockery, pain and even crucifixion. That's the Christian message, and it's always been the Christian message. Christians are called to love and suffering.

Our enemies are what they've always been: addiction, suspicion, hatred, self-seeking -- sin, sickness, evil and death.

I'm going to expand on the last entry.

Let's say I have an imaginary friend named George. Are you OK with that? Of course.

Now, say we are out to lunch and I want George to have a seat at the table, that I talk to George with you present, and that I order a meal for George.

You'd think it's strange, but as long as my conservations with George are civil, you'd probably file that under "tolerance of eccentricity."

Now the check comes. You expect me to pay for both my meal and George's, but alas, I say, "George will pay for his own meal." Now it's impacting you, and you'd insist that I pay.

"But you ate some of the good off George's plate! Very rude, by the way."

What I'm doing isn't illegal until I try to leave the restaurant. You insist that I pay for George's bill, and I insist that he can pay for his own bill. You argue that I'm asking an imaginary friend to pay for imaginary money for real food. I insist my friend is very much real.

Now say I resolve this argument when George tells me he's a little strapped today. So I pay.

Now say I try to register George to vote. You'd say, "OK, now you've gone too far."

I insist you're discriminating against him and compare you to poll-tax supporters during the segregation age. Bigot.

I call you a bigot, who wants to take away George's civil rights, and insist there is no ontological difference between the imaginary and the "real." I can define people as I see fit -- who are you to say George isn't real?

You want to ban imaginary friends! We shall overcome ...

And you say, "I'm not against imaginary friends. I just don't think they should vote."

I ignore that and insist you're a horrible bigot who is just like those who opposed liberation for African-Americans. We shall overcome.

*****

That's how strange pro-same-sex marriage arguments appear to me.

Same sex marriage is an ontological impossibility. We could not legally create one even if we tried. All we'd do is create an imaginary marriage and then swear it's bigotry to fail to acknowledge the impossibility.

And one step further -- you can't not know this. Natural reason and natural conscience tell you so. Just as in the above scenario, I can't not know that George cannot pay his own bill and that George cannot vote.

Same sex marriage is a mass delusion, as in, "extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds."

Obama says same sex marriage should be legal.

So should unicorn farts; alas, there's no such thing.

Now you have a right to an imaginary friend. You can name him George and have long conversations with him. However, it's not bigotry if I fail to legally recognize your imaginary friend's civil rights.

If you want your imaginary friend to vote in elections, I'm against it. And I really don't want to hear that I'm discriminating against him because he's black, or that I want to ban imaginary friends.