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Puck Comes to Mind

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"


Shakespeare had Puck say that, in A Midsummer Nights Dream.  He might have been anticipating Michele Bachmann, but he wasn't.

Our Belle, Michele, is one of those people who is convinced that there are plots and conspiracies everywhere.  I read, yesterday, that people of altruistic impulse, have a little more gray matter at a specific place in their brains that most people.  I fully expect that someday a researcher will discover that the Joseph McCarthy, Michele Bachmann, and a generous number of Tea Baggers will be discovered to have larger than average black holes in their brains.  Or something like that.

I have no doubt that exaggerated suspicions of others once served a useful purpose in our history.  People who were too trusting of strangers occasionally ended up with lumps on their heads, or empty pockets, or dead.  Surely some of the cause for that had to do with how our brains worked.  Conversely, a certain amount of suspicion of strangers probably served a good purpose.  Michele Bachmann probably comes from a long line of unusually suspicious survivors.  She seems to believe that the President, and a good number of her follow members in Congress, are plotting to do us all in, and turn this country into a nation of barbaric, uncivilized, French-fry-nibbling, socialistic, Islamic, health-care desiring traitors who will convert all of our kids to same-sex-marriage, multi-lingual, menudo-eating tunnel-diggers and Sharia lawyers.

Like a lot of other conspiracists, she believes that government is inherently evil, and that she would like to be a member of it; maybe even President, although that did not work out so well.  Not yet, anyway.

There may yet be hope--some small hope--for the political establishment.  John McCain and John Boehner have said such talk is reprehensible, although they may not have used that word, and they should not have, because it is important that Our Belle be able to understand what they are saying.

"Loony" comes to mind.  So do black holes, where things fall in and disappear, and only wild radiation comes out.  And Puck comes to mind.



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