What If The Crazies Have It Right?

They’ve been around, in one form or another, since the early 1950s, and if most of us don’t know one of these people personally, we at least know them by reputation. They’re called by names like American separatists, survivalists, patriots, militia, Posse Comitatus or just the guys who put the Right in righteous. They’re defined by their beliefs and priorities— things like gun ownership (with special emphasis on automatic weapons and heavy munitions) and religion, although their theology can pretty much be boiled down to Revelations with the rest of Scripture seen as mere filler material so that there would be a “Book” of Revelations rather than a pamphlet. Rarely revealing themselves in polite company as bigots, they are, in fact, Klansmen without the white getups, and a black President was always their worst nightmare. As Barack Obama began to emerge as a credible presidential possibility, they labeled him as the Antichrist. I have no idea what or who the Antichrist is, but I gather that it has something to do with Revelations. And finally, when it comes to economics, they hoard gold and believe that the entire world economy is controlled by a cabal of powerful white Jews, plotting to orchestrate the affairs of the world under names like the Council on Foreign Relations, or the Federal Reserve, or the World Bank.

Here’s the thing. These were the people who built backyard fallout shelters in the 1950s, and just because they were over-prepared back then for a war that never materialized, that doesn’t mean that they could never get it right. So now we have the spectacle of Henry Paulson, and if he is part of a cabal that controls the world, then we all need a fallout shelter. What if the crazies have it right? Maybe it all really does come down to Revelations. Maybe the hokey pokey really IS what it’s all about.