Fingering Yet More Loathsome Bastards

 THE CRAZY BASTARD who exploded his RV and himself inside it indeed had a bone to pick, as had been strongly suspected. Why wouldn't he? If you'g gonna try to blow up a whole city, at least do it for a reason, right? The bone was deranged, also predictably, but had nothing to do with Islam or racism, to the probably disappointment of Christian zealots. What, the 5-G freaks believe that the government has only suddenly hit upon the idea of embedding propaganda, or Covid 19,cancer, or communism within the electromagnetic media?Hell, they've been doing that for decades.Its called corporate controlled media and/or christian broadcasting. Why, in a world awash with electromagnetic radiation, man made, coursing through our bodies, jiggling our every brain cell, any semi-sentient, coherently conscious being would be the least quanta concerned with 5-G, is quite beyond coherent comprehension. The cow, as we like to say, is long out of the proverbial barn, by about a century. The man must have been mentally ill, or mad, as in angry. Many of us seem to be nowadays. And that's the problem with all these idiotic alternative cosmic paradigm purveyors tidal waving into mainstream culture in ever greater abundance: they do real harm to real people in real space and real time. They form cults. They kill people, when sufficiently mad and motivated. Put them all in the same historical dustbin, the one labeled "nutcases", because they all belong there. The anti-vaxxers, the Q-Anon deep staters, the 5-G paranoids, the multidimensional extraterrestrial contactees, the alien abductees, the election fraud fanatics - have I left anyone out? Many, doubtless. It becomes easier to understand how religions emerged and evolved. An American, intelligent, ostensibly sane, from an affluent family, cruises through the first thirty years of life well educated, well connected, socially high ranking. Then, the stumbling block. That first great American novel is never finished, never published. A writer, a successful one, was all he ever wanted to be, or planned on being. Disillusioned, he rejects the real world and blasts off into the stratosphere, lugging his alternative cosmic paradigms along for the ride, and for the sublimation of social status. e has his status back; only he knows what he knows, and he is all too eager to share. What might he do next? Build a cult following? Encourage others to disown the world, or to harm it in an attempt to reform it? That's the problem.  We are all confronted daily with millions of ticking time bombs. On the bright side, if civilization can survive Essenes, St. Paul, and the Pentecostals, maybe, just maybe, it can survive our current hot mess, even if a few bombs go off every once in a while.