~ Steven Stills and Buffalo Springfield, 1967

Maybe Paranoids 'R' Us should be America's slogan in this the oh-oh decade, because it’s as thick in the air as warmongers on the Fox News Channel.

Generalized paranoia is one of the unintended consequences of a society in the middle stages of terminal politicization, the process by which everyday challenges confronting people and their private social institutions are transformed into political crises addressed only through simplistic, centralized solutions.  The advanced stages include progressive social breakdown and blood in the streets.  Think Germany in the '30s or Argentina today.  But we're not there yet, not quite.

Just this week, the aptly-surnamed Richard Bizzaro was so paranoid when he saw three casually-dressed young men with him in first class whispering among themselves that he thought they were going to hijack his flight into Salt Lake City.  As he sat there wondering if he'd have to pull a Tod Beamer and save the Olympics from another jet bomb, the three revealed themselves to be sky marshals and arrested Mr. Bizarro for suspicious behavior.  You see, they got suspicious of him after he showed signs that he was suspicious of them.  It was all a big paranoid misunderstanding, though Mr. Bizarro may spend some time in the slammer for being on the wrong side of the power curve.

Do you wonder when the FBI will come knocking on your door and ask if you’re the Patty Paranoid who wrote a letter to the editor last month criticizing the President?  That's what happened to 60-year old retired phone company worker Barry Reingold, who publicly dissed Bush's policies during his regular Bay area gym workout.  Next thing you know, the FBI is at his door asking lots of questions.  Then there's A.J. Brown, a North Carolina undergrad who received a visit from the Secret Service due to a report that she had an anti-Bush poster in her dorm room.  Next is traveler Neil Godfrey who aroused suspicion and was kept off his flight because he was carrying a novel by green anarchist Edward Abbey.  The real surprise there is that the airport security people even knew who Edward Abbey was!

But if you think you're paranoid, take a look at the gun control "debate."  The gun rights fanatics think that every new restriction on their right to keep and bear arms is one more mogul on the way down the slippery slope toward total disarmament.  History shows that they may be right, but as the gunnies like to say with a sly grin, "It's not a question of whether I'm paranoid, but whether I'm paranoid enough."  Flip over the coin and you see the gun control crowd terrified that some highly-trained, fingerprinted, FBI-checked, permitized, lawyerized concealed gun carrier is going to go on a shooting spree.  Or maybe they too see “shall issue” concealed carry laws as a slippery slope toward an armed society they dread.

Then there's the environmental 'noids who think that global warming is going to kill billions, though the evidence is spotty at best, and a warming earth may even be a net boon for humanity as more arable land becomes available.  Add to the list the FDA 'noids and their medical hangers-on who today breathlessly advise you to eat what they insisted would kill you yesterday.  And I'll be fair enough to admit that we libertarians and anarchists can be as paranoid as anyone else, ever fearful of the encroaching one-world state with the advent of each new international governing body.

But I've saved the best for last.  This being a market anarchist website, it will come as no surprise when I say that the government is the most outrageously paranoid group of all, and with good reason.  Depending on the decade, they see communists, anarchists, Confederate sympathizers or terrorists under every rock, and they’re often right, since they create their own enemies with stupid and shortsighted policies.  They must remain ever-vigilant lest the American people recognize that the emperor has no clothes, and bring the whole house of cards crashing down around them.  But just because they’re paranoid doesn’t mean we’re not out to get them.

If they can't buy us with handouts of money or power, brainwash us in their youth concentration camps or with TV propaganda, or intimidate us with income tax audits, there's always the knock on the door with its implicit warning from your friendly neighborhood Homeland Security officer.

I'm sure you'd like to hear more but I have to go drink my St. John's Wort milkshake.  Care to join me?