Many of my conservative friends used to tell me that the government kept secret kill lists and secret tracking lists, following us by our cell phone GPS signals and Internet usage so the government could arrest or kill us at any time — I would either keep quiet and think they were being a bit paranoid or try to reason that it was too costly for the government (let alone private companies like Google) to track so many people.

The Snowden leaks proved them right and me wrong.

What if the other things my conservative friends and family tell me are true?

For instance:

• Are Bill and Hitler Clinton longterm Soviet communist/socialists sleeper cells?
• Is President Obama secretly following a Black Panther/Islamic agenda?
• Is Ronald Reagan the greatest U.S. President ever?
• Are we living in an Animal Farm world where some pigs think they’re more equal than others now that they’re on the podium, getting there by promising a more equal world until they got their hands in the till?
• Will the banking and financial sectors, which were barely slapped on the wrists for causing the Great Recession, cause another economic meltdown because they feel invincible now that they’re “too big to fail”?
• Are urbanites planning to steal land from the ruralites, incarcerating and killing those that get in the way of corporate greed to own all the means of food production and oil/mineral reserves?
• Are corporations like Monsanto trying to own all the seeds that feed the people, in cahoots with a “star chamber” to control the whole population?
• Was Obama brainwashed by Chinese communism when he lived in Indonesia?
• Do we live in a dystopian technocratic society where our leaders with no formal military ethics training kill their own people using push-button, remote-control drones without getting blood on their hands?
• Do cell phones cause longterm cancer?
• How exactly does fluoridated water work on the brain?
• Are cell phone towers secretly sending massive brain control signals?
• Are mosquito control spraying programs the localised version of “chemtrails”?
• Do the FBI and CIA create false files on people so they are kept in constant fear that they can be arrested at any time for any reason whatsoever and shipped to secret torture sites out of the country and out of the view of the American public, thus making the American people more accepting of socialist programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act?
• Do large corporations purposely keep employee wages so low that they’re forced to rely on the government for food and thus unwilling to revolt against a suppressive government?
• Is there a list of more conservative fears I could find to investigate these questions I never took seriously before Edward Snowden opened my eyes to the reality that “just because you don’t believe they’re tracking you doesn’t mean they aren’t”?
• Does the UN stockpile weapons in your city in anticipation of largescale riot control when food and water become scarce, driving prices out of reach of most people?
• Are government scientists secretly developing a Soylent Green program to convert huge numbers of incarcerated people, arrested for the flimsiest of reasons, including being upset because the police raided the wrong apartment/house, into food when the time is right?
• Could a teacher really be so drunk on vodka that she could get by with walking the school hallways wearing no pants?

In this Brave New Post-1984 World, anything is possible, even the repurposed use of Pinkerton-type “detectives” to track and keep people in line. Anyone think the Anti-Pinkerton Act is valid anymore?

Thank goodness I know that Richard Nixon was the greatest U.S. President who ever lived!

On days like this, finding ways to entertain myself is endlessly fun!

[On a side note, while typing this up, I got a call (“Hello. This Rachel from cardholder services…”) that the Caller ID said was from my own phone number.  How funny is that? (And how easy it is to create your own Caller ID info, if you know how.)]