Ever wonder why a large number of messages coming from Republicans these days seems to be paranoid, accusatory screeds?

The fact is that these people are angry and resentful at best or deeply embedded in the clutches of fear. Truth and facts do not operate well in these emotional levels. To illustrate this point, have you ever tried to communicate an obvious fact—like the sun is up—to an angry person? It just won’t land. No point of agreement on a fact can be found with angry, resentful, fearful, terrified people. They don’t see you, a fact, the walls, you name it and feel compelled to bat back any data you offer.

Thus it should come as no surprise that so much obvious manipulation of facts come from this district. This is really where the attempts to manipulate education à la Ron DeSantis originate. Author Steven Beschloss ably makes this point on his Substack blog:

The funny thing is that the weak really have nothing to fear from the truly strong. Since men are basically good, real strength translates into help and assistance for one’s fellow man.

But the truly weak and terrified among us—thankfully a tiny percentage—live in fear and terror of anyone who might appear stronger, more successful, more educated, more anything than they are. So, their mission becomes tearing those people, institutions, causes or organizations down—at all cost.

The fear and terror of these tiny minds know no bounds. They also seek for the most part to operate from hidden positions and snipe covertly. You see evidence of this in the rampant presence of Black Propaganda campaigns in operation today. But some of the crazies—a useful umbrella term—seem to have become more comfortable operating in plain view. They feel they have found enough agreement to their conspiracy theories, delusions of FBI agents hiding in their trash and the safety of their position to say their quiet parts out loud. Add to this the media outlets—FOX, OAN, Newsmax, Breitbart—that cater to their insanity for their own purposes.

Into this churning mass of disturbed and dysfunctional thought processes flies a purported Chinese “spy balloon.” The paranoia squad is on fire with speculation and trigger-happy ideas of how to “deal” with it if the “gubment” won’t. Images and stupid video clips of “a girl with a rifle” going up in a helicopter are the norm today. Also running wild are the random crazy speculations being “shared” as legitimate information like a House member from Kentucky wondering if the balloon “took off from Wuhan” to distribute more Covid-19.

Turns out this is far from the first time such a balloon has crossed our land mass. Oh, the outrage. Never mind that we flew SR-71 spy planes over every country in the world and run a network of spy satellites that can read a license plate from space. The big difference here is that the Chinese seem to have figured out how to accomplish SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) far cheaper than anything we have ever done.

The Chinese “spy balloon” is probably an intelligence operation. That’s speculation. Additional speculation would be that while it is listening to us, the NSA at Fort Meade is probably listening to it—and having some pretty talented hackers themselves—may have a full readout of the balloon’s digital product. Note: these ideas are labeled as speculation because that’s all they are. The people that know for sure are not going to tell us.

Meanwhile, the paranoia-terror coffee klatch of the far-right thinks every random thought is a “fact.” And by this they tip their hand as to their real mindset—they fear literally everything. And they assume we must be as well, and if we don’t, well they’ll really show us with some more statements from the land of Q.

So lets just do what really drives these folks nuts: ignore them and get on with the business at hand.