I notice a trend with people who live on the fringes of society. Paranoia runs rampant among their ranks. Whether said fringe-dweller is to the far left or far right, he or she has developed a healthy fear of the world around them and automatically assumes that every person not espousing a militia-esque belief system is a tool of the guvamint, out to bring them down.
Frighteningly enough, however, are those who live and walk and work among the 'normal' (and I use that term loosely), who harbor secret fears and fantasies about who is out to get them and what kind of tools are in employ to do it. These are the most creative people ever. If these people had any idea of grammar, a moderate vocabulary and a laptop, they could all join the ranks of Isaac Asimov and write best sellers that would creep out and /or reassure millions.
My latest example of this takes me back to my encounter with my angel dust-intoxicated friend from a couple of weeks ago. A key part of the story, which I woefully left out, were the chips which had been implanted in him to track his whereabouts and activities. He pointed to several non-scarred, non-tattooed areas on his body and noted skittishly, that the cops had planted them in him. He knew this because everywhere he went, there were cops and they all seemed to be watching his every move. Strangely, it had never occurred to him that the reason for such surveillance may have been because he was twitchy and loud and behaved erratically. He repeated may times over that he needed to "go and get these fucking things taken out, because they were really starting to stress him out." I wondered silently if there was a program for chip-removal that one learned about when on psychotropic substances. Having done many of those substances (though never angel dust), I felt left out of the loop for a moment. Then again, I haven't done that many and I'm also not paranoid.
Case number two in my paranoia analysis is, sadly, a detail of someone to whom I was once quite close. I never could grasp this aspect of him, however, and to this day, wonder how it is possible to live thinking that everyone is ready to go out of his or her way to sell you out to the fuzz and invent reasons to take you down. I am of the belief that most people simply aren't that motivated.
Our subject is educated, entrepreneurial and not prone to attention-grabbing activities. You would have thought that he was any normal guy, moving through life as a relatively successful, good-natured guy. I thought so too, until he told me about his "apocalypse stash", which was completed by a handgun for use when "people start breaking in and trying to get to his shit." The fact that he only dealt in cash, refused to tell people his name in many instances and wouldn't go to certain parts of town, for fear of being captured on film, seemed only like idiosyncrasies until the mention of firearms freaked the shit out of me and put it all into perspective. This has caused me to come to a grave realization.
The paranoid and deluded are the ones who are "stocking up". They are the ones you will see roaming the streets with weaponry, wild-eyed and ready to see you as an aggressor, or at least claim that so they can hold you up and rob you of your food stores, money, water, or whatever other currency they can come up with. These are the people who are not trained in emergency situations, have no tactical training or ability and who are just plain crazy. When "the shit" goes down, as it inevitably will, your emergency kit, water, food and clothing rations and resourcefulness will be no match for their lunacy.
Kind of makes you paranoid, no?
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