Happy Halloween—It’s time to lynch your local staff meteorologist 

We’re getting close to the annual Halloween celebration, and some really weird things are happening in our country.

While it’s all in fun, the annual return of ghoulish giants and monstrous skeletons, appearing on the neighborhood lawns, is really galling to me. In order to be one of the anointed, I must spend substantial cash, driven by the endless ego trip to keep up with the ever-annoying Joneses. Of course, that’s not their real name, but there are some people that just won’t give their neighbors a break—forcing us all to compete with their OTT spending.

Among the annual Halloween excesses, there are Grim Reapers gracing the front yards of my neighborhood; lots of comedic gravestones, tilted by time, remembering the dear and un-dear departed; a sabbat of witches meeting on my neighbor’s veranda; spider webs stretched from the rain gutters to the road; and the witching-hour is just slightly contaminated by the sound of little electric motors, whirring-away, inflating the internally-lit ghosts that will disappear after the trick-or-treating is over.

But Halloween is a dark holiday. Within the meaning of that spooky occasion, there’s a realization that the ignorance of superstition has been far too prominent in our history.

Along with the festive decorations, there are some unpleasant echoes from the past that are re-visiting Americans. We hear the cries of witches being burned at the stake; we see the drownings of those accused that verified, “They weren’t witches.” After all, the logic was that only the guilty could survive, protected by the devil and preserved for the fires that awaited.

We remember the torture and mayhem that was perpetrated during the Spanish Inquisition; we are reminded of the murderous racism that drove our country to torture and kill Emmet Till, and the words of President Lincoln when he declared freedom for the African Americans.

What was that rabid racism about? Some thought it was the fear of Americans losing their jobs to those willing to accept a lower wage. And, of course, some of the murderous zealots were pushed into their inhumanity by the worry that Black Americans, who had been largely relegated to a sub-human species, were actually human beings who could give the white race—intellectually and physically—a run for its money.

The sad thing: Americans, like much of the world, have a need to find the Bogey-Man.

These reminders should steer Americans away from the conspiracy theories and the need to create scapegoats for everything that goes wrong. Yet we have a fairly large percentage of nitwits who are willing to believe even the most ridiculous and whimsical theories.

The latest: Marjorie Taylor Greene has declared that “They can control the weather,” and blamed the recent hurricanes on a conspiracy theory to steal Americans’ property.

One would think that the superstition and magic that drove yesterday’s atrocities and killings of innocents would have disappeared as science took a more dominant seat in our collective thought. But as much as objectivity and fact have been pushed to the forefront, there are a surprising number of Americans who are still not anchored in the facts.

It seems that there are thousands of really confused people out there—ones who are afflicted with magical thinking and a high reliance on the superstitions being promoted by the most-wacko MAGA Republicans. I hate to give them all the blame but, really, where are these people coming from?

While I’d like to believe that there is just a certain percentage of any population that is fundamentally nuts, there seem to be far too many of them wearing their red ballcaps and streaming American and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags from their mean-looking, jacked-up pickup trucks.

How did Marjorie Taylor Greene learn that our hurricanes were part of an evil plot? It seems she was lying in bed one night and received a visit from a mysterious apparition. “Is it You, God?” she inquired. And there was a resounding reply: “Nope, it’s me, your own Uncle Sam, and I’m here to tell you that I have at least as much power as the Prince of Peace. If you don’t believe that, just look at the damage I’ve done in the Southeast. Pow! I gave you the one-two punch of Helene and Milton. Sure, I’m just your uncle, but I have the power to send monster storms. It’s all part of my plan to take back the land and make a financial killing.”

Well now, doesn’t that explain everything? Personally, I doubt that MTG actually believes it, but I guess we should have all been able to guess that the back-to-back hurricanes—ones that set records on financial devastation—were all part of a conspiracy to take people’s homes and land. It seems that Uncle Sam is just a greedy little bastard who is all about financial gain at the expense of the American population.

And, bless her heart, Marjorie is just trying to make America Great Again. “OK, Republicans, this is the time to act. Find your local weatherman and lynch him right now. He’s part of the plan to steal our country from its rightful owners.”

The cry has gone up: The weathermen are the culprits. Of course, the lame-brain, highly impressionable dummies with the red hats will give the meteorologist a fair trial. That means MTG’s Facebook subscribers will hold the weatherman’s head under the floodwaters for a good five minutes, to determine if he’s actually guilty. If he dies, it proves his innocence; if he lives, well, it proves he’s a witch, the devil protected him, and he was part of the conspiracy.

After all, it worked flawlessly in Salem, so that type of justice can’t fail us now.

I have to shake my head and ask myself how such stupidity can be driving so many of my countrymen. And, like the lightbulb that comes on for “Ford has a better idea,” the answer is clear: Stupid people are driven by stupid leaders, the kind that provide the poisoned Kool-Aid to put a whole community to sleep—permanently.

Just remember—if you should have the driving need to go out and kill your local meteorologist, it may be time to ask yourself where all this BS got started. The crazy conspiracy theories largely originate with MAGA and Donald Trump, America’s own “Kool-Aid King.” Only a willing supply of his superstition-based, non-thinking goons can keep it coming.

The author is a retired businessman, novelist, columnist and formerArmy assistant public information officer. He resides in Riverton with his wife, Carol, and their adorable and ferocious dog “Poppy.”