Squat and Squabble

History is replete with famous individuals whose behavior has been driven by paranoia, and many works of fiction have featured main characters destroyed by uncontrollable suspicion of everyone and everything.

The paranoia of Josef Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and Richard M. Nixon rendered them distrustful of everyone to a point of dysfunction.  Lead fictional characters as portrayed in The Caine Mutiny and Conspiracy Theory demonstrated the life-changing damage caused by undue suspicion.

Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD) is a mental disorder characterized by paranoia and a pervasive, long-standing suspiciousness and generalized mistrust of others.

The latest claims from Hillary Clinton, the decades-long proponent of the “vast right wing conspiracy,” indicates that she may finally have slipped over the edge from being reasonably suspicious about her adversaries to being a full-on paranoid.  In the political sense, her final break from reality may be more accurately identified as “CLINTONOIA.”

At a recent TV appearance, Hillary blamed her election loss on the following groups/people/things:

1. The FBI
2. James Comey
3. Russians in general
4. Vladimir Putin specifically
   

   Madame Secretary, it’s time for your medication….

5. “Anti-Americans”
6. Deplorables
7. Obama
8. Suburban women
9. Misogynists
10. New York Times
11. TV executives
12. Cable news
13. Facebook
14. Netflix
15. Twitter
16. Wikileaks
17. Donald Trump (of course)
18. Bad polling data
19. Macedonian websites
20. Democratic National Committee
21. People who thought she would win
22. The electoral college
23. Everybody but Hillary Clinton

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The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV), the diagnostic standard for mental health professionals in the United States, lists the following symptoms for CLINTONOID PERSONALITY DISORDER (CPD):

Politicians with Clintonoid Personality Disorder (CPD) tend to be self-centered, self-important, defensive, and emotionally distant.  The disorder often impedes social and personal relationships and career advancement, particularly when running for President.

Won’t they please just come and take her away?

“Six degrees of separation” is the idea that all living things and everything else in the world are six or fewer steps away from each other so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929.

If that is true, then what happens when a congressional investigation embarks on a quest to find a connection between any given Trump associate and any given Russian?  According to the theory set forth by Karinthy, it only takes six people to get there.

So, if a personal connection between your Aunt Daisy in Kansas and some itinerant goat herder in Zimbabwe can be had in only six steps, then it shouldn’t he difficult for some House or Senate committee to prove, without a doubt, that there was a path for a connection between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Of course, this doesn’t amount to anything significant, but it certainly makes it difficult to defend oneself when you are supposedly guilty of some nefarious activity because you were “friends with a guy who knew somebody who talked to another person who was closely affiliated with a particular individual.”

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Breaking news:

Democrats claim to have obtained information from an unidentified government source who allegedly has knowledge that a connection between Trump and Putin can be made in only FIVE steps!  Impeachment of the President is therefore imminent….

 

If you are one of the millions of Americans for whom this picture brings a tear, or a silent prayer, or a memory of comrades past, nothing more needs to be said.

Memorial Day 2017