OutTakes
Commentary by Edd Merritt
November 18, 2010, page 19.....

When the going gets tough,
the tough get signs.

Driving home from Burlington several days before the election, I reached the end of Dorset Street Extension and was confronted by eight signs for Brian Dubie’s gubernatorial campaign. Turning right on to the Charlotte-Hinesburg Road, I didn’t think too much of it until within ¾ of a mile I hit the Spear Street intersection to find myself facing 10 more. Rather than head home immediately, I decided to continue on Hinesburg and Ferry Roads to the lake. I met 13 Dubies at Mt. Philo Road, 16 on Church Hill by the historical society, 15 at the intersection of Lake and Ferry Roads and a mere three at the curve just up from the ferry dock. My fingers weren’t sufficient. I needed a calculator to count the 65 signs for one candidate on this roughly 6-mile stretch of Charlotte Road -- and that excludes the individual signs in people’s yards. We must have been important customers. I do congratulate the Dubie campaign team for cleaning up the sign clutter immediately after the election.
In other election news . . .
Being a newspaper, we tend to get material that doesn’t go to a general audience. A recent piece we received is about as wacky as they come. On the other hand, if it, and pieces like it, influence even a relatively few people, it can be very dangerous. And it cries for some type of intervention, as the world of unfounded facts, spread multi-fold through new technology, seems to go unheeded.
In late October our office mail contained an envelope with a printed return address, “Leahy Info;” no further identifying information and no signature or name of the sender. Assuming that it would be something from our senator’s campaign locker, I opened it to find, not a pro-Leahy piece, but rather a copy from a dark tract entitled TRANCE Formation of America, The True Life Story of a CIA Mind Control Slave by Cathy O’Brien with Mark Phillips. Reading beyond the warning that it contains sexually explicit quotes and irrefutable anatomical details of perpetrators, I found the book (I assume) described as a “documented autobiography of a victim of government mind control.” O’Brien, the brief says, “was covertly rescued from her mind control enslavement by Intelligence insider Mark Phillips. Their seven-year pursuit of justice was stopped FOR REASONS OF NATIONAL SECURITY. TRANCE Formation of America exposes the truth behind this criminal abuse of the Unconstitutional 1947 National Security Act.”
Whoever sent it included a copy of Chapter 30 entitled, “In the Interest of Time and Space,” which was the victim’s view of Patrick Leahy’s role in CIA cover-up. Calling it bizarre doesn’t do the chapter justice. O’Brien claims she was flown to the top of a mountain where she met with the senator in a “place that was run like a fortress.” She says he was wearing an “orange flannel shirt that lost its purpose in crispness” (whatever that is supposed to mean). After delivering some document and message to him, she said he told her that her death was imminent “due to (her) groundwork participation in NAFTA.” She continues her addled argument saying, “Leahy was unquestionably one of the most intelligent criminals of this entire Shadow Government. His carefully contrived chameleon-like characteristics provided him the latitude of appearing to share the principals and beliefs of whomever he was masterfully manipulating on both a national and international level.” That description doesn’t fit my meeting him at Hall’s Farm in East Charlotte where we stood next to each other in order to get good photos of Willy Nelson.
The authors bring other high-level politicians of supposedly different political persuasions into their conspiracy theory, throwing in drugs, sex and violence just for good measure.
The book’s written quality would have difficulty getting past a good third-grade teacher. The unfortunate thing is its demonstration that lack of such quality doesn’t necessarily hinder one’s ability to get into print. A couple of recent accounts by prominent politicians probably substantiate the argument.
On both personal and journalistic levels, this “book” is a bit scary. Given what is happening to beliefs in our own empire and what we are discovering about seemingly unthinkable acts happening throughout the world, it seems to fit into an emergent human theater of the absurd. One wonders whether there really are such crazies as these authors in the world. Yet, here it is in black font.
Maybe the big-bang theory is accurate.
Maybe, though, it is yet to happen. Stay tuned to public radio. No, better yet, look out for black holes where the third rock from the sun should be.