paranoia |ˌparəˈnoiə|noun:
a mental condition characterized by delusions of persecution or exaggerated self-importance, typically elaborated into an organized system.
 
There’s an unexpected and scary paranoia poisoning the air in the land of the free beyond our southern border.

True, American politics have always been nasty, fiercely dividing two almost identical conservative, capitalist parties into different camps which are incredibly difficult for us simple Canadians to tell apart. But since Americans elected a man with a better tan than most of us some nine months ago, I believe the nastiness has turned delusional, irrational, edging on insane.

Take the “one-world government” scare. Substantial numbers of Americans believe that Obama is a foreign agent secretly planning to make America part of a “one-world socialist government”. Doesn’t matter to them that the only existing socialist gatherings to join are a few odd-ball religious cults who, anyway, mostly just want to be left alone. (Socialism is a system under which “the means of production, distribution and exchange are owned by the community as a whole”).

Take the theories that Obama is a commie mole, a closet Nazi, or the Antichrist. Seemingly normal people actually believe these things and say them out loud while bragging that their personal right to own guns is America’s  only defence against various, evil conspiracies (see above), both domestic and foreign.

A lot of these people, of course, are the same wackos who believe that Franklin Roosevelt deliberately let the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour to push America into World War ll, that the moon landing was faked up here in Sudbury, that Bush the Younger allowed 9/11 so he had an excuse to invade Iraq, that Elvis is alive and well and living in Podunk, Iowa, and that God uses them to send messages to planet earth. Just the same old lunatic fringe.

But this is a whole lot more serious. Powerful politicians warn that the Obama administration’s proposed “evil” health plan is part of a fiendish plot to kill grandma. Right-wing commentators claim Obama hates whites. "Patriotic” armed militant groups substantially increase membership. Threats to the president's life increase by 400% since Bush held the office.

Now it’s time to really worry.

In all my years as a journalist (including a stint covering the White House) I’ve never felt such extreme fear and loathing directed at the U.S. head of state. But then I look at the pictures of all the other 43 relatively tan-less presidents and start to understand.

To many Americans, the democratically elected 44th president of the United States is so obviously not “one of us.”

Instead, he’s “one of them”. And they are inferior and different and dangerous and un-American and must be defeated at all costs so God’s country can go back to being white which, of course, is what He in His wisdom always intended.


(Samantha Jones is a Canadian TV journalist whose erotic memoir "My Life In The Great Sexual Window" has just been published by Amazon and Lulu.)