The [North American Union] may be the quintessential conspiracy theory for our time, according to scholars studying what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called the "paranoid style" in American politics. The theory elegantly weaves old fears and new realities into one coherent and all-encompassing plan, and gives a glimpse of where, politically, many Americans are right now: alarmed over immigration, worried about globalization, and - on both sides of the partisan divide - suspicious of the Bush administration's expansive understanding of executive power.Link
Can no political position ever be maintained without it being attributed to "fear," "alarm," or "worry?" Maybe we just don't like the idea of the Globe's penny-shining masters fashioning a new political entity.
At the gas station we carry the Rutland Herald, The Brattleboro Reformer, the Eagle Times, The Hartford Courant, the Boston Globe, the New York Post, the New York Times, and USA Today.
At the end of each day it is part of my clean-up duties to catalog all the unsold newspapers so that we can get credit for them. It is a yellow piece of paper with all the newspapers listed and a column for each day of the week. In each column you write the number received and a slash and the number returned. Here is what a typical week's credit slip looks like:
Remember: 3/2 means 3 received, 2 returned for credit.
..............................Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun
Rut. Herald................ 8/2 8/1 8/1 8/3 8/1 8/1 8/0
Bratt. Reform............ 6/1 6/2 6/2 6/2 6/0 6/0 6/0
Eagle Times............ 10/3 10/1 10/1 10/1 10/2 10/2 10/2
New York Post......... 2/1 2/1 2/1 2/0 2/1 2/0 2/0
New York Times...... 3/1 3/1 3/1 3/0 3/0 3/0 3/0
USA Today............... 4/0 4/0 4/0 4/1 4/0
Boston Globe......... 3/3 3/3 3/3 3/3 3/3 3/3 3/3
No one buys the Boston Globe. I can fill out the sheet even without inventorying the remainders. Because I know that we receive three each day. And three will go back. Why? I don't know why. But I did read the paper once. (I have plenty of time.) I will say that outside of the arts section, nothing in that paper makes any sense. Maybe that's why. Those Vermont rubes seem to have caught on to it.
