I Think I Just Failed Another Sanity Roll

...with probably about d4 damage.

Julia, at Sisyphus Shrugged, decided to go looking for the origins of the new wingnut meme-du-jour, i.e. that the executive branch is crawling with time-traveling Russian, Bulgarian and Serbian emperors. She noticed that the Wikipedia page is a relatively recent creation [its opening timestamp coincides with the circulation of this polemic from the wingnut Taxpayers For Common Sense], but I think I know where the meme originated: legendary hippie prankster Robert Anton Wilson (or, as I like to call him, Uncle Bob).

Uncle Bob was an eclectic fellow, to put it politely. I have a copy of the book he wrote that I think was the likely source of this weirdness, TSOG: The Thing That Ate The Constitution. That book was almost certainly ignored by the wingnut hive mind, but I suspect the prank political party that Uncle Bob and his twisted friends put together might have managed to get more purchase. Go read the Guns And Dope Party manifesto and see if you don't think it might have a chance of being taken for serious by certain types in the wingnut wilderness. It quite handily marries Second Amendment militancy with the Tenther madness, then goes on to rail for page after page about the Tsarist Occupation Government. Does that sound like your modern teabagging Glenn Beck fan? It does to me.

How did the wingnuts find out about the Guns And Dope Party, I hear you asking? I think I might have had something to do with that. See, back in 2004 I was passing those links around to all the wingnuts I knew. And I knew a fair number in those days, because they hadn't quite gotten to the point where they were stockpiling ammunition like they are today, and they were still congregating in places where a hippie freak like me could communicate with them freely without being banned in ten seconds flat.

One thing I noticed when I would flow those links at the most weirdly of the wingnuts: they'd go all quiet for a few hours, then they would send a really short and cryptic follow-up message like, "Those are interesting links." And they would never mention it again.

As I mentioned to Julia, I'm more than a little concerned that I might have been one of the vectors for the transmission of this meme. Let That Be A Lesson To You! What happens at Burning Man, must ever STAY at Burning Man.