That phrase, spoken by Albert the Butler in the movie The Dark Night, describes an awful lot of people, those who like to set fires, start trouble, and otherwise wreak havoc just for the fun of watching the destruction that follows. A few posts back I quoted a good deal of an email sent to me by Dr. Jabow and her followers having to do with assertions that the UN and the world's governments intend to poison and/or sterilize billions of people via forced vaccination and use of martial law to keep people from eating what they want to, asking people to comment as to what they thought was going on with Dr. Jabow and her people.

Well, I got to thinking about it myself, and realized that somewhere inside each of us, sometimes buried under many layers of inhibition, sometimes right up there at the surface, is a Joker hell-bent on watching the world burn. Not that most people would ever admit to that Joker in themselves, you understand. They'd deny it with their dying breath. And if that Joker was actively struggling to get out and do his thing, that denial would reach epic proportions, the Joker presenting himself as a savior out to protect the world from the Bad Guys -- and, in the process, trying to start panics that could result in mob violence. Just the sort of thing the Joker likes to watch.

I think it's likely that even though Dr. Jabow and those with her aren't conscious of him, the Joker is alive and well among them, giggling fiendishly over his plot to panic the world into doing the burning for him. Way to go, Dr. Jabow. Just brilliant. Make yourself feel good by thinking you're a saint, a savior, even as the Joker within you is doing his best to bring about the opposite of salvation for the whole world. And, on top of everything, like lots of other panic-mongers, you've kicked out the principle of presumption of innocence, setting an ugly precedent. Where's the substantive proof to back up your claims? Or even well-ordered circumstantial evidence of the sort that would be acceptable in a court of law under that court's rules of evidence? "Oh, all the courts are part of this conspiracy to blah etc." Right. Thank you so much for battering our already fragile Bill of Rights all over again . . .

In a previous entry on my nightmares about wandering along the verge of freeways, trying to cross their on-off ramps to get to other freeway verges, and trying to get off all of them and into the suburbs or a city, I forgot to add that often these dreams take place in the evening or at night, when it's chilly or very cold, when my clothing isn't nearly warm enough for the temperature, and I'm very hungry, without the prospect of anything to eat anywhere. And I begin to think I'll have to walk 20, 40, 60 miles to get to where the freeway ends or an access to an exit that I can climb or walk up will appear. Sometimes the freeway reminds me of the Pasadena Freeway that runs between Pasadena and Los Angeles in California -- the thing is actually a country road with an attitude, and some of its exits require making a right-angled turn about 50 feet from the beginning of the off-ramp, when you're going maybe 60-80 miles per hour, depending on the time of day. Sometimes it reminds me of US 101 as it goes through Santa Barbara and Goleta, California. And sometimes it reminds me of any of the countless freeways that snarl their way through Southern California and get all tangled up in enormous interchanges that would take an Alexander to cut through the Gordian Knot they form. Just as the waking-world version of the latter run in all directions, so do the ones in my dreams. Just thinking about them gives me a headache. And while the cars that travel them go just as fast as those on waking-world freeways, the number of cars, like the number of people in such lucid nightmares/dreams, is only about one-tenth of one percent or less the number you'd find in the waking world.

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