You know, I have never been one given to donning a tinfoil hat when it comes to pop-paranoid theories about this and that. I firmly believe that JFK was murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald (a well-known commie-symp acting alone), that the Bilderbergers are nothing much more than a fantastically wealthy international social group (a kind of Chamber of Commerce on steroids) and that there aren’t any mysterious black helicopters flying from sooper-secrit bases in the American West – after all, the damn things have to come down sometime, be refueled, crewed and maintained somewhere, and as wide-open and thinly-populated as parts of the west are – a quasi-military base with an active flying mission cannot help but attract notice of the locals. Yes, I love to puncture conventional wisdom; it’s one of my hobbies. And yes, oh 9/11 Truthers … steel does indeed melt.

However, increasingly of late and upon considering the current administration, I do find myself looking speculatively at the roll of Reynolds-Wrap in the kitchen drawer. Gun-running to Mexican narco-traffickers, spilling confidential information on political opponents, the IRS coming down like a ton of bricks on Tea Party groups, the Park Service on members of the park-visiting public, the NSA listening to everyone, and whatever shenanigans was going on with regard to our consulate in Benghazi a little over a year ago … one cannot go wrong underestimating the veniality, or at very least, the competence of the Obama administration.

It was very curious, the separate incidents of EBT carts in several states and locations first not having any balance on them at all, and then having an unlimited balance. Even if it only went on for a couple of hours, and everyone in a position of authority insists that it was just an accident glitch … what if it wasn’t? What if it was a test, just to see what would happen; what if the larger message being sent was – see what happens when the urban underclass doesn’t get their bread on time? And then a selection of the urban underclass stripping the shelves bare upon discovering that there was temporarily no limit on their EBT cards; what then, oh wolves?

Hanging out among the more independently-minded libertarian bloggers over the last year or so, I have run across comments and sometimes blog-length speculation regarding the effects of a total break-down of society – many such comments and posts made the point that most grocery stores only have about three days worth of stock on hand, and if the trucks stop rolling, the shelves are bare very shortly. (This is the kind of thing which started me on stocking up in case lots, by the way, and buying staples like sugar, flour and beans in twenty-pound bags.) And so – what happens when the grocery store shelves are bare in the inner cities, or when the EBT card balance stands at zero for more than a couple of hours, days or weeks? Speculation along this particular line usually includes rampaging mobs, looting, social unrest and a lot of overtime for law enforcement … at a minimum. At a maximum, calling in the National Guard, imposing martial law … all kinds of actions on the part of the State, for reasons of security, and all. After all, the Reichstag fire only burned a building. What would be the result of a good few cities on fire – although to be fair, you’d hardly notice at all if parts of Detroit were to burn. Would the current powers-that-be deliberately crash the EBT system in order to generate a crisis? Well, would they? I wouldn’t like to think so, ordinarily – but in the wake of recent events, it is an understandable reaction. To update the old saying – these days, one can never be too rich, or too paranoid.

(To the NSA guy monitoring my email and blogging – pizza tonight. No anchovies. Come by around 6:30 – you know the address.)