If your foil hat is made of the correct metals (and mine <i>probably</i> is), you may have noticed that government agencies and paranoid citizens alike have been quietly preparing for armed rebellion for <i>at least</i> a decade.<p>Ignoring entirely the Chicken Little bleating from the professional rabble-rousers and conspiracy theorists that say stuff like &quot;ZOMG why do <i>Post Office</i> and <i>Agriculture</i> needs all teh ammos?!&quot;, the mistrust-of-government businesses are booming, and many of the fnords in the mainstream media point to a coordinated propaganda campaign against not just people who defy government, but also against those who merely question it too deeply.<p>When I take off the foil hat, <i>everything is still okay</i>.  It isn&#x27;t <i>good</i>, but it isn&#x27;t irretrievably broken, either.<p>I used to believe more easily that I wasn&#x27;t really living in the real world when I had the foil hat on.  But lately...<p>I was thinking that Martin O&#x27;Malley struck a deal with the Democratic Party to be the hand that Hillary Clinton claps against through the primary season, in exchange for a high level executive position in her government.  Bernie Sanders is running for the Democratic Party nomination only because running for PotUS as an independent is futile.  He was never given any benefit from the party large enough to convince him to give Clinton her the title shot with only token resistance.  And he&#x27;s so unexpectedly popular that they can&#x27;t squeeze him out of the media coverage quietly enough to make him drop out.<p>And then I go to take off my foil hat, and find that I thought that stupid conspiracy theory up <i>bareheaded</i>.  When I actually put the foil hat <i>on</i>, it just gets ridiculous.<p>Something is very wrong when my rational mind notices &quot;there should be more people up on that stage contesting the nomination now, months before the early states start to pick,&quot; and comes up with a completely plausible explanation that is rather blatantly anti-democratic.  I can&#x27;t tell if my BS detector needs to be recalibrated, or whether US politicians have just stopped putting forth reasonable efforts toward passing it off.<p>You don&#x27;t even want to hear my theories about the Republican Party nomination races.