Bob and I were drinking coffee in the diner waiting for his grandson's tournament to T-off. The owner's name is Ern, a very nice man who did not charge me for the coffee, as I had to wait for him to brew a pot.

From behind the counter came a girl named Michelle who declared that she would be sitting with us as she scooted her ample bottom into the spare chair at the table and began forking into a heaping plate of sausage, bacon and eggs,which she offered to share with Bob...

“I see you looking at it—just speak up. I'm losing weight, eating breakfast only. Have to get in shape after my husband up and left.

…

“Thirty-one years. I didn't fight it. You don't fix relationships—you let them go in peace. I don't need that headache anymore, I'm fifty-two.

…

“Yes, I play golf, and I hate mother-fucking Tiger Woods!

…

“You bet! If he had been mine I would have finished him with that nine-iron and left the windshield be... You Mormons?”

…

“What's a heathen?”

…

“Oh, cool!” as she pretends to be smoking a big reefer with a grin. “Sorry for cleaning the table while you sat, but it was dirty. I'm only supposed to be company for the members and guests and bring suggestions to Ern. But I can't leave a table dirty.

…

“I'm half Mexican and half Indian—Native American I have to say. Never had no parents and now no husband. Ern, he took me in like I'm family. We play golf here on the carpet when its winter time. It's a family, my family. I saw this one mother-fucker pocketing some golf balls over there and I told him, 'You are stealing from my family, from my Father! Put 'em back or I'll cut your fuckin' hand off!'”

…

“That's how it should be, family. So how do you think I feel about these Mexicans coming across the border and taking my job, your son's job, your grandson's job! I hate those motherfuckers! I was born in this land. I speak English, English is my mother-fucking language and you have to speak Mexican and make shit bilingual so I can't get a job because I won't speak Mexican! I can speak Mexican and Native—but I don't, because I'm fucking American!

….

“I'm sorry, but while we are on the subject of Americans—fuck Joe Biden! Fuck that mother-fucker!”

…

We laughed and winked and wished each other well as T-time came, and as we walked outside Bob even offered Michelle to me as a squaw if I'd stay in Utah...

Sure, Michelle was a bit nutty. But people like her who have been pushed to the point where they say enough already, often go insane in the Civilized setting. They are then institutionalized and either drugged, maimed or killed, depending on the stage of Civilization.

Could it be, that the reason why crazy people were routinely burned as witches and heretics under Christian rule, and why they are drugged, maimed and locked away under secular rule, be the same reason why barbarian savages generally had taboos against killing the insane?

I know that anthropologists say that it is because the primitives feared that the ghost of the insane person would afflict them, and that this is a superstition, a false belief. But is it? Have not the millions slaughtered, maimed, drugged, medically committed, incarcerated for self-medicating and driven insane by America, in its pursuit of profit under the color of outrageous lies, in my half century of life alone, driven this nation insane?

Are we not haunted by guilt so deep that it has to be painted with black-face rather than denied?

In the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s, one old woman was crushed to death for the crime of declaring in court that her thoughts were between her and God alone. She seemed an unusually wise woman based on her testimony, an outlier of strong character. In disagreeing with the Church fathers she was insane by our standards, as she faced certain gruesome death for standing on her principals.

Might this show us another way in which the crazy people are useful to barbarians and hated by civilized folk, because they are bold and unfiltered enough to point the way?

In primitive settings, in real communities, before the rise of the mind-chaining faiths and ideologies, the odd perspective might provide a great benefit. But in a world woven of lies, perspective is the last thing that its weavers and tailors want made available to those of us destined to be mazed and used.