So Canada has crazies too…

Since I try to keep clear of current popular culture to the extent possible, it is sometimes by a roundabout route that I learn of some stateside trend. 

This evening, sampling the excellent offerings of that fine site Medi1 (a joint Franco-Moroccan venture) I was listening to the following audio essay:

Les réptiliens: crise, complot et dinosaures

Bemused at this report of a mass movement centered in the United States, of which I had been unaware, I clicked around a bit, and learned that as many as one out of twenty-five voters in these parts  believe in the conspiracy theory that many world leaders are actually extraterrestrial reptiles in disguise.  No no -- funny, of course;  but the point is, these people believe it.  And they are joining the Tea Party, which at the moment holds the health of the world economy in its Twinkie-stuffing-smeared fingers.

The point here, though, is not to lay yet another charge (coals to Newcastle) at the door of the Repo troglodytes, but to notice that (as one further click revealed) a similar psychosis is corroding Canada:

Eves attacked Dalton McGuinty for voting against a bill to protect taxpayers from increased taxes, when it turns out McGuinty in fact voted for that bill. Finally, on the Friday of the second week, the Eves campaign issued a bizarre press release calling Dalton McGuinty an "evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet". This moment would prove the defining moment of the campaign. First, it was so memorable and unusual that it served to attract the attention of all Ontarians, including those who do not pay attention to a campaign until its final days. Second, the over-the-top negativity brought to life a key critique of the Liberals, that the Harris-Eves Tories picked fights for no reason and went too far. Third, the hysteria around the comment put the Eves campaign on the defensive in the media at a critical point and prevented them from regaining their footing after a difficult week. Fourth, it polarized the election around the PCs and Liberals, and left the NDP on the sidelines. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Eves team was instantly at each other's throats over who would take the blame for approving the press release.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_reptilian_kitten-eater_from_another_planet

This meme of insidious shape-shifting  reptiles had its birth in science fiction.   But such fantasy worlds have a way of bleeding into the lives of hapless mother’s-basement-dwelling masturbators:  witness the Star Wars conventions.  The first canny marketer to realize that one could make big bucks out of such stuff, was sci-fi penman Ell R*n H*bb*r\d (name touched up a bit to escape the trolling of that litigious sect), who parlayed his tripe into a scam -- later promoted (for tax purposes) into a “religion”.   And now some humanoid named (appropriately) Icky (again, modified to thwart the crawling spiderbots) has turned the reptilian meme into a going and growing concern.

Weep, deeply weep, for the Republic.