Happy Halloween 2018

We take Halloween pretty seriously at Stilton's Place, as evidenced by these actual interior decorations we've been enjoying for most of the month...

We're also ready with a full contingent of outdoor decorations for the trick-or-treat crowd, including inflatables, video projectors, creepy music, and psychedelic lighting. Unfortunately, rain and wind are predicted tonight (damn you, global climate change!) so we may just end up watching storms with our noses pressed against the window while eating tiny candy bars instead of greeting costumed kids.

But hope springs eternal, and we'll be ready to make the outside of stately Jarlsberg manor suitably creepy if there's a break in the weather.

And speaking of hope springing eternally, we'd like to share the graphic below from our good friend Johnny Optimism. Every year on that site, we post a collage of decorated Halloween wheelchairs as a reminder that when Life gives you lemons, you should kick Life in the ass and throw your lemons at it, then do something totally awesome.

Considering the all-too-spooky news lately, we think it's a timely bit of advice. So enjoy Halloween, and take optimism and inspiration from these kids (and their wonderful parents)!

Illuminutty

Is insanity the new normal? We hope not, but we're starting to have serious concerns. No sooner do authorities collect a Trump-obsessed bomb maker than the story is blasted out of the spotlight by another hate-filled maniac who went on a killing spree in a quiet Jewish synagogue, leaving 11 dead and more wounded. This is tragic and unacceptable craziness.

Following hard on their heels, legions of "news" people and social media gadflies are weighing in on whether Trump's "rhetoric of violence" (which mostly seems to be an unfortunate appreciation of rough-housing and fist fights) caused one or both of the incidents cited above. Spoiler alert: no, it didn't - except to the extent that the mentally unstable can get inspiration from almost anyone or anything before acting out. Do we know for a fact that neither of the crazed individuals was inspired to action by Hillary Clinton's impassioned call to treat your political enemies with "incivility" when they "want to destroy everything you stand for?"

We'll happily concede a scintilla of nuttiness in Trump, but considering the fact that the Obama administration wrapped a thick fog of insanity around every aspect of government (thus normalizing it), and Hillary "Guilty of Literally Everything" Clinton was set to continue our straightjacketed march into Hades, conservatives' only "rational" choice in 2016 was to choose Clinton's irrational opponent. The fact that he's still been spectacularly successful only underscores that we're not in Kansas anymore.

News people and politicians regularly demonize their opponents now in more-or-less Biblical terms, and preach that if you're not against the "evil" and actively fighting it ("Get in their faces! Let them know they're not welcome anywhere!"), then you're evil yourself and damned to political perdition. Unless you do penance by repeating (or acting upon) slogans like "Punch the Nazis" and"Kill White People."

Is anyone sane on college campuses these days? Conservative speakers are physically attacked, fires are started, and windows smashed. Minority students falsify racist attacks by scrawling graffiti and hanging nooses. "Safe spaces" are needed for students to recover after experiencing "micro aggressions" like, presumably, gnat farts. And a recent study suggested that as many as 26% of all college students may now be experiencing PTSD symptoms left over from their candidate losing in 2016. Snowflakes, indeed.

And while we hate to say it, we've recently seen a disturbing amount of craziness offered up by people who are good friends, as they cite wild conspiracy theories denying the obvious realities surrounding both the pipe bombs and the steroid-fueled whacko living in a van which looked like a Trump parade float. "He's too stereotypical to be real," "His window stickers don't look faded enough," "Anonymous Internet sources say he was a Democrat right up until the day this happened," "How did he drive all those bombs to the mailboxes in one day," and on and on.

With love in our hearts, we encourage anyone with this mindset to take a deep cleansing breath, think of the mantra "Sh*t Happens" on your exhale, then rejoin the less dramatic world of the marginally sane.

Yes, there are real conspiracies (the whole Mueller Russian investigation is a fine example), but it's a bad idea to develop an entire cosmology based on the idea that nothing that we see is real, and nefarious puppet-masters like the Bilderbergs, Zionist Jews, Globalists, or the Illuminati are constantly pulling the invisible strings running from the 9/11 attacks to Sandy Hook to the crowded secret cemetery in Arkansas that holds the bodies of Clinton murder victims.

More than any time in living memory, we are being bombarded by nuttiness, conspiracies, and calls to violence. We are pressured around the clock to replace reasoned discourse with emotional actions. It is a contagious fever - and an exceedingly dangerous one.

For all of this, we have no answers. But we can at least point out that somehow all of this madness must end - and soon - if the American experiment is to outlive us all. Until then, "be sane" and encourage sanity in others.

Lip Bomb

In a nightmare scenario which seems in retrospect to have been almost inevitable, ten or more alleged pipe bombs were mailed to high profile Democrats, causing huge explosions of moral outrage and accusations from the Left, even though the "bombs" appear to have been about as dangerous as Tinker Toys.

In other words, the bombs functioned perfectly - because the likely intent was to disrupt the news cycles and throw the upcoming midterm elections into a state of chaos. Mission Accomplished, anonymous "bomber!"

At the time of this writing, we honestly don't know who is behind these devices, nor if the "bombs" were simply ineptly assembled or purposely designed to be photogenic and not to do any physical damage. Neither do we know the politics of the person or persons responsible. Whether they lean Right or Left barely matters; they represent neither group and are either off their rockers or guilty of having spectacularly inappropriate senses of humor which they will hopefully have a lot of time to reconsider while in the penitentiary.

The FBI is working hard on clearing up those points, and we expect answers and arrests soon. Unfortunately, that won't undo the very real damage which has already been done. Left-leaning "news" outlets which always caution us not to assume a terrorist is Islamic just because he shouts "Allahu Akbar" are declaring with absolute certainty that the Rube Goldberg bombs were sent by a Trump-loving racist hillbilly who has been inflamed by the President's many imaginary calls for violence.

These unsubstantiated stories are what was recently called, by those same sources, "interference in our elections." If Leftist media actually gave a rat's rear end about the sanctity of elections, they wouldn't be screaming their unfounded accusations to the electorate on a 24/7 basis. The impact of their mendacity wildly overshadows any insignificant influence which may or may not have been generated by a few thousand dollars worth of Russian ads on Facebook back in 2016..

What was contained in those manilla envelopes may well be the first actual "social media bombs," but they surely won't be the last. The mainstream media has made clear that a single individual, whether crazy or crafty, can change the national narrative - and perhaps the course of an election - with a wild enough stunt.

Sadly, the media's complicity in all of this has completed the transformation of our nation's Fourth Estate into a dangerous Fifth Column. Put that in your pipe bomb and smoke it.