Carole Lord Wants to Move?

Carole Lord writes: "I live in Hadley.... Well im moving!" I can only assume she means Hadley, Massachusetts.

What is the purpose of saying something like this? To let me know that my neighbors, and people all around this small town of Hadley, are watching me? Keeping tabs on me? Talking derisively about me? Isolating me? Maybe cooking up a little vigilante justice? Reminds me of my next-door neighbor’s comments not that long ago.

Should I just automatically assume Carole Lord has kept this to herself and not gossiped about it? Discussed it with her family or friends? Spread it around? Shared it online? Or was she put up to it by a local cop who hopes to build a fashionable case of cyberstalking? Or is “she” herself a local cop? In the age of social media, anything is possible.

Carole Lord claims that I’m making her move out of town? Seriously? Doesn’t take much, does it? A little Scare Theater and away she goes. Because she believes Scare Theater??? I hope the door doesn’t hit her on the way out. (No, I don’t think Lord means this literally.)

Just the same, I’m not to believe that the purpose of Scare Theater’s video is to collect as many threats and attempts to ostracize me as possible; all based on total lies, lies that ordinary people are all too easily convinced to believe?

I have no idea who Carole Lord is or whether she is even a real person, but the message inferred is clear: people, assisted by local police, all over town are wagging their tongues. No job interviews, no new friends, no friendly neighbors, not even a church supper (blocked a couple of years ago by two "open and affirming" Congregational churches).  I better watch my back? Is that the message? 

No exaggeration: this is what the early stages of fascism look like. No, I don’t mean Nazis or Communists. I mean fascism with a small “f.” Sure, vigilantism, both spontaneous and sustained, has been going on forever. But now it has the blessing of local police, which means it’s state sponsored. It’s no longer just some whacky townies. It’s fascism. This is your government talking.

Fascists are selective. They focus less on ethnic heritage, such as being Jewish - although they do that, too - than on random fears within themselves but projected onto others.

They beat, ridicule, torture, murder, and ostracize women who have had abortions, men who drink too much, homosexuals, mere readers of political pamphlets with which they disagree. And men who laugh on YouTube for no known reason.

They constantly, in concert with police, keep people under surveillance, intimidate them, spread nasty and false rumors about them. In no small numbers do they focus on people they regard as merely odd – misfits, the socially unskilled, the handicapped.

It is striking not only that the Happy Anniversary video has been uniformly mis-characterized from the start, but that there is such a huge audience hungry for whatever red meat is dangled in front of them by the latest huckster – with the avid assistance of local police.

Significantly, people want to believe that Maura Murray was the victim of a horrible crime, probably on a lonely road in New Hampshire. They believe this for about the same groundless reason they themselves imagine that I’m a monster of some kind, a boogeyman, a Boo Radley.

The need of fascists to feel victimized is a constant theme with them. The chance – the very good chance – that Maura Murray ran from the Vasi hit denies them the perverse luxury afforded by self-victimization. Unfortunately for them, it’s impossible to identify with Maura Murray if she’s a common criminal. She must, then, in their minds, be elevated to the status of a Missing White Woman. 

Boogeymen and White Women: an incendiary brew that enlarges the authority zone of fascist local police while comforting the cowards of Hadley, Massachusetts.