Fred2Blue

A fortnightly rant FL-S style, with an extra heapin’ helpin’ of FD&C #40.  Yummy.

I’ve been preparing all week for this fortnightly rant.  I’ve been obsessed with finding a way to connect two disparate world events separated by 30 years.

One event, on November 18, 1978, centered on charismatic radical cultist Jim Jones, the planned mass-suicide by him and his 909 followers in a Guyanian jungle, and the murder of a network news correspondent and the popular California Congressman Leo Ryan.

The other event, on or about November 18, 2008, centers on (charismatic to some, I suppose) elected official Paul V. Milde III, and his well-publicized plan to hornswaggle voters into approving the radical redistribution of power on the Stafford Board of Supervisors. 

In the latter case, no one has killed others or themselves, but it might be a good idea to start activating the ADT alarm system before bedtime.

Last night, the toe-headed kid in the vintage 1970s TV commercial I saw provided the connection I was looking for, in the form of a request:

More Kool-Aid mom…please?

They drank the Kool-Aid.

That and countless variations have come to symbolize a situation where one, some, or many, do something or act in some manner that is so wrong, so warrentless, so idiotic, and so unbelievable as to defy common sense.

Don’t tug on Superman’s cape, don’t spit into the wind…and for god’s sake don’t drink the Kool-Aid!!!

EHHHHHHHHHHHHH-VER!!!

Jonestown: November 1978

For those in Fred2BlueLand too young to remember, 1978 brought the scary specter of cultism to living room television screens. 

It wasn’t thousands, but still an alarming number of young mostly middle-class undergrads from picket-fenced suburbia - overwhelmed with the sudden structures, responsibilities, and pressures of college life and owning not an ounce of “street smarts” - fell victim to the simple, easy answers offered by highly charsimatic people that preyed upon them. 

It’s hard to believe that young people had been lured from college life, brainwashed and forcibly kept against their will.  But it happened.

Stories abounded of otherwise happy, well-adjusted children renouncing their family and friends.  Some gave up hard-earned living allowances and bank balances.  Stories shown on local news broadcasts alternated between high school portraits of happy faces and the “mile-wide stares” of the protein-deprived and sleep-deprived begging for the loose change of tired travelers waiting at the carousel for their luggage to arrive. 

Family friends told of terrified parents (they knew) who quite literally kidnapped their own children for what could best be described as cult-deprogramming.  A nightmare, for sure.

Then came Jonestown. From Wikipedia:

On November 18, 1978, 909 Temple members died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning in an event termed “revolutionary suicide” by (Jim) Jones and some members (of the People’s Temple) on an audio tape of the event and in prior discussions. To the extent the actions in Jonestown were viewed as a mass suicide, it is the largest such event in modern history. The incident at Jonestown was the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001.

The poisonings in Jonestown followed the murder of five others by Temple members at a nearby Port Kaituma airstrip. The victims included Congressman Leo Ryan, the first and only Congressman murdered in the line of duty in the history of the United States.

909 men, women, and children from infancy to adolescence, drank a lethal tonic of sodium cyanide dissolved in purple Kool-Aid. And, despite the fact that Kool-Aid laced with LSD had been commonplace on college campuses years before, it was the mass-suicide at Jonestown in November, 1978 that led anxious parents and caregivers across America to switch to Tang, Sunny Delight, Mott’s apple juice, anything but…

Stafford: November 2008

Stafford Republicans and their three votes on the 7-member Stafford Board of Supervisors have mixed their own Kool-Aid and are asking Staffordians to drink it willingly.  And pushing the beverage cart down the aisle is Supervisor Paul Milde.

Paul Milde has never been one to keep his cards – or his emotions – close to the vest.  In the past year, as a Democratic majority has ruled the Board, Milde and his punch pushers have groaned, grumbled, and groused, incredulous to the reality that voters had turned tables on them.

After seeing the results of the election just passed, where Senator-elect Mark Warner won Stafford with 58 percent of the vote, and President-elect Obama garnered an unheard of 46.5 percent, the other side must surely be agitated.  In just 4 years, they’ve seen Stafford turn from bright red to purplish blue. 

That’s put our friends in a feisty mood. 

Led by Milde, The Citizen’s Chairman Coalition (they love dramatic names) has saturated voters’ and business owners’ mail boxes with bold claims that the current method of county representation – 7 majesterial districts each represented by a Supervisor with a Board Chairman chosen by, and among, those Supervisors – is an unfair, unrepresentative system for the people of Stafford.

Now, they want to have 6 majesterial districts and one at-large Board Chair – all elected by the voters.  Some on the other side have said this will be better – we (the voters) will get to vote for not 1 but 2 supervisors.

Funny.  They didn’t mind it so much when they themselves trashed the old representation formula of 6 board supervisors and 1 at-large supervisor.   

But I can understand Milde’s frustration.  Practically every board vote is 4 to 3, with Milde among the 3 dissenters.  This has led one local businessman sympathetic with the 3 dissenters to kid Board Chairman George Schwartz, saying: ”Hey George, why don’t you save the county the cost of the electricity to light the vote tally screen.  You don’t need to light it.  Every vote results in the same 4 to 3 split.”

For a group that says it believes less government is better government, Milde and his ilk sure seem to sound like the odious characterizations they fob on their political adversaries.

To the pundits, the mavens, the business owners, and the voters of Stafford I say this:  DON’T DRINK THE KOOL-AID. 

If you don’t like the members of the Board’s current majority, vote for someone else when two of them are up for re-election in 2009.  Don’t let the few rearrange the structure of your Board just to suit their express objectives. 

And to the grumblers and compulsive kvetchers, be careful not to confuse the poisoned Kool-Aid goblet with the unpoisoned one.  Sure, you may get your way and win restructure to include a Board Chair elected by the people.  But there’s a strong possibility you’ll drink from the wrong goblet and see the first directly elected Board Chair be a Democrat.

The probability of that happening is…substantial.

And one last thing: replace your kids’ artifically-flavored and colored drinks with filtered County tap water.  It’s the best beverage!