From the Washington Post:

BASTROP, Texas — The office of the Bastrop County Republican Party is in an old lumber mill on Main Street, with peeling brown paint and a sign out front that captures the party’s feelings about the Obama administration: “WISE UP AMERICA!”

Inside, county Chairman Albert Ellison pulled out a yellow legal pad on which he had written page after page of reasons why many Texans distrust President Obama, including the fact that, “in the minds of some, he was raised by communists and mentored by terrorists.”

In my mind, I was born on Krypton, raised by a kindly farm couple, and mentored by the artificial intelligence of my dead dad. Unfortunately, that has no bearing on reality.

I also wonder if the contents of Ellison’s yellow legal pad are as cogent and rational as Jack Nicholson’s manuscript in The Shining.

So it should come as no surprise, Ellison said, that as the U.S. military prepares to launch one of the largest training exercises in history later this month, many Bastrop residents might suspect a secret Obama plot to spy on them, confiscate their guns and ultimately establish martial law in one of America’s proudly free conservative states.

This already sounds paranoid, but it’s especially absurd in light of the fact that Obama has gone on record as opposing military tactics from the police when dealing with civilians. But I suppose that was the radical Black Panther Obama who wants to let packs of Negroes run wild, setting fire to businesses, and terrorizing honest, law-abiding Americans. Today, Ellison is afraid of the Chairman Mao Obama who is going to turn America into a third-world dictatorship. Some might presume that because Obama has done nothing like this during his almost seven years in office that he probably isn’t going to get to around it. However, maybe the radical Black Panther Obama has been so busy eating fried chicken and watermelon that he’s going to have to pack all this in before the end of next year.

They are not “nuts and wackos. They are concerned citizens, and they are patriots,” Ellison said of his suspicious neighbors. “Obama has really painted a portrait in the minds of many conservatives that he is capable of this sort of thing.”

I dunno. “Nuts and wackos” seem a fair description of people who believe, with no compelling evidence, that an elected leader is either philosophically or even practically capable of establishing “martial law” in a free state.

Here in the soft, green farmlands east of Austin, some say the answer is simple: “The truth is, this stems a fair amount from the fact that we have a black president,” said Terry Orr, who was Bastrop’s mayor from 2008 to 2014.

Orr said he strongly disagrees with those views, and he supports Jade Helm. But he said a significant number of people in town distrust Obama because they think he is primarily concerned with the welfare of blacks and “illegal aliens.”

“People think the government is just not on the side of the white guy,” Orr said.

Yeah, if only the white guy could get a break in the United States.