Turns out, crazy people in politics isn't a new thing.
NOTE: This is an older draft from 2019(!) that I just finished today. Still seems relevant, maybe even moreso.
I was surfing Wikipedia the other night at three in the morning because I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. I don't know what steered me in that particular direction, perhaps because I was reading about Judy Garland after seeing the Judy movie starring Renee Zellweger.
Although Renee Zellweger's performances are fantastic, and she has a lot of guts to take on such a cultural icon and try to sing and mimic her voice, the movie left me kind of with mixed feelings. Of course, Renee Zellweger had the advantage of picking a point in Miss Garland's life where her voice was at its lowest, so it was possible for her to do a reasonable impression or caricature of that chanteuse.
My mother was a big Judy Garland fan and she bought into that whole "tragic lifestyle" philosophy. Seeing someone on the stage smoking, drinking, and popping pills and feeling sorry for themselves was a little too close to home for me. Again, I don't feel sorry for celebrities and superstars because they had troubled childhoods, or how awful it was with billions of adoring fans and millions of dollars in the bank. I also don't buy into their troubles with the IRS when they try to keep their millions in the bank and not pay their taxes either. But I digress.
Somehow the Wikipedia entry to Judy Garland links to gay icons which then linked to Tammy Faye Bakker which then linked to Jim Bakker who shared a prison cell with Lyndon LaRouche. I think that's only five degrees of separation, maybe less.
Supposedly LaRouche died a few years back at age 93. I think most of us have forgotten all about him. He ran for president every year as an independent or sometimes as a Republican or Democrat - and always garnered a fraction of a fraction of the votes. He claimed to run a worldwide research organization and claimed ties to high-level people in the corporate world and in government. I don't know if any of these claims are true or not. He also claimed to have predicted a lot of economic trends and even worldwide epidemics.
I like any good prognosticator, such as Faith Popcorn, in order to predict the future all you have to do is just basically predict everything, and then when stuff actually happens you simply cherry-pick through your previous predictions to show that you were right. Of course the stuff that didn't turn out as you thought, you don't talk about.
People have called LaRouche a megalomaniac and a narcissist and an egotist as well as a cult leader. I don't really know about that, all I remember was he was just sort of this cranky old guy on peripheral edge of American politics for a while. But I couldn't help but think what he would think of politics today, in particular, Donald Trump.
I think LaRouche would feel cheated. Trump is a total crackpot who actually succeeded in becoming President of the United States, which LaRouche had been desperately trying to do - in fact holding the record of running for President longer than any other person in American history. Why not LaRouche? After all, when it comes to strange rants, bizarre politics, and loyal followers, LaRouche checked off all the boxes! Why not him?
I guess back in the 70s and 80s we just weren't ready for Lyndon LaRouche or his ilk. Sadly, he didn't have Facebook and Twitter and the Internet to work for him back then. Nor did he have a "reality" television show to put his face in front of the electorate every week. He just had a string of bad luck!
And that includes being tried, convicted, and jailed for fraud - something Donald Trump hasn't done.
Yet!
