Trolls are everywhere this election season.

But one, under a link I posted recently on Facebook, under the heading "WikiLeaks stands under threat,” can teach us something about how things came to the current un-pretty pass.

There, one "Hatto Aquitane" reveals himself to be a perfect example of the insanity that lies at the heart of what is wrong with America today.

Intellectual rigor has never been one of America's strong points…

But when you live in a nation being poisoned by two massive lies, the Kennedy Assassination & the phony War on Drugs, an entire segment of the population, dimly perceiving that something has gotten very very rotten in the state of Denmark, eventually concludes that reality is anything they decide to say it is.

It's not.

Why "Hatto's" left hanging

But that leaves the "Hatto Aquitane's" of the world prey to purveyers of sponsored disinformation, whose Internet creations, almost too numerous to name, include both diehard Obama "birthers" and the current dregs of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

One of the hardest things to come to grips with intellectually is the idea that, even with the best intentions, we can all be successfully lied to. 

What separates the men (and women) from the boys (and girls) is the courage and humility to admit this fact to ourselves.

And many "9/11 Truthers" were too busy congratulating themselves on being intuitively aware that we were lied to about 9/11 to avoid falling into a yawning crevasse prepared for them by people who have in mind nobody's best interest but their own.

"Hatto" begins by endorsing a list of such people, who ride a variety of intellectually dubious hobbyhorses, either for their own self-aggrandizement, or because they have nothing better to do. 

Never believe anyone from Utah who knows Orrin Hatch

"Hatto's List" includes "Steven Earl Jones, Kevin Ryan, Richard Gage, Cynthia McKinney, Paul Craig Roberts, Jim Hoffman, and (modesty, Hatto!) "Hatto" himself.

Using only what is publicly available about these people, (as for "Hatto" himself, he's not a person, but a troll) it is clear that some of them should be ruthlessly ridiculed, while others are more properly pitied than scorned.

Take the number one name on “Hatto’s” list: Brigham Young University physicist, Steven Jones.

In addition to his dubious research in scientific areas (cold fusion!),  Jones has published papers (“Behold My Hands: Evidence for Christ's Visit in Ancient America”) about archeological clues he discovered which indicate that Jesus Christ visited Latin America after his resurrection.

It should go without saying, but in America today, it doesn't: 

Anyone who can find Jesus in South America 2000 years ago is capable of finding pretty much anything he wants to.

Yet many have been led by him to believe that an incendiary substance called Thermite, bolstered by sulfur (evidence of the demonic?) generated the exceptionally hot fires at the World Trade Center that caused the structural steel to fail and the buildings to collapse.

Hatto's heroes 

Just one more example. There's no fun in shooting fish in a barrel.

Consider the "intellectual" background of Paul Craig Roberts, another name high on Hatto's list, whose academic appointments are to institutions where neo-cons breed like flies… like Virginia Tech, Tulane, and Stanford, where he was Senior Research Fellow in the Hoover Institution.

(The Hoover Institution? What's their motto: "Immortalizing the First Great Depression?")

Roberts also held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown, named for a thief who was one of President Ronald Reagan's many toxic legacies to America.

If you’re looking for a take on American history from the father of Reaganomics" who believes the bin Laden raid was a hoax, this may be your guy.

But, if its Friday, and Paul Craig Roberts tells me its the end of the week, I wouldn't believe him.

And neither should you.