Perhaps after being pulled aside by one of his saner brothers, at his father’s memorial yesterday — in the Dakotas… Hinderaker grudgingly now admits that “leftists” cannot “make” anyone in the US eat bugs.

So it is, that John has felt the need to (again!) explain what he sees as a vast liberal conspiracy… in which only liberals own cattle ranches, and in which they alone are the ones making red meat more expensive. Uh-huh.

This is just sad, really — and I am sure one or two of his brothers told him so, over drinks a couple nights ago — or last night, even.

Even his “walked back” version tonight has all the markings of a paranoid, delusional and yes, now mostly-senile… mind:

“…If you think liberals are just trying to expand our field of choice — it’s up to you whether you want to eat bugs or not! — you don’t know liberals. After all, we could have been eating crickets and mealworms all along if that was our idea of a good dinner. But we have already seen skyrocketing prices for meat and other commodities in grocery stores. The liberals’ plan is to make meat prohibitively expensive before extinguishing its consumption altogether….”

His attempt at being more “plausibly reasonable” — in his buggy accusations… is actually more frightening than his earlier (more fantastical) versions… because it is now clear that he is not in on the joke that the hard right is playing on its rubes: Hinderaker, it seems, is the butt of the inside joke, and wholly unawares, too.

It is hard, truly… to watch the real-time, day-by-day decline, of what was at least some years ago… an agile mind.

Damn. Out.