Conservative Paranoia over Jade Helm has not subsided according to a recent article in the Washington Post.   For some reason Bastrop continues to be the epicenter for the conspiracy theorist wackos convinced that Obama is coming for them – as if he didn’t have more important things on his plate.  Anyhow, the stalwarts of the Bastrop Republican Party apparently remains convinced that they have but days to live in a free society before the jack booted thugs (read U.S. Military) of the Federal government crack down.  Fortunately, not everyone in Bastrop is bat shit crazy.

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.”

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.

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.”

Across town at the Bastrop County Courthouse, such talk elicits a weary sigh from County Judge Paul Pape, the chief official in this county of 78,000 people. Pape said he has tried to explain to folks that the exercise, known as Jade Helm 15, is a routine training mission that poses no threat to anyone. . . . “I’m sensitive to the fact that some of our Bastrop residents are concerned, and I’m confident that they are very sincere about their concerns,” Pape said. “But how did we get to this point in our country?”

How indeed?