The Eye of Sauron is Upon Us - op-ed

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Eye of Sauron is Upon Us

There are frightened little men who in their feverish brains see conspiracies in everything: your license plate number is a secret code imposed by the Masonic-Vatican-IRS Continuum so that unmarked Canadian helicopters can track you, Queen Elizabeth is a diabolic lizard warrior in disguise, fluoride is a Communist mind-control drug, traffic signals beam your image and DNA to the Martian outpost on the dark side of the moon, and algebra is the language of Satan.

Well, okay, that bit about algebra being satanic is true.

But that Solomon’s Temple was a cleverly disguised alien spaceship, well, no. Sorry.

After Justice Scalia died several weeks ago, the mansies who live in their allotted gigabytes cluttered the planet’s microwave signals with fantasies about Justice Scalia being a member of a golly-gee-super-secret-girl-haters-blood-cult called The International Order of Saint Hubert.

Well, the International Order of Saint Hubert really exists, and it is so secret that it has a web site: http://www.iosh-usa.com/.

Justice Scalia was not a member of the International Order of Saint Hubert, which is no more significant than the fact that he was not a member of the Rotary Club and did not have a Barnes & Noble discount card.

The IOSH is indeed a hunting fraternity, one with a long and remarkable history, including the fact that its Grand Whatever was murdered by the Nazis because he wouldn’t let Hermann Goering join.

Here are the conspiracies carried out by the Order of Saint Hubert:

To promote sportsmanlike conduct in hunting and fishing

To foster good fellowship among sportsmen from all over the world

To teach and preserve sound traditional hunting and fishing customs

To encourage wildlife conservation and to help protect endangered species from extinction

To promote the concept of hunting and fishing as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity

To endeavor to ensure that the economic benefits derived from sports hunting and fishing support the regions where these activities are carried out

To strive to enhance respect for responsible hunters and fishermen

Wow. Scary stuff, huh?

The values of the International Order of Saint Hubert are not at all different from Justice Scalia’s equally exclusive club to which many of us belong, the Hunting Brotherhood of Grandpa’s Old J.C. Higgins Shotgun.

There is a Saint Hubert, whose conversion story is worth reading. He is the patron saint of hunters, mathematicians, opticians, and metalworkers.

Not a bad fellowship, that.

And, after all, mathematicians are in special need of our prayers.

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