You may think that the big news story lately has been riots in Baltimore — or, if you have different priorities, either that boxing match or Kate’s baby. But in certain circles, the big thing has been the right-wing belief that operation Jade Helm 15, a military training exercise in Texas, is a cover for Obama to seize control of the state and force its citizens to accept universal health care at gunpoint.

No, really — and this is being taken seriously both by Ted Cruz and by the governor, who has ordered the National Guard to keep a watch on the feds and their possibly nefarious activities.

Before you pooh-pooh this, think about what would happen to a Democratic politician who gave similar credence to a left-wing conspiracy theory this far out. I can’t even think of what that conspiracy theory might be.

And this isn’t an isolated incident. You should think of the panic over the attack of the Obamacare black helicopters as being part of a continuum that runs through inflation truthers like Niall Ferguson and Amity Shlaes, who insist that the government is cooking the economic books, to QE conspiracy theorists like (sadly) John Taylor and Paul Ryan declaring that Bernanke only did it to bail out Obama, to the more general prevalence of inflation derp, the insistence that Weimar is just around the corner despite six or more years of failed predictions.

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear (although I have some ideas I’ll flesh out soon.) But it’s quite remarkable, and pretty scary.