I go to a Starbucks in Brooklyn most Saturdays to get some reading done and answer emails, and there’s always this same group of people at one table: mostly senior citizens and a few younger people who are involved in some sort of Tea Party-ish Birther group that files countless lawsuits trying to prove President Obama’s birth certificate is false. They loudly discuss their next step, talk to like-minded others on their cell phones, so there’s no way to miss it. They are always unfailingly polite to everyone.

I find it depressing and just try to ignore it, but one of them, the ringleader, an old guy who is 6′ 6″ and 300 pounds and has a gentle face, noticed a book I was holding as I was walking out this week. It was a science book that had a vaguely conspiratorial title, though it wasn’t that kind of book. He asked me about it, was obviously highly intelligent and just absolutely batshit crazy. But he was clearly functional enough to be hounding the legal system continually. People wonder why Obama can’t find middle ground with some who oppose him, but the common ground has been erased from the maps in their heads. Here’s what he said:

“You know, there’s no more space program today because there is going to be a solar nexus in 2048 and the Earth and Mars and the moon are going to be destroyed at the surface. Scientists know because they’ve found particulates from the sun on all three already. There are secret cities being built beneath the Earth so that the Selected Ones will be able to survive. But that’s why we’re not trying to go to Mars. There’s no reason to go. That’s why the pyramids were built, because of the solar nexus. The Egyptians knew. There’s a book about it. I’m friends with the author. During the 1960s, there was an observatory built within the Cheyenne Mountains so that scientists could chart the sunspots. I visited there. Anyhow, everything will end in 2048 for most of the people on Earth. There are those who know about it.”