Kendall - man, are you good. People see whatever they look for. If they look for evil intentions and somebody to make a scapegoat of, they will find these things, even if they aren't there. If you want an enemy, you will make your own. If you want friends, that's what you'll find. Seems to me it's not the nature of Mudcat that makes those two very different things happen.

Paranoia, even of a very mild type, feeds on itself. A person thinks there is some sort of secret society out to get him. After a while, that person will push people he perceives as being part of the society away, or attack them. The people will become hurt, and possibly turn on the slightly paranoid individual. They may even come to resemble a secret society. He creates the thing he most fears. The only thing we can do is refuse to let ourselves be turned into a mob by one person.

We can't do a damned thing about the enemy seekers. They have been/are/will be with us always. It's a good thing they don't have to live here, and can go off somewhere else to begin the process again with a whole new bunch of unsuspecting people.