SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Prior to January 2017, John Fleming served as a representative for Louisiana’s 4th congressional district. More recently, he joined the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as President’s Trump appointee for assistant secretary in charge of health technology. He answers to Secretary Tom Price. Fleming’s position garnered little, if any, media attention. But the public now wants to know how Fleming will help guide key health policies, given that Trump’s other cabinet picks have come under intense scrutiny. The answer may lie in Fleming’s 2006 book on adolescent addiction, which warns of the inextricable bond between counter-culture expressions -- including piercings, alternative music, modern fashion and tattoos -- and drugs, which appear like stigmata on those who sin against the white, 1950’s, American ideal that represents the Lord’s perfect realization of purity.

Paradise Lost

John Fleming approached the White House after losing a senatorial race to David Vitter. Despite an infamous prostitution scandal, Vitter managed not only to remain in the good graces of the Republican moral majority until this December, he was viewed more favorably than Fleming. Part of the reason could involve Fleming’s 2006 masterpiece, Preventing Addiction: What Parents Must Know To Immunize Their Kids Against Drug and Alcohol Addiction. The book offers a fascinating and sometimes chilling look at penis phobias, the insidious Goth culture, opioids as evidence of God’s existence, and the link between tattoos and drug use. Not every person with a tattoo is a substance abuser, the book observes, but every substance abuser has a tattoo.

Fleming’s appeal to Trump must have come from his ability to bypass prevailing liberal myths. Consider homosexuality. Progressives and left-leaning scientists continue to promote the notion that non-traditional sexual orientations are biologically determined, not influenced by matters of preference. In one study, Fleming effortlessly shattered the facade of lesbianism.

Another recent example I can cite is that of an adult woman who was allowed to see a pornographic movie as a child. As an adult, she has suffered from a phobia to male genitalia. (p. 80)

This traumatic experience led to the subject’s disdain for penises. It was not the result of attraction to other women. But the most critical revelations in Fleming’s work involve the countless paths to drug use. Dressing in black and listening to Goth music are undeniable gateways to devil worship and drugs. However, they are also connected to tattoos. Body art, or rather accursed stimagata that often take the form of colorful skulls or heathen runes (sometimes referred to as tribal designs), are outward indicators to parents and society that a substance abuser is present.

Since the the book’s publication, this declaration from a professional physician has struck many readers as odd. However, officials in Mexico say Fleming’s lost weekend 12 years ago could hold the key to understanding his perspective.

Fleming’s Alleged Maddening Descent into Depravity and Branded Flesh

In February 2005, Alberto Conserje, a former officer in the Mexican Federal Police, responded to a “disturbing” call from a hotel owner in La Mesa, a borough in the municipality of Tijuana. The room, Conserje noted, had been laid to waste -- in the sense of debris and human waste.

“I can’t say for sure that the man who destroyed the room was John Fleming, but he looked the same, his passport had the same name, and he registered under the name ‘Ian Fleming, the master baiter of international mystery men,’” Conserje told the Evening Transcript via translator. “Neither the hotel owner nor myself understood the meaning of the signature in the ledger.”

After explaining Fleming’s current position in the U.S. health administration, and illustrating some of the conclusions in his 2006 parenting manual, Conserje revealed details of the disturbance that may have inspired the work.

“In Fleming’s defense,” Conserje stated, “I think I understand where Fleming is coming from. Our story begins in a Tijuana hotel room in 2005. After a weekend bender of donkey shows, being pegged by underaged prostitutes in Goth attire, mainlining smack, popping amyl nitrate, and washing it all down with some cheap local crap called chocho, Fleming awoke with a tattoo of a horse penis on his chest, apparently administered by a rusty nail in the crude scrawl of a child holding a crayon too big for its fingers. So, he naturally assumed that once you take drugs, tattoos just appear on your body like stigmata.”

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