I'm old enough to remember when the phrase "conspiracy theorists" conjured an image of polysyllabic sophists arguing the merits of the neutron activation analysis of CE-399. (Like this.) But nowadays, things are very different.For a lesson in the low state of American dissent, go here. The author of the main article is Joseph Cannon, a name which may be familiar to some of you. The site reprinting that piece belongs to Alex Jones, the gravel-voiced Texan Illuminati-spotter who puts the "blow" in "blowhard."
Alex is very, very popular. He is also an idiot. Except when compared to his fans. The Jones fan-base makes Jones himself look like a Rhodes scholar. (The spirit of Puck inspired me to choose that expression: I know full well how neo-Birchers like Jones react when they see the name "Rhodes.")
In previous posts, I have clarified my feelings about Alex Jones. See, for example, here. Also see the long-ish piece here, in which I compare Alex to Robert Crumb's character, the Snoid:
In other words, I don't like Alex Jones. He and I do not have anything in common.I close my eyes each night and see, in my mind's eye, a truly horrifying sight: The sneering, arrogant mug of Alex Jones, vomiting daily lies with total jackass self-assurance. This is what America wants: A noggin without a niggling doubt, a mind without a "maybe." He is certain that the Illuminati are real, that secret societies run the world, that Bush is an occultist, that devil-worship occurs at the Bohemian Grove, and that hidden bombs brought down those damn buildings. I see Jones and I think of the immortal words of R. Crumb:
MEET THE SNOID! Now here's a dude with absolute self-confidence! Never had a self-doubt in his entire life! And no qualms of conscience have ever stood in his way!Soon, all political debate will be reduced to a battle between left-wing and right-wing versions of Alex Jones. He is our future.
In a sense, he is a Bush by-product. We have a Snoid President and a Snoid Veep, supported by a well-funded infrastructure of Media Snoids such as Snoid Limbaugh and Snoid O'Reilly. Bush opponents have learned that one can combat the Snoids only by becoming a Snoid. Let us have no more weighing of possibilities; no more concessions; no more qualifying clauses; no more perhapses; no more conditional phrases; no more admissions of error; no more recognition of the world's uncertainties. This is war. A war of the Snoids. My Snoid versus your Snoid, and may the loudest Snoid win.
So why did my text appear on his site? You must ask that question of little Alex, my droogies, for your friend and humble narrator gave not his permission for such petty crasting of his slovos.
Jones reprinted this piece, which delves into Obama's strange doings during and after his college career. You'd think that my novel hypothesis would have evinced at least one intelligent response from the AJ aficionados. A good counter-argument would have been most welcome. I would have loved a detailed refutation from someone who doesn't sound like he regularly eats Wheaties with horseradish and gravel.
As Jones himself likes to say: "There's a war on for your mind." His listeners obviously lost that battle. To prove the point, here's a representative sampling of how the Jonesians reacted to my piece. First, a word from the inevitable birther nut:
1. He’s obviously an “enemy” of the Constitution.That comment is rational compared to this stuff:
2. He’s “foriegn” born.
3. He’s presiding “domestically”.
There you have it: “…Enemies, foriegn and domestic”.
“Your honor, the prosecution rests”.
######## Grassley: Ted Kennedy Would Die Under Obama Plan ##########Apparently, the rules of magic dictate that LaRouchian wackiness becomes less wacky if you repeat it four times.
######## Grassley: Ted Kennedy Would Die Under Obama Plan ##########
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/11291
######## Grassley: Ted Kennedy Would Die Under Obama Plan ##########
######## Grassley: Ted Kennedy Would Die Under Obama Plan ##########
THERE WILL BE NO BOLSHEVIC HERE!Neither will there be accurate spelling or lower-case letters.
I love this one:
The reasons the Kennedy’s supported Obama was symbolic. It was to pass on the Kennedy curse to Obama. For as the 44th president, by Vedic Astrology, Obama is due to die in office.The piece goes on to develop the "Vedic Astrology" thesis further. Alas, the reasoning gets a little sketchy.
1) Durring the campaign when they had those security issues at some of Obama’s rallies, that was to foreshadow what’s going to happen.
2) When Hillary Clinton said that she will keep running in case of anything happens to Obama, that was to foreshadow what was going to happen to him.
3) When the 2 people running for VP, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin were asked at the VP debate what sort of president they would be if the president died in office, that was again, to foreshadow what is going to happen to Obama.
4) Those people who keep showing up at Obama rallies, with loaded guns, are to forecast what is going to happen to Obama. Even Michael Jackson’s death may foreshadow it, because he is both Black and White, and so Obama (maybe you are thinking of “Doesn’t matter if you are Black or White”).
Oh, Michael Jackson also has the moon walk, and he died on the 40th aniverrsary of the supposed Moon Walk.
OUT Ya Demons Obama et-al ! THis IS self-defense of Truth, Justice, The American Way.
YES…through The Power of the UN-Failing Love & Atom~Smashing
Power of Mind, of Jewish Teacher & Wayshower, Jesus the Christ.
Your religion is garbage wake upHm. Does the faith of Garbage Wake Up have regular services? What are the sacraments? I shudder to think about what the baptism must be like.
Anglos are the problem – IDIOT – NOT Jesus!! God is the SOLUTION!!!
The best way to trully follow Jesus , is paradoxically , to study what he studied while in Kashmir / Tibet / India , in other words , study the Vedas !!!Now, isn't that a perfectly reasonable response to an article about Barack Obama? In Jonesland, the topic always quickly morphs into a discussion of Weird Jesus Theories. You can be talking about the dearth of outhouses in Nome, Alaska and within seconds the Jonesheads will find some way to bring JC into it.
Here's a portion of another perfectly reasonable response:
BTW, the churches which try to convince their members to “stand down” in the fight for Liberty are those “apostate” so-called “Christian” churches mentioned earlier. They also teach the false concept of the “Rapture” (a concept developed within the Rockefeller financed “National Council of Churches”): no, we (Iincluding those of us in the Restored Church) will be here and “fighting the good fight” until Christ, Himself, returns, about the time of Armageddon. We will NOT “stand down”, nor will our Apostolic leaders require us to do so! Some of the leading lights in the Patriot Movement have been, believe it or not, members of the Restored Church (Apostle Ezra Taft Benson, who wrote “God, Family,and Country” and preached most often on the doctrine of free agency, and who later became the President or presiding officer of the Church; Professor W. Cleon Skousen, who wrote “The 5,000 Year Leap” and founded the National Center for Constitutional Studies; Professor Steven Jones of the 9/11 Truth Movement; even Glenn Beck, who’s heart is basically in the right place...The guys who write and read crap like that are my worst nightmare. Yet they are reading me. What did I do wrong?
If only William Cooper was still alive today, he and john would make quite a tag-team against the NWO & their latest ploy to swindle the freedoms and liberties of American people.I met Coop once, before most of these cranks had heard of him. A dangerous loon. He ended up shooting a cop, only to be shot in return. I hope that the officer who dispatched him got a commendation.
Juicy tid-bits of information..I'm not sure, but I think the aim of the foregoing comment is to posit that I wrote my piece with a hidden agenda. "Hear fish, fish, fish" -- I love that line. It sounds like dialogue from a Tommy Wiseau movie about St. Anthony of Padua.
Dangling from a hook perhaps?…for when the fish takes the bait (tid-bit) the aim is to control it!
Hear fish, fish, fish.
Finally, my favorite: president nixon had to resign because of corruption. adolf hitler commited suicide because he was shit. obama is no different to adolf hitler and george w bush and all the rest. only former president lincoln could save america now!!"former president lincoln..." The first time I read those words, I started laughing like Stan Laurel in the "tickle" scene in Way Out West.
I also like this commenter's reconstruction of how things went down in Der Bunker. "Hey Eva -- it just occurred to me. I'm shit. A real Scheisskerl. Hand me those pills, willya?"
Such are the Alex Jonesians. I have no doubt that Phil Garrido was part of his crowd. There are millions of 'em out there, desperate to squawk about commies and mind control and aliens and Weird Jesus Stuff -- and the vast majority of them are completely incapable of arranging their thoughts in a straight line.
Millions. Think of that, as you try to fall asleep tonight.
30 comments:
Credit card companies were successful beyond their wildest dreams marketing their real product, instant gratification.
People don't want to come to a logical conclusion after reasonable dialog anymore. That takes too long and requires too much effort.
They prefer post-digested conclusions, the nuttier the better.
I forgot to add, it looks like that Jones guy is a victim of a wig maker's conspiracy to make him look bad.
Dear Joseph,
Before you get a few hate commentaries from the AJ crowed, I just wanted to thank you for that little sparkle of hope and relief.
There is somebody out there in the US that knows who is John Pilger, who as sence of humour and can write some critical political piece on Obama without having to jump on the socialists..
Thanks.. I usualy laught a lot reading the Alex Jones commentaries, but for once I was laughing with you;
Keep on with the good work.
From Sebastien, a frenchman.
Isn't that SEWER SNOID, to be most oompletely correct?
(Takes me back to '70s memories).
Not that I've heard of the Vedic astrology angle, but I do find the death scenario mentioned possible.
I've just started watching 'Evidence of Revision,' which features a huge archive of rarities of the contemporaneous video of the television coverage of the era of assassinations, starting with JFK.
I'd never heard it before, but the voice over for the television coverage at the Ft. Worth stop prior to Dallas was a rumination on presidential vulnerability, how JFK's forays into crowds was reckless and the worst nightmare for the Secret Service, and an historical statement of the circumstances of the assassination of McKinley.
Prescient, accidentally foreshadowing, or preparing the national mind? Certainly violence was in the air in Texas that day, as Adlai Stevenson, Billy Graham, and many others had tried to warn. In this current environment, I cannot discount the various hints and foreshadowing as meaningless.
XI
Oh, please don't let anything happen to Obama-- two horrific events would come to pass-- Biden, and Obama the Martyr. Soon there would be groups, like the Reaganites, advocating for every county to have an Obama monument.
" There are millions of 'em out there..."
All products of America's multi-trillion dollar public school system.
Actually, and in spite of all, I still like Joe Biden. Have for decades.
I certainly wish for no harm to come to Barack Obama, or to anyone else holding that office.
There are two Bobs. The latest one should refer to himself as Bob2.
The same article of yours also made an appearance on the blog secretsun.blogspot.com under the "Week in Review: Back to the Garden" post of August 29. Don't know if that will upset you or delight you (well OK not actually delight, but maybe scratch your head).
Making fun of Alex Jones is easy, but it does not make him wrong. If you don't like what he says, it should be because you can prove him wrong, not because he is comical, and not because he doesn't censor his comments. Making fun of someone is an easy way to make what someone says look wrong, but doesn't prove anything. Your entire post fails to mention one lie he has told. What is he wrong about? Do you just not like what he has to say? Surely you can find some evidence that he is wrong about something, I'm sure I could. If the guy gets on the radio and spouts lies for four hours a day, it should be easy to come up with evidence of those lies. Try sticking to the facts.
Ugh. There was a time I found AJ an amusing personality on the radio, but then he started getting a big following and his manner of speaking just exploded. If anyone has only read Jones' work I highly suggest you to listen/watch him speak in his moronic Billy-Mays-on-speed-alarmist-armwaving-paranoia mode.
It's almost impossible to argue logic with someone that presents their ideas in such a fashion.
Sans the Biden part, I've been constantly praying that nothing happens to Zerobama, too, for that very reason:
"..please don't let anything happen to Obama....(result:) Obama the Martyr. Soon there would be groups, like the Reaganites, advocating for every county to have an Obama monument."
Let him die of shame, in old age.
"...and the vast majority of them are completely incapable of arranging their thoughts in a straight line."
I think this is the desired effect.
Enemies of Democracy™ require an uninformed public.
I miss the Tommy Wiseau billboard. Great ice breaker for the line @ Pink's.
Ah, I'm a big fan of Pinks. It's been too long since I've had a chance to visit the place.
So, did you see the movie? I don't understand why everyone thinks the "Hi, doggy" line is so hilarious. That's pretty much what I sound like when I'm, er, um, talking to my dog.
I think one of the reasons Ted supported Obama was, he couldn't stand the thought of women parts in Jack's office!! NOOOO!
I wish no harm to President Obama, but I bet there's a number of Obots that would find his martyrdom very convenient. They would then never have to face the fact they were so wrong. Really, imo, some of them are hoping for it , at least subconsciously.
I can't say I'm an Alex Jones fan, neither, however, do I peremptorily dismiss him as a fool.
I do give him credit for infiltrating the Bohemian Grove. No one has before or since.
Anonymous who posted a comment at 9:12 AM is right. Give us thoughtful reasons why Jones should be dismissed. Even kindergarten kids can name-call and ridicule.
For that matter, there are many who think you, Cannonfire, with your Obama is a CIA spook, trafficks in Lala tinfoil-hat land.
Actually- environmental groups in Marin have been known to hold protests in the redwoods surrounding the Grove for years and ... Alex Shoumatoff of Vanity Fair did break in to the Grove for awhile before he was arrested.
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/05/bohemian-grove200905
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/05/bohemian-grove-guide200905
And there's just one example I would use to dismiss Jones- the man is full of self-aggrandizing crap - lies mixed liberally with sprinkles of hidden truth. Fear monger...for profit.
(I'm rewriting and re-posting my answer to Eowyn. My original comment got garbled in transmission.)
Eowyn, you're kidding, right?
Of course I'm tickled that Alex got into the Grove, although Jon Ronson had much more to do with that foray that AJ ever let on. I believe the matter is discussed in this podcast...
http://sittingnow.co.uk/archives/tag/jon-ronson
I'm much more inclined toward Ronson's quiet, cautious and sardonic attitude, as opposed to Alex's Texas-style blowhardism.
That Bohemian Grove video was my first intro to AJ. I thought it was so funny I practically blew beer out of my nostrils.
What was funny was the spectacle of AJ, as self-satisfied as he is self-deceived, trying to present those proceedings as an evil, eldritch pagan ceremony -- when, to judge by the evidence of his own damn video, the whole thing was just innocuous inanity. Listening to Jones' commentary I was reminded of that routine on the old SCTV show -- "Ooh, look kids...scary!"
(By the way, good ol' boy Alex is so uncultured that he could not even recognize the most famous passage from Beethoven's Seventh.)
Even funnier was AJ's conception of himself as some sort of expert on the occult. Good kee-RIST. That clown doesn't know shit. He wouldn't know Dee from doo-doo.
Look, I really did date a sixth-level OTO-er -- that part of my most infamous April 1 post was on the level -- and I once gave away in public the most precious secret of Crowleyan sex magick. (Look up my post "The Sex Magick of Jesus Christ.") And I'm here to tell ya two things:
1. Contrary to the garbage peddles by Alex Jones, the ruling strata of society has no interest in the occult.
Christian soldiers like AJ think that the OTO is some monstrous conspiratorial organization. Sheez! Last time I was at an OTO public gathering, people brought home-made cookies and cans of Old Milwaukee.
Nobody I ever met in that world has even HEARD of a real-life equivalent to the sort of fancy shindig shown in "Eyes Wide Shut." Oh, they WISH it were like that! Most Crowleyites are pretentious fops who WISH they lived in mansions instead of apartments shared with roomies.
But it just ain't so.
2. AJ screams about scary secret societies which worship malefic pagan deities, but he never does any research using original source materials. If he did, he'd know that it is an axiom in occultism that the magician is doomed to poverty.
AJ relies on crank books which cite other crank books. There's this whole self-reflexive literary subculture out there. I'm well familiar with it. His paranoia about secret societies all traces back to an anti-Semitic fanatic named Nesta Webster, who was the kind of paranoid who routinely answered the door with a gun in her hand. She supported Hitler, natch. Her writings resurrected the crap written by Barruel and Robison, who, in the wake of the French Revolution, peddled nonsense about Masonic conspiracies.
You can't understand this stuff without being conversant in the Monarchist/Republican "civil war" in France. Throughout the 19th century, royalists like des Mousseau and Drumont -- ever hear of them? -- constructed the mythos of all-powerful secret societies as a way of explaining the downfall of the aristocracies and the rise of democracy. To the people who constructed this mythos, the fallen aristocrats were the GOOD guys.
That's the tradition that Alex Jones draws from, although he may not be sufficiently well-read to trace it that far back. But trace it you can: From Barruel to des Mousseau to Drumont to Webster to Winrod to Goff to Carr to Skousen to the JBS and thence to AJ. At each stage of the game, new crap was added to the crap pile.
(More in the next comment)
But to young readers who don't know about this sorry literary pedigree, all this talk about secret societies can seem very exciting and new. They don't know that it is all founded on fear and flim-flam.
I've dealt with guys like AJ for years -- long before he came on the scene. I knew Coop, king of the conspira-cranks. And I learned a long time ago that you can't reason with such people. You can't talk them out of what is, in essence, a religious belief.
Any given conspiracy THEORY may be true or false, but ConspiraCISM is a religion. Trying to talk a fanatic out of his or her pet religious belief is like talking to a brick wall.
And frankly, I'm done with having conversations with walls. It's a pointless exercise. I'm done with spending nights doing research in a fruitless attempt to turn around someone who is un-turn-aroundable.
If AJ -- or you -- is emotionally wedded to this "secret societies rule the world" crap, there's nothing I can do. I can simply recommend (to other people, who have not yet been sucked in to this belief system) books like George Johnson's "Architects of Fear," Morris Kaminsky's "The Hoaxers," Stauffer's "New England and the Bavarian Illuminati" and a bunch of similar works, written by people who know a thing or two about how to do actual research.
If that library doesn't have an impact...well, as Schopenhauer once said, "If a book and a head collide, and a hollow sound results, is it the fault of the book?"
(more to come)
Three more things about AJ:
1. He's the hero of the bombs-in-da-building brigade. No more need be said. And I mean that -- the subject is closed, at least around these parts. I used to allow the CD nuts a voice here, and they were so vile that I nearly gave up my own blog. I hate them, they hate me, and that is that.
2. AJ devoted a radio program to the proposition that George W. Bush is the grandson of Aleister Crowley, yet never once sought to contact the main source of info on that topic. Which was me. Writing on April 1. (Hee hee hee.) The fact that he never sent me so much as an email is all the proof you should ever need: The guy is a fool. He doesn't care about tyhe truth. He is a fear-junkie, constantly looking for his next rush.
3. I've written a screenplay -- it's floating around the industry, and has aroused some actual interest -- with a secondary character who may bear certain resemblances to AJ. During the ceremonial scene set at "The Arcadian Grove," our heroine tells this character: "You made this thing out to be some sort of scary occult ritual. I've seen scarier stuff in my vegetable bin."
Oh, the difference between AJ and me? Re-read what I wrote about the Snoid. You missed that part.
What I DESPISE about loud-voiced Texas blowhards like AJ is their jack-ass self-confidence. I hate all self-assured swaggerers. They acquire an audience because they're always so fucking sure about everything, and weak-willed people admire the abnormally confident.
(GWB, another Texan, was very much of that ilk.)
If I present an outside-the-mainstream thesis, it's always phrased in the form of a "Maybe." It's always posited tentatively. It's alwyas meant to generate further investigation and discussion, not to be proclaimed as the TRUTH OF TRUTHS. I am always anxious to hear from reasonable people who proffer alternative explanations.
I've often had to re-order my views as new facts come in.
Bombastic guys like AJ simply don't operate that way. Their psychology does not permit it.
Oh...and when I go into speculative mode, I tend to stick to hard-core espionage stuff. That kind of thing usually bores fear-junkies like AJ. One of the frustrations encountered by everyone who tries to research spies is that the public insists on mixing it up with wacky crap about UFOs and secret societies and all the rest of it. That gunk is the best "cover" the intelligence agencies ever had.
As a guy named John Judge once said: "The difference between the CIA and the Illuminati is that the CIA is real. And they have guns."
There was a time when Judge was considered over-the-top. But compared to AJ, he's downright mundane.
I regret to say Alex has all but disappeared from Austin cable TV. That guy has made me laugh more than Milton Berle.
To keep up with Jones' nonstop torrent of crazy statements, I've been visiting an hilarious blog called LEAVING ALEX JONESVILLE.
The blogger has quickly perceived that the best way to debunk Akex Jones is to quote him:
The New World Order elite might fake a UFO landing with the Pentagon's "giant hologram projection system" as yet another excuse for martial law.
Arabs own Hollywood.
The military leaked a Pentagon document to the writers of The Matrix, as part of an effort to desensitize us to their plan to place us all in tanks and lock us into a hive mind.
The rescue of Jessica Lynch was scripted and directed by Jerry Bruckheimer.
"Photosynthesis, that's admitted. But they say photosynthesis isn't real. Someday plants will be a conspiracy theory. They won't exist anymore, and some kid will say, 'Mommy, did there used to be plants?' 'No, honey, that's Al-Qaeda.' "
Ha, great stuff. Normally I see the comments on Infowars as a function of the article. The article is crazy, therefore the comments will be crazy. But this just shows that even when a reasonable article gets posted there it's just the same.
Something I love on there is how irrelevant the comments will be to the articles topic. I expect most of them read no further than the headline, and just use the comments section as a place to spam their particular brand of insanity.
Nice. I used to read articles on that site from time to time, but my head cleared after the initial rush of excitement at things more interesting than reality and I came to my senses. The comments ARE funny though.
Well written comments Joseph, I agree with your approach and try to use it myself.
Oh, just one thing though from a previous comment:
"The rescue of Jessica Lynch was scripted and directed by Jerry Bruckheimer."
Honestly, I think there is a great deal of truth to this statement (even if JB himself did not script and direct it....SOMEONE obviously did).
Gus
You'll have the Disney Barracudas coming after you for that Abe Lincoln comic book cover now that Walt's frozen head owns the Marvel superheros. I wonder if there was a run on Stan Lee voodoo dolls when that bit of news came out. Was the Marvel film production effort a flop?
Thanks, for the triple replies, Joseph. Since I have no vested interest in Alex Jones, I'm all for leaving that subject by the wayside.
About your "Obama was a CIA spook" speculation:
1. Your thesis' virtue is that it does explain (a) BHO's Pakistan trip; (b)his ability to pay the tuition at Occidental, Columbia, & Harvard Law -- all private institutions with hefty tuition & fees; (c) the massive coverup of his many documents (college records, bc, etc.) which takes beaucoup $ as well as the collaboration of multiple govt agencies and officials.
2. However, your thesis is contradicted by BHO's biological father's socialist anti-Britain beliefs; his many socialist associates & cronies (e.g., Bill Ayers); his ideological convictions; and his policies as prez. Unless (a) BHO turned on his CIA masters; (b) he's a double, if not, triple agent.
Your thoughts?
"Nobody I ever met in that world has even HEARD of a real-life equivalent to the sort of fancy shindig shown in "Eyes Wide Shut." Oh, they WISH it were like that!"
There was an article recently about a company that sets up those parties. Of course they got the idea from Eyes Wide Shut but the parties do exist and you can attend them if you want. At least theoretically. None of use will ever be invited.
I inclination not acquiesce in on it. I regard as polite post. Specially the title attracted me to review the unscathed story.
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