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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Paranoia Engine

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Paranoia Engine

by Anne Laurie|  April 3, 20115:43 am| 108 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Clown Shoes

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New York encourages us to welcome our new mouse-pox-wielding overlords:

A shadowy group of elites—mainly international bankers but also George W. Bush, Barack Obama, the Clintons, most of the mainstream media, the Saudi royal family, and Google—is trying to enslave the Earth’s population through orchestrated terror attacks and revolutions, vast economic manipulation, vaccines and fluoride, and an ever-widening system of surveillance that includes Facebook.
__
That’s the truth—at least, the truth according to Alex Jones, a popular talk-radio host who is today’s leading proponent and marketer of political paranoia. “The globalists have stolen the world’s power,” he told me recently, with surprisingly abundant good cheer. “Their big dream, and all they talk about, is creating a super bioweapon, basically based on a mouse pox, and just turn it loose and kill almost everybody. It kills about 99 percent of whatever mammal you design it for. It’s their Valhalla, and they’re going to do it.”…

If you’re like me, it’s comforting to know that even in our modern smoke-and-mirrors reality, there are still brave individuals willing to dial the crazy up to eleven… or do they?!?

***********

Apart from heightening the contradictions among the black helicopters, what’s on everybody’s schedules today?

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Reader Interactions

108Comments

  1. 1.

    Phyllis

    April 3, 2011 at 6:24 am

    There’s no logic like batsh*t crazy logic, I say.

  2. 2.

    Shalimar

    April 3, 2011 at 6:28 am

    Why do I think his entire worldview came to him one day after he watched Twelve Monkeys while on acid?

  3. 3.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    April 3, 2011 at 6:30 am

    compared to the usual political rantings and paranoia,dog whistles, and buzz messaging, it does have a certain bonhomie to it. like garden variety wingnutophillia before the world started taking the far right seriously.

  4. 4.

    Scott

    April 3, 2011 at 6:47 am

    Reminds me of some of the stuff from Donna Kossy’s old “Kooks” book, especially the mimeographed, single-spaced, no-margins leaflets handed out by schizophrenics. Kossy could make a whole new edition of her book based solely on the Modern GOP.

  5. 5.

    Jason

    April 3, 2011 at 6:50 am

    How does he know that that is all they talk about? Hmm? Unless…he is one of THEM!

  6. 6.

    Baud

    April 3, 2011 at 6:53 am

    Alex Jones clearly is a few cards short of a full deck.
    The elites aren’t creating a virus to kill us. They’re working on a virtual reality machine so they can secretly use our bodies for fuel without us knowing it. Keanu Reeves tried to warn us, but no one wanted to listen.

  7. 7.

    Cervantes

    April 3, 2011 at 6:57 am

    Joe Hagan (in New York):

    Jones’s visions of elitist machinations (and, of course, the elite are machinating), far from seeming ridiculous, have plenty of echoes on both the left and right. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and the creator of the Academy Award–winning documentary Inside Job all traffic, to various extents, in riling up fears of secretive plots, some based in fact, some much less so.

    Sheer laziness.

  8. 8.

    Ken_L

    April 3, 2011 at 7:02 am

    Hahaha, that’s why I use a trackpad!! Get your mouse pox around that, losers!!!!

  9. 9.

    Sly

    April 3, 2011 at 7:25 am

    Step 1: Steal the world’s “power”
    Step 2: Develop super bio-weapon
    Step 3: Kill 99% of human population with super bio-weapon
    Step 5: Profit

  10. 10.

    gene108

    April 3, 2011 at 7:26 am

    Juice Media, Rap News 6, features Alex Jones in part of it.

    If you’ve never heard Juice Media, check them out, they are so FULL OF AWESOME, your life will be better for it.

  11. 11.

    ppcli

    April 3, 2011 at 7:31 am

    @Cervantes: Worse than laziness. Almost a conscious effort to blur genuine investigation and wild fantasy.
    Joe Hagan’s grandfather, dateline Nov. 1, 1938: “Though people did show astonishing credulity over the War of the Worlds” broadcast, such fears have plenty of echos on the left and right. The population has shown a taste for speculation about Warren G. Harding’s alleged Negro ancestry, Roosevelt as a conscious agent of foreign powers, the Soviet Union’s Stalin as having consciously engineered the Ukrainian famine, and the German government’s purported aims of European conquest and annihilation of the Jews in Europle, some of it fact-based, some much less so.”

  12. 12.

    Craig

    April 3, 2011 at 7:46 am

    What am I doing this morning? Waiting for the local wildlife hospital/sanctuary to open. My wife noticed a loud peeping coming from our bushes in the back yard. Three newborn rabbits in a hole. How my beagles missed them this morning I don’t know but we have to relocate the bunnies for their safety. Cute. Loud.

  13. 13.

    El Cid

    April 3, 2011 at 7:46 am

    About 15 or 20 years ago, his voice would have been one of many, of different conspiratorial leanings mostly friendliest to the right wing, pinging out of shortwave radio. The world of militia conspiracies saving us from Hillary Clinton fulfilling the 50 year old plan of having the UN takeover the USA; of Jewish and anti-gold conspiracies manipulating the economy for their varied nefarious purposes; of anti-Christ fearing fundamentalists; or of Big Government and the AMA plotting to keep us all sick so we listeners would buy the show’s all natural healing snake oils.

    Now, I guess someone like Jones manages to cobble together the remaining paranoids from different political leanings since they’ve gotten the access to many more people, given that the net of 9/11 alternative explanation theorists draws in so widely.

  14. 14.

    Dead Ernest

    April 3, 2011 at 7:49 am

    @Sly:
    I think there must be a ‘secret step’ involving a time machine. Which would, of course, make it all work out.

  15. 15.

    Cermet

    April 3, 2011 at 7:54 am

    @ppcli: Uh, Stalin did cause the famine in the Ukraine (through, not engineer the deaths directly with that in mind)- his policies most certainly did cause the famine and he refused to change them once the problem, its root cause and how it could have been corrected was apparent (stop his policy of collectivizing of farms.) However, the needs of the State for cash to industrialize (the motive of profit here!) overrode any sense of morality so millions staved to death.

    I guess the old story about the Soviet’s bio-warfare center in the 70’s or 80’s and some versions in the early 90’s (depends on who is telling it) developing a new super small pox virus in a special facility on a very large island in one of their inland sea’s (I think 60 minutes even did a report on the real production facility (still there, fully certified as a germ warfare plant but now abandoned)), which became airborne and spread among people/crew that where on a large ship twenty miles out to sea. As the story goes, most died (over 90%) and being a version that was fully capable of infection as an airborne agent could have burn through the world’s population like wildfire killing all who got it (vaccines don’t exist for this new one as the story goes) – but they managed to contain it. See, even his crazy talk is based on a real story (not necessarily a real occurrence!) and since the media had planted this seed, any surprise someone runs with it, adds better ideas (mice are vectors!) and paints a grand conspiracy to boot! Gotta luv the right loons – between fake news and its insane and unbalance, the boil on his butt or is that his mouth? The big fat liar, palin … wait all top thugs, any truth, even buried in a pile of $hit is something worth repeating/building and using to scare people from the dangerous $egro in the white (not any more) house!

    For me? Feed the beast!(ie do taxes)

  16. 16.

    HeartlandLiberal

    April 3, 2011 at 8:00 am

    Just to make John feel bad, I will mention that one benefit of my newly minted retirement status is lots of time for your vegetable garden and yard. I planted about 30 7-foot rows of cold weather crop greens, radishes, carrots, and peas two weeks ago, and 90% of it has already sprouted.

    Yesterday I finished the initial close crop of the lawn, including mulching all the left over leaves from winter with the mower. It was all used to mulch what was already planted, and the rest will be plowed into the remaining half of the garden in the next couple of days, assuming weather permits.

    Here is a question for the gamers, though. I have googled and find a zillion sites giving same explanation of how to enable cheats and console in Dragon Age 2, but it just won’t work. I have tried just about every variant, double checked everything. My wife is playing it. Her complaint about this version mirrors the first one. You just cannot get enough money. What is with that in the design of the game?

  17. 17.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    April 3, 2011 at 8:11 am

    @Baud:

    The fan-wank theory goes that Neo and Morpheus tried to warn us about the reality of the Matrix, but the machines caught on and made Reloaded and Revolutions so that no one would ever take the idea seriously.

  18. 18.

    Southern Beale

    April 3, 2011 at 8:12 am

    Ha!!

    I read that first paragraph and thought “What, has New York magazine been talking to Alex Jones?”

    Why, yes! Yes, they have.

    He’s a nutball. I got introduced to him back when I was researching cults for my book project, his name came up in regards to Bohemian Grove. I was shocked and appalled to learn my sister agrees with some of this stuff. She has some friend who’s into ham radio and electronic surveillance and they’re always doing “reconnaissance missions.” It’s troubling.

  19. 19.

    qwerty42

    April 3, 2011 at 8:13 am

    The Saudi royal family but not the British royal family? Obviously, this “Alex Jones” (if that really is his name) is part of the real plot. I mean, really, no mention of the Catholic Church or even the Jesuit conspiracy? Or the Freemasons? This guy is clearly trying to cover something up.

  20. 20.

    Southern Beale

    April 3, 2011 at 8:17 am

    This piece on Joseph Stieglitz’s VF article on growing income inequality is worth a read.

  21. 21.

    StonyPillow

    April 3, 2011 at 8:39 am

    Fluoride is back where it belongs. ‘Bout time.

  22. 22.

    ppcli

    April 3, 2011 at 8:41 am

    @Cermet: “Uh, Stalin did cause the famine in the Ukraine”. Uh, yes, that was the point of the analogy. The African American ancestor of Harding and Roosevelt as conscious agent of foreign powers were crazy baseless fantasies, the Stalin – created famine in the Ukraine and Nazi plans were all too real. Running them together would have been a way of discrediting the reporting of genuine horrors.

  23. 23.

    ornery curmudgeon

    April 3, 2011 at 8:41 am

    @El Cid: “About 15 or 20 years ago, his voice would have been one of many, of different conspiratorial leanings mostly friendliest to the right wing, pinging out of shortwave radio.”

    Ummm … it would, and it was.

    I don’t like these kinds of fruit-tossing threads … Alex Jones isn’t a creditable good guy but there is clearly SOMEthing going on and ‘my side’ seems to never catch on, maybe because they’re too busy mocking.

    I wish reflexive point-and-laugher’ers would take some time to wonder why in 2000 the media divided this country into Red and Blue and no one even bothered to notice: THAT is the kind of thing that creeps me out. Not that it was done, but that it was accepted without question.

  24. 24.

    ppcli

    April 3, 2011 at 8:44 am

    @StonyPillow: Absolutely. Finally someone is stepping up to defend our precious life-giving fluids.

  25. 25.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    April 3, 2011 at 8:45 am

    my meta conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theories and such, are only discussed by purveyors of mass communication when they feel as though they are losing a degree or two of credibility amongst the masses.

    they try to reign in those who no longer accept face value,or doubt their appeals to happenstance , or disregard conventional wisdom. they remind the masses of conspiracy nuts hoping to trigger a neurotic belief one might be headed in the direction of the nuttiest among us because the presenters of mass communication are the mainstream sane opinion makers and story tellers.

    in short, conspiracies are a plot by the establishment to keep people from believing oblique agendas are possible or likely.

  26. 26.

    Hermione Granger-Weasley

    April 3, 2011 at 8:45 am

    meh.
    America never really left the cold war.
    The USA was defined by ideological opposition for 50 years.
    It is just that our ideological opponent is now green instead of red, islamism instead of communism.

  27. 27.

    Montysano

    April 3, 2011 at 9:00 am

    @Southern Beale: Agreed, an interesting piece, but this brought me to a full stop:

    Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war:

    Is this ignorance, willful misinformation, or just a poor choice or words?

  28. 28.

    WereBear

    April 3, 2011 at 9:04 am

    It’s a mis-directed gut instinct. We are surrounded by conspiracies to defraud and destroy us. In fact, some of them are so upfront about it, it hardly qualifies as a conspiracy.

    The pharmaceutical industry gets caught falsifying data over and over, and continues to get away with it. They don’t try to tweak the drugs to eliminate side effects; they just come up with another drug to take for the side effects.

    And that’s just one giant industry.

    People know this, but would prefer to be caught up in a different drama; one that isn’t so real. Alex Jones, Glenn Beck; all of them are Drama/Amusement for people without much of an imagination.

  29. 29.

    Josie

    April 3, 2011 at 9:04 am

    @Hermione Granger-Weasley: This is so true. I wish that we could upend that and be defined by something we aspire to instead of by someone we fear and hate.

  30. 30.

    Bruce S

    April 3, 2011 at 9:16 am

    In the annals of Teabagger insanity, 4 TeaParty/GOP Missouri state senators have effectively cut off unemployment benefits for 34,000 people with a filibuster, after even the Republican-led legislature had accepted the federally-funded extension. These people are sociopaths…

    http://titanicsailsatdawn.blogspot.com/2011/04/this-is-insane.html

  31. 31.

    nancydarling

    April 3, 2011 at 9:19 am

    @WereBear: The method to their madness—keep the great unwashed chasing after phantasms and they won’t see what is going on right under their noses.

  32. 32.

    mem from somerville

    April 3, 2011 at 9:25 am

    And teh GMOs: I had to listen to Alex Jones interview Jeffrey Smith (a sciency-ness contributor to HuffPo) and I learned that teh GMOs are going to sterilize the population. Here’s the audio for those with strong stomachs.

    I can’t figure out how sterilization via GMOs and vaccines–and of course the mouse pox killing–enables enough future slaves to be born, though.

  33. 33.

    WereBear

    April 3, 2011 at 9:34 am

    @nancydarling: Now there’s a conspiracy theory for ya!

  34. 34.

    Donut

    April 3, 2011 at 9:42 am

    @Cervantes: @ppcli:

    Hagan goes even further later in the article – page 5 of the link – he willfully, and incorrectly, conflates what Maddow and Greenwald do with what Limbaugh and Hannity do:

    In the new media universe, where Jones and Greenwald (and Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh) are virtual allies in their distrust of institutional authority and in fact feed on it, a wormhole has opened from the most far-flung and seemingly insane corners to the precincts where most of us live—and it doesn’t seem likely to close anytime soon.

    As pplci said, two of those people present arguments/opinions that are meticulously researched and based in fact – in other words, basically bringing an academic model to TV and blogging, etc.

    The other two are just liars.

  35. 35.

    nancydarling

    April 3, 2011 at 9:42 am

    @WereBear: It’s not a conspiracy theory that the republican elites feed the beast with birther stories, death panels, etc.

  36. 36.

    RossinDetroit

    April 3, 2011 at 9:43 am

    Reminds me of Men in Black, where only supermarket tabloids had the truth and the mainstream media was all fiction.

  37. 37.

    PaulW

    April 3, 2011 at 9:44 am

    I’m getting ready for the Tarpon Springs (FL) Public Library Local Authors Event this Tuesday April 5th by getting bookmarks printed for my eshort story “Welcome To Florida“, available on Nook and NookColor for $.99, and getting my poster ad for my “Last of the Grapefruit Wars” story anthology prepped for display. If anyone’s in the Tampa Bay area, please come out and support your local authors and local libraries!

  38. 38.

    Woodrowfan

    April 3, 2011 at 9:46 am

    @El Cid:

    In the 1990s he WAS one of those promoting “the Clinton Death List” and other such nonsense. if I remember right, he did it via local access TV.

    Alas, he has some popularity among the tinfoil heads on the left. Hal Sparks and one of Stephanie Miller’s cohosts have praised him for his “research” on air, and there is a regular group of commentators on Crooks and Liars that love him.

  39. 39.

    Chad N Freude

    April 3, 2011 at 9:49 am

    @ornery curmudgeon:

    I wish reflexive point-and-laugher’ers would take some time to wonder why in 2000 the media divided this country into Red and Blue and no one even bothered to notice: THAT is the kind of thing that creeps me out. Not that it was done, but that it was accepted without question.

    And here I thought that the Red/Blue dichotomy was color-coding shorthand for majority-right-Republican-conservative and majority-left-Democratic-liberal. How could I have been so unquestioning as to fail to recognize that this was a media conspiracy to . . . um, to . . . to do what, exactly?

  40. 40.

    RossinDetroit

    April 3, 2011 at 9:50 am

    As for today, I’ll have a ton to do. I’ll probably blow it all off and spend the day in the shop trying to get depletion mode MOSFETs to behave like triodes in a solid state White Cathode Follower circuit.

  41. 41.

    Chad N Freude

    April 3, 2011 at 9:54 am

    I saw this issue of New York at a newsstand yesterday, and I intended to read the article today. Thanks to all of you who pointed out Hagan’s terrible pseudo-journalism and false equating of rabid right and literal left, for saving me the ten or so minutes out of my life it would have taken to read it.

  42. 42.

    WereBear

    April 3, 2011 at 9:56 am

    @nancydarling: You’re right, but I didn’t consider that a conspiracy theory. Since they admit they do it.

    @PaulW: Congratulations!

    I won a Basic Book Package from the folks at Publish Green, and am busy getting my book ready. Heady stuff!

  43. 43.

    AnotherBruce

    April 3, 2011 at 10:06 am

    I’m not worried, since I’ll be part of the 1% they don’t wipe out.

    First, they killed 99% of the population, and I did nothing.

    Then, well there is no then.

  44. 44.

    dr. bloor

    April 3, 2011 at 10:12 am

    They don’t have to go to all that trouble. As the quote from The International goes, “You control the debt, you control everything.”

  45. 45.

    Donut

    April 3, 2011 at 10:13 am

    @Chad N Freude:

    You’re right to avoid it. I feel stupider having read it. For whatever reason (I vote for a laziness and deliberate ignorance combo) Hagan went for the “all sides do it” paradigm. I’ve avoided Jones and Beck, but listened to and watched all of the others pretty extensively. If you spent just a small amount of time with Greenwald and Maddow, then Hannity and Limbaugh, yet you feel you can still say they’re all engaged in the same activity, you’re either lying or you have not a fuckkin clue what you’re writing about.

  46. 46.

    Phyllis

    April 3, 2011 at 10:13 am

    @RossinDetroit: I did that yesterday. Today I’m going out for Sunday lunch and then plant some flowers.

  47. 47.

    Marmot

    April 3, 2011 at 10:14 am

    @El Cid:

    About 15 or 20 years ago, his voice would have been one of many, of different conspiratorial leanings mostly friendliest to the right wing, pinging out of shortwave radio.

    Nope. About 15 years ago, Alex Jones moved from his cable access show to KLBJ, an FM talk station. He did do (and I think still does) shortwave, and now he’s big on the Internets and he makes videos for crazy-stupid people.

    The world of militia conspiracies saving us from Hillary Clinton fulfilling the 50 year old plan of having the UN takeover the USA; of Jewish and anti-gold conspiracies manipulating the economy for their varied nefarious purposes; of anti-Christ fearing fundamentalists; or of Big Government and the AMA plotting to keep us all sick so we listeners would buy the show’s all natural healing snake oils.

    Yes and no. I think he was pretty pro-militia, but Waco was where he really started to get traction. That and Ruby Ridge gave the anti-government libertarian types an example of gummit run amok against semi-regular folk. I don’t think he’s ever been on the Jews-run-the-world crazy talk, but he’s certainly picked up a lot of its cultural detritus, including wild accusations against the Tri-lateral Commission, the UN, the Bilderberg Group, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, et cetera.

    After he saw the Matrix–I kid you not–he immediately took it up as a uniting theme. “People, we’re living in the Matrix!” So if any of his other ideas sound like they came from movies or TV or old mythology, they probably did. It’s like how no one ever reported seeing the “Gray” aliens come out of a UFO until a late-70s TV show invented them.

    So it’s been microchips to control your thoughts and follow your actions, fluoride is POISON!, superpox, 9/11 Truth, and a billion other false issues that he and his loony staff generate at breakneck pace. He’s popular among people who like libertarian ideals but don’t really read a lot, and can’t determine a source’s credibility. That means a lot of people on the right, but not necessarily. There’s a big swath of them here in Central Texas–you’ll hear a little of that sort of attitude in Bill Hicks’ comedy, though he wasn’t crazy.

    I try to poll them when they protest tax day to see what new idiot thing they’re up to–they typically vote Repub, but they always claim both parties are in on the game, so there are a lot of Libertarian voters among them too. Sigh. At least they’re not religious fundamentalists.

  48. 48.

    scav

    April 3, 2011 at 10:16 am

    Oh come, how many of us are just seeing that little blue train chugging up a hill: “I know I fear, I Know I fear, I Know I fear, I KNOW I fear!” with the little circus animals and people standing around watching. (Funny, the circus master looks like Glen Beck in my version.)

  49. 49.

    RossinDetroit

    April 3, 2011 at 10:22 am

    @Marmot:

    I try to poll them when they protest tax day to see what new idiot thing they’re up to—they typically vote Repub, but they always claim both parties are in on the game,

    If one of the conspiracy theories is that capital controls politics for its own purposes then they’re absolutely right that both parties are in on it. Thanks to SCOTUS and the cost of media there’s been a breakthrough in the ability of wealthy elites to steer our politics. In both parties.

  50. 50.

    Marmot

    April 3, 2011 at 10:22 am

    @ornery curmudgeon:

    Alex Jones isn’t a creditable good guy but there is clearly SOMEthing going on and ‘my side’ seems to never catch on, maybe because they’re too busy mocking.

    No dude. Just no. Alex Jones is a fool, a nut, or both. Your fervent wish for a secret cabal of all-powerful manipulators notwithstanding.

    I wish reflexive point-and-laugher’ers would take some time to wonder why in 2000 the media divided this country into Red and Blue and no one even bothered to notice: THAT is the kind of thing that creeps me out. Not that it was done, but that it was accepted without question.

    I wish “my side” would take pointing and laughing up as a major campaign issue. I’m gonna assume you wrote that Red-Blue stuff in haste, or that you’re trolling, cuz that’s too daft for even Alex Jones.

  51. 51.

    RossinDetroit

    April 3, 2011 at 10:26 am

    Where Jones and his ilk fail is in seeing ordinary greed and lust for power everywhere and assuming it’s coordinated. The world isn’t that organized. Self interest will pop up everywhere because it’s part of human nature. The organizing principle is the desire for individual advantage, not some hidden evil cabal.

  52. 52.

    Marmot

    April 3, 2011 at 10:32 am

    @RossinDetroit:

    If one of the conspiracy theories is that capital controls politics for its own purposes then they’re absolutely right that both parties are in on it. Thanks to SCOTUS and the cost of media there’s been a breakthrough in the ability of wealthy elites to steer our politics. In both parties.

    Certainly, but it’s a lie cobbled together with little pieces of truth. Jones would have you believe that there’s an orchestrated plan to use microchips, fake disasters, diseases, etc. to control the world.

    Sure, the wealthy and powerful want more wealth and power. That’s the teaspoon of sugar that makes the crazy medicine go down.

    Edit: I see RossinDetroit beat me to it. Dang you to Heck!

  53. 53.

    Woodrowfan

    April 3, 2011 at 10:34 am

    deleted by poster for over snark (but I agree with CF)

  54. 54.

    RossinDetroit

    April 3, 2011 at 10:35 am

    Maybe Jones is our modern Homer, spinning tales of the cruel and capricious gods abusing Man for their amusement.

  55. 55.

    indubitably

    April 3, 2011 at 10:43 am

    Yeesh, Alex Jones sounds like Daily Kos anymore.

  56. 56.

    Nick

    April 3, 2011 at 10:44 am

    sounds like mclaura

  57. 57.

    Marmot

    April 3, 2011 at 10:47 am

    @Nick: Who’s that?

    Waaaaaaaait a minute! Are you that sock puppet guy?

  58. 58.

    Davis X. Machina

    April 3, 2011 at 11:00 am

    It’s the Stonecutters, I tells ya

    All: Who controls the British crown?
    Who keeps the metric system down?
    We do! We do!
    Karl: Who leaves Atlantis off the maps?
    Lenny: Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
    Alien: We do! We do!
    All: Who holds back the electric car?
    Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?
    We do! We do!
    Skinner: Who robs cavefish of their sight?
    Homer: Who rigs every Oscar night?
    All: We do! We do!

  59. 59.

    Hermione Granger-Weasley

    April 3, 2011 at 11:09 am

    @Josie: yah, creeping shariah is the same as the red menace of McCarthyism. from crypto communists under every bed to crypto muslims everywhere.
    But the moozlems are even skeerier, cuz they can build…..terror mosques!!

  60. 60.

    Superluminar

    April 3, 2011 at 11:11 am

    @Davis X Machina
    also the South Park Truther episode, where it turns out the 9/11 conspiracy theories are made up by the Bush admin so that they appear to be competent…

  61. 61.

    WereBear

    April 3, 2011 at 11:19 am

    At its root, I see the Conspiracy Market as people who cannot handle complex systems.

    Just as their spirituality tends to be a Big Boss in the Sky, their concept of how any works is that Someone Is In Charge, and This Is All Done Deliberately.

  62. 62.

    Hawes

    April 3, 2011 at 11:23 am

    Jones clearly doesn’t know about the Pentavirate, who run everything in the world, including the newspapers, and meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows.

    Tony Giardino: So who’s in this Pentavirate?

    Stuart Mackenzie: The Queen, The Vatican, The Gettys, The Rothschilds, *and* Colonel Sanders before he went tits up. Oh, I hated the Colonel with is wee *beady* eyes, and that smug look on his face. “Oh, you’re gonna buy my chicken! Ohhhhh!”

    Charlie Mackenzie: Dad, how can you hate “The Colonel”?

    Stuart Mackenzie: Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes ya crave it fortnightly, smartass!

  63. 63.

    maya

    April 3, 2011 at 11:42 am

    This does not make any monitary sense. If the grand conspiritors kill off 99% of the poulation who can they then manipulate to pump up New World Order,common, after they corner the IPO? It could work only if the subsidiary Carlyle Group merges with XE and Kraft Foods for a nifty house-to-house pocket search joint venture while keeping the mice occupied.

  64. 64.

    Yutsano

    April 3, 2011 at 11:43 am

    I saw the title and thought you meant this AL.

  65. 65.

    Hermione Granger-Weasley

    April 3, 2011 at 11:49 am

    @WereBear: well…..Red Domino Theory got us into Vietnam and shaped our FP for a half century. Now Green Domino Theory is pretty endemic in the US.
    70% of Americans are against the “terror mosque” in polling.
    That is more than the 27% crazification factor.
    And Green Domino Theory is what the shariah law freakout is all about.

  66. 66.

    RossInDetroit

    April 3, 2011 at 11:53 am

    I’ve seriously wondered at times if the Cold War wasn’t on some levels a long con to keep everyone amped up on fear and compliant to authoritarian government.
    Evidence: GHWB was the former CIA director yet was wrong-footed when the USSR ‘suddenly’ folded. How could that possibly happen?

  67. 67.

    Davis X. Machina

    April 3, 2011 at 12:04 pm

    @maya: The Black Death caused the largest run-up in wages, and general level of prosperity, for the common man Europe had ever seen, or would see, for centuries.

    For the peasant survivors of the plague, it was an absolute gold mine.

  68. 68.

    ornery curmudgeon

    April 3, 2011 at 12:06 pm

    @ornery curmudgeon: @Chad N Freude: “…here I thought that the Red/Blue dichotomy was color-coding shorthand for majority-right-Republican-conservative and majority-left-Democratic-liberal. How could I have been so unquestioning as to fail to recognize that this was a media conspiracy to . . . um, to . . . to do what, exactly?”

    To divide the nation into two warring factions. (who said ‘media’ conspiracy?)

  69. 69.

    befuggled

    April 3, 2011 at 12:11 pm

    @RossInDetroit: How could it have happened? Pretty easily: GHWB believed his own bullshit. Who did see it coming in advance?

    I don’t think “long con” is the way to think about it. Think “opportunism” instead. The US and western Europe were never exactly friendly with the USSR, and it took Adolf Hitler to drive them together for a brief alliance. It’s not a surprise that the wartime alliance fell apart afterwards, nor is it a surprise that some people saw this as an opportunity.

  70. 70.

    Brachiator

    April 3, 2011 at 12:14 pm

    @El Cid:

    About 15 or 20 years ago, his voice would have been one of many, of different conspiratorial leanings mostly friendliest to the right wing, pinging out of shortwave radio.

    Actually, this stuff is the bread and butter of late night radio talk shows like “Coast to Coast,” etc. The old standards of conspiracy reveries have absorbed and received new life thanks to birther nonsense and fears about the coming domination of either China or Islam.

    I suppose that psychologists could have a field day on how this stuff is ultimately based in fear and the inability of some people to accommodate change or complexity.

    Sadly, Obama’s election and the racial anxiety that erupted within some people, has made this craziness go mainstream in a way that it did not do before. So, for example, charlatan financial commentator Charles Payne was recently speculating on his radio show about whether Obama was deliberately making the US into a second rate nation economically and militarily, and whether the firing of Warren Buffet’s top associate was really an indicator that Buffet himself seeks to control the free market by nefarious means.

    And while in the past, some Republicans would more quietly curry favor with the John Birchers and other extreme right wing nutjobs, today the GOP is working this crap for all its worth.

  71. 71.

    Chad N Freude

    April 3, 2011 at 12:22 pm

    @ornery curmudgeon:

    (who said ‘media’ conspiracy?)

    I thought you did:

    I wish reflexive point-and-laugher’ers would take some time to wonder why in 2000 the media divided this country into Red and Blue

  72. 72.

    RossInDetroit

    April 3, 2011 at 12:35 pm

    @befuggled:
    Certainly opportunism. The conflict between East and West served interests on both sides. I still think we got conned into seeing the USSR as an imminent threat that required a beefed-up military long after they were far too wrapped up in domestic problems to actively menace us. Afghanistan was an obstacle that tipped the USSR’s military off the rails and destabilized domestic politics.

  73. 73.

    scav

    April 3, 2011 at 12:36 pm

    ornery curmudgeon is either very very young or very very amnesiac.

  74. 74.

    feebog

    April 3, 2011 at 12:41 pm

    @Marmot 46:

    He’s popular among people who like libertarian ideals but don’t really read a lot, and can’t determine a source’s credibility. That means a lot of people on the right, but not necessarily.

    Describes my oldest son exactly. Despite the fact he holds down a very responsible job, he does not read, and does not allow television in the house. So all his information is through the internet, and Alex Jones is one of his favorite sources. I visted a couple weeks ago (they live in rural NW Washington state). He had four 55 gallon drums of water in the back yard and was storing freeze dried food in his closet. He was also storing rice, which led to rats getting into the rice, which led to him setting our traps, which led to rats dying and stinking up the house.

    It is a never ending circus of crazy there, makes it hard to visit, even for a day.

  75. 75.

    Hermione Granger-Weasley

    April 3, 2011 at 12:51 pm

    @Brachiator: but it isnt exploitation of teh crazy….they are only 27%.
    Its exploitation of teh stupid.
    The lower 3/5s of the bellcurve.

  76. 76.

    Ronc99

    April 3, 2011 at 12:57 pm

    After watching Obama morph into King Dubya II, I really can no longer afford to dismiss any conspiracy theories.

  77. 77.

    Yutsano

    April 3, 2011 at 12:57 pm

    @Hermione Granger-Weasley: :: pulls up boots as bullpuckey begins to rapidly accumulate ::

  78. 78.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    April 3, 2011 at 12:58 pm

    Fortunately you have to fuck the mouse to get the pox so only Jones and his Companions in Crazee are in any danger.

  79. 79.

    burnspbesq

    April 3, 2011 at 1:05 pm

    @Southern Beale:

    I agree with a good chunk of what Stiglitz wrote in the VF piece, but I feel obligated to say that it has a huge piece of post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy at it’s core. The notion that the current global economic structure was “designed” to benefit some ill-defined elite is nonsense. The possibity of races to the bottom is inherent in any system that recognizes national sovereignty. Every country gets to decide what its tax, labor, and environmental laws are. If Botwsana, for example, decides that having a garment manufacturing industry that can pull a few hundred thousand of its citizens out of abject poverty into something a little better, and it’s willing to make certain compromises to get those jobs, well, that’s Botswana’s call, and there neither is nor should be fuck-all that bleeding-heart Americans can do about it.

  80. 80.

    Brachiator

    April 3, 2011 at 1:07 pm

    @Hermione Granger-Weasley:

    but it isnt exploitation of teh crazy….they are only 27%. Its exploitation of teh stupid. The lower 3/5s of the bellcurve.

    So how does this explain Donald Trump?

    Or 911 wackjob (and rock star)Charlie Sheen?

    And only 27%? I think you missed the mid term elections. The influence of the birthers, the conspiracy nuts, the Tea Party People is not easily contained.

  81. 81.

    maya

    April 3, 2011 at 1:30 pm

    @Davis X. Machina: So they’re doing this for the good of the peasants?

  82. 82.

    James E Powell

    April 3, 2011 at 1:34 pm

    @burnspbesq:

    there neither is nor should be fuck-all that bleeding-heart Americans can do about it.

    There is something Americans can do. They, or rather their government, can impose tariffs on products made by child labor, from countries without environmental laws, and so on.

    Whether this is something that should be done is a matter of debate, I’m sure.

  83. 83.

    piratedan

    April 3, 2011 at 1:35 pm

    @Brachiator: I know that there are still [plenty of small business folks that have no investment in the culture wars that still firmly believe that Republicans are good for business that haven’t clued into the fact that Republicans are big proponents of their corporate benefactors, small town business, not so much.

  84. 84.

    Hermione Granger-Weasley

    April 3, 2011 at 1:41 pm

    @Brachiator: lawl. You are telling me they aren’t all stupid? There are only two kinds of people on the Right anymore. Exploited and exploiters.
    Sure the exploiters are mostly invertor dementors like Rush and Brietbart, or free market boggarts like Sully and Douthat. But all the exploiters know what they are doing. Conservatism is anti-empirical. It FAILED. So the grifters and carny barkers have to scam the base into giving them another shot.
    Do you know why Huckabee and Trump have embraced birtherism?
    Because they can’t turn it off.
    There are more birthers now than there were a year ago in spite of a full court press from conservative elites to turn it off…..just like there are more Taliban inspite of America’s furious effort to wipe them out/deligitimize them.

    ha. ha. ha.

  85. 85.

    Brachiator

    April 3, 2011 at 1:47 pm

    @piratedan:

    I know that there are still [plenty of small business folks that have no investment in the culture wars that still firmly believe that Republicans are good for business that haven’t clued into the fact that Republicans are big proponents of their corporate benefactors, small town business, not so much.

    No, there’s a blindness and anger at play here also. Our foodtruck guy notes how the management types at some of the stops he makes have this deep anger at Obama and the Democrats, and are convinced that the Democrats not only want to tax business into the ground, but are also convinced that the Democrats want to give all their hard earned money to illegal immigrants, nonwhites and other “non deserving people.”

    And, absolute true story: one of the companies along his route treated all their employees to lunch, and then fired them all at 2 pm and shut down the company. I bet the owners took their nice tidy little pile and will do well in the future.

  86. 86.

    Hermione Granger-Weasley

    April 3, 2011 at 1:47 pm

    @Brachiator:

    I think you missed the mid term elections.

    I didnt. Did you? We are living in Distributed Jesusland.
    But the right can only win locally now. I think the Right may never win the WH again.
    And that is making them even crazier.

  87. 87.

    Hermione Granger-Weasley

    April 3, 2011 at 1:51 pm

    @Brachiator:

    No, there’s a blindness and anger at play here also.

    aka stupidity. That is why social media and teh interwebz and the demographic timer are going to kill off conservatism. Its a perfect storm.
    ;)
    Only old white christian people are conservatives anymore.

  88. 88.

    quaint irene

    April 3, 2011 at 2:13 pm

    Well, at least the ‘mouse pox’ thing is a little new. When I first read the quote I thought ‘flouride? They’re still pissing their pants over flouride?”

  89. 89.

    Brachiator

    April 3, 2011 at 2:17 pm

    @Hermione Granger-Weasley:

    But all the exploiters know what they are doing. Conservatism is anti-empirical. It FAILED.

    Again, you must have missed the mid term elections. And even before the mid terms, the Democrats were unable to pass a sustained budget or come up with an alternative to the Bush tax cuts.

    Do you know why Huckabee and Trump have embraced birtherism? Because they can’t turn it off. There are more birthers now than there were a year ago in spite of a full court press from conservative elites to turn it off

    Again, you’re not paying attention. The mainstream GOP is milking birtherism for all it’s worth because it has given them a new lease on life. Had they not been, like Voldemort, revived from the dead by Sarah Palin and their ability to exploit racial anxiety over Obama’s election, the Republican Party would be on its last legs, like the Whigs a historical curiosity.

    …just like there are more Taliban inspite of America’s furious effort to wipe them out/deligitimize them.

    This perhaps says more than you are willing to admit about blindness and stupidity. The Taliban, like Voldemort, bring nothing bring nothing but nihilism and negation. But they thrill some who long for certainty, purity, authority without thought. The Taliban is is doppelgänger (to the Tea Party.

  90. 90.

    Librarian

    April 3, 2011 at 2:20 pm

    Actually, when I first read that I wasn’t sure whether it was a right-wing conspiracy theory or a left wing one. It’s getting so you can’t tell the difference anymore.

  91. 91.

    Caz

    April 3, 2011 at 2:29 pm

    I like the This is Spinal Tap reference in there, whether intentional or not.

  92. 92.

    quaint irene

    April 3, 2011 at 2:30 pm

    They were replaying part of the ‘Civil War’ and I was rereading parts of Mary Chestnut’s ‘A Diary From Dixie.’ In the first page she describes hearing of the election of Lincoln and her fellow passenger’s reactions.
    ” The excitement was very great. Everybody was talking at the same time. One, a little more moved than the others, stood up and said despondently: “The die is cast; no more vain regrets; sad forebodings are useless; the stake is life or death.” “Did you ever!” was the prevailing exclamation, and some one cried out: “Now that the black radical Republicans have the power I suppose they will Brown 1 us all. ” No doubt of it.”

    Sound familiar to wingnut’s reaction to Obama’s election?

  93. 93.

    Phoenician in a time of Romans

    April 3, 2011 at 2:32 pm

    @quaint irene:

    Well, at least the ‘mouse pox’ thing is a little new.

    Go read Richard Preston’s “The Demon in the Freezer”.

    IIRC,
    i, Mousepox and smallpox are the same sort of thing, different species.

    ii, Australian researchers stuck a mouse IL-4 gene into mousepox and found, to their shock, that it blew through a mousepox immune population of mice. This experiment has been replicated.

    iii, It should be fairly easy to do this for smallpox assuming you have (i) human IL-4 to be transcribed, (ii) a bioengineering kit and (iii) smallpox.

    iv, the first two of the above are readily available. Officially the last is under very secure conditions in two places in the world, but unofficially no-one really knows…

    v, And, oh, yes – smallpox has killed more people that any other disease, ever.

  94. 94.

    Hermione Granger-Weasley

    April 3, 2011 at 2:38 pm

    @Brachiator: lol. the Taliban are WINNING.
    30k of them are kicking America’s ass. we have 100k troops there and 250k coalition troops (Karzai’s and NATO).
    The Taliban aren’t teabaggers……they are the FUCKING VIETCONG you dumbass.

  95. 95.

    Hermione Granger-Weasley

    April 3, 2011 at 2:40 pm

    @Brachiator:

    The mainstream GOP is milking birtherism

    They. Can’t. Turn. It. Off.
    Even Brietbart and Allahpundit have tried.
    And the election results are pure Distributed Jesusland.
    The Red Wave turned into beach break in colorado. Where we are, like, EDUCATED.

  96. 96.

    Darrell Whitchurch

    April 3, 2011 at 2:41 pm

    Where to the FEMA concentration camps and black choppers hide when Republicans are in the White House? Alex and his ilk only seem to see them when a Democrat wins.

  97. 97.

    DPirate

    April 3, 2011 at 2:42 pm

    @Jason: It’s very simple, really. ALEXJONES is an anagram for SATAN.

    Well, it is in the secret lizard people language…!

    @quaint irene: Hanta virus.

    @Brachiator:

    Obama’s election (etc) has made this craziness go mainstream in a way that it did not do before.

    I think that for your average American what happens and is happening to our country is just so far removed from anything they can identify with that crazy shit like this is the simplest explanation for, or at least the most satisfying. Any identifiable evil is preferable to discovering that the problem is simply humanity. It at least allows you to retain confidence in structure, meaning capitalism, nationality, race, justice, whatever. As in “the system is good, but has been corrupted”, instead of “the system is corruptive”.

    Corruptive a word? Spellcheck says no!

  98. 98.

    andy

    April 3, 2011 at 2:48 pm

    I’ve often had a queasy feeling when I find out that people I know that seem normal and sane also buy Jones’s crazy talk. It’s like going to a friend’s house and finding encrusted Furry costumes hanging in a closet.

  99. 99.

    quaint irene

    April 3, 2011 at 2:50 pm

    Corruptive a word? Spellcheck says no!

    My dictionary says yes!

  100. 100.

    Chad N Freude

    April 3, 2011 at 2:57 pm

    @Hermione Granger-Weasley:

    Only old white christian people are conservatives anymore.

    I work with middle-aged and relatively young people who are committed Xtians and buy into most if not all of the conservative blather.

  101. 101.

    Hermione Granger-Weasley

    April 3, 2011 at 3:13 pm

    @Chad N Freude: sure, but they are not a power demographic. Most xtians are old.
    Youth dont vote for racists, because racists are not cool.
    Do you know the five pillars of the GOP?
    racism.
    anti-intellectualism, including anti-science.
    free market madness.
    christianity.
    ensoulment.
    ;)

  102. 102.

    Margaret Thatcher

    April 3, 2011 at 3:55 pm

    @quaint irene: Sounds at least as much like upper- and middle-class England’s reaction to the declaration of war in 1914.

    Simple people who hate complicated things, because they’re complicated, are awfully prone to embrace what looks like The One Big Simple Solution.

  103. 103.

    Brachiator

    April 3, 2011 at 4:09 pm

    @Hermione Granger-Weasley:

    Only old white christian people are conservatives anymore.

    Not even remotely true.

    But the right can only win locally now. I think the Right may never win the WH again.

    The damage being done at the state level will have national consequences. And the right does not have to win the White House to wield enormous power. Budget bills have to originate in the House, where the Tea Party holds the GOP majority hostage. Judicial and other appointments are already delayed. More GOP gains in the Senate will make it harder for Obama to accomplish anything.

    lol. the Taliban are WINNING. 30k of them are kicking America’s ass. we have 100k troops there and 250k coalition troops (Karzai’s and NATO). The Taliban aren’t teabaggers……they are the FUCKING VIETCONG you dumbass.

    No, the Taliban are the FUCKING KHMER ROUGE, you dumbass. Ignorant, primitive, murderous. They will consume their own.

  104. 104.

    DPirate

    April 4, 2011 at 12:28 am

    @Brachiator: Isn’t the argument around here that the american right is the khmer rouge (Ignorant, primitive, murderous), too? So, we’ve got khmer rouge vs. khmer rouge in Afghanistan. Must be home court advantage.

  105. 105.

    burnspbesq

    April 4, 2011 at 3:08 am

    @James E Powell:

    “There is something Americans can do. They, or rather their government, can impose tariffs on products made by child labor, from countries without environmental laws, and so on.”

    I’m not an international trade lawyer, but I’m reasonably certain that we gave up the right to impose those kinds of punitive tariffs when we signed GATT and became a member of the WTO.

  106. 106.

    burnspbesq

    April 4, 2011 at 3:14 am

    Seems fairly obvious to me, after reading approximately 20 of her comments, that Hermione = matoko, spoofing an IP address to escape BJ perdition.

  107. 107.

    Paul in KY

    April 4, 2011 at 11:29 am

    @burnspbesq: Hah! I only had to read 10 or so before I figured it out. It is her improved use of punctuation and various other english style points (that she used to eschew) that threw me off at first.

  108. 108.

    Paul in KY

    April 4, 2011 at 11:36 am

    @Hermione Granger-Weasley: Racist youths will vote for racists.

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