Today’s the day: the definitive book on Ron Paul, Ron Paul’s Revolution: The Man and the
Movement He Inspired, is out – and I’ll
host a talk with the author, Brian Doherty (as well as audience members
representing various factions of the libertarian movement) live and in person at the Dionysium THIS THURSDAY, MAY 17 (8pm) at 2
Havemeyer St. in Williamsburg (on the second floor, right above the future
site of the bar Muchmore’s). First
subway stop in on the L (Bedford Ave.), you cowardly Manhattanites (then just
walk three blocks east, entering the building through the N. 9th St. side
door).
I. RON PAUL
This is a big week for Paul, who has made public his plan
to, in essence, give up on beating Romney in the popular vote and just see how
many convention delegates he can wrangle.
Ironically, given that Paul has flirted with conspiracy theorists, it’s
tempting to conspiracy-theorize about what his real plan is: Actually try to
get enough delegates to take over the GOP convention in August? Play nice to keep his son Rand in the GOP’s
good graces (maybe even get him on the ticket, which would please me greatly)? Play not
so nice in order to get Rand on the ticket?
Get out of the way so libertarians can migrate to newly-minted
Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson?
Even Newt Gingrich now says
Mitt Romney should start imitating Ron Paul, who represents real, historic,
seismic political change.
But one person who is back
on cue to say Paul is done and good riddens and furthermore don’t read Brian’s
book is (my fellow Phillips Foundation fellow) Jamie Kirchick, who has been
periodically re-revealing to the world, at critical junctures, that Paul
decades ago produced newsletters with a few racist or conspiracist passages –
and who plainly has lost any ability to see Paul, or even the broader
libertarian movement he represents, through any other lens.
But for the sake of argument, let’s ask: What’s so terrible about conspiracy
theories?
Don’t get me wrong, I am a rationalist, skeptic, and man
who notoriously has little patience for assertions made without evidence
(including the claims that there is a God, that government reduces poverty, or
that U.S. military intervention abroad is usually worth it). But given that every candidate, alas, has (or
purports to have) beliefs that are unproven or irrational (Jeremiah Wright,
Mormonism, Keynes, etc., etc.), shouldn’t we perhaps stop judging such things
merely by how “taboo” they are and instead ask what the likely real-world consequences are?
Paul warning about the international elites gathering at the
Bilderberg conferences (as they in fact do) may sound odd, for instance, but we
should be far less frightened of Paul than of, say, an average politician who
claims that the Department of Commerce is a useful thing, even though the
latter claim sounds too boring to be dubbed “crazy.”
II. ALEX JONES
Paul (like my ex-boss Judge Andrew Napolitano) has been
criticized for appearing on the show hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (who
is, like Paul, a
product of Texas – but also, like the Dionysium events, a
product of notoriously weird Austin, TX).
But even Jones has his uses. Who
else dares to interview
someone portraying G.I. Joe villain Cobra Commander and, ridiculous as it
may seem, underscore the point that real government can be as authoritarian as
this villain?
(Fans of conspiracy theories and G.I. Joe should be thrilled
next month, by the way, since the impending sequel G.I. Joe: Retaliation depicts Cobra Commander as a literal reptile
man who uses his shapeshifting powers to become president of the U.S. and
institute fascist rule. As you may know,
one conspiracy theory widely believed these days, though not by Paul, is that alien
reptile-men are controlling the
planet – and the Moon – and can occasionally be glimpsed in various odd but
routine video glitches from TV shows, which now festoon YouTube and mesmerize
paranoid schizophrenics everywhere, many of them fans of conspiracy theorist,
lecturer, former sportscaster, and ardent reptile-resister David Icke.)
One thing that put Jones on the map a few years ago was
getting the first sneaked footage of the Bohemian Grove ceremonies that government
and business leaders attend in California.
It looks like just a big, miscellaneous conference/vacation outing to
me, but as a result of Jones’s investigation of the faux-pagan ceremonies and
his subsequent outrage over them, there are online clips – note that I am not claiming they’re worth watching – of
a less-polished-sounding Jones circa 2000 outside then-Gov. Bush’s Austin
office with a bullhorn, ranting about Bush mimicking ancient
Babylonian/Druidical human sacrifice rituals – which is technically true, I
should add...but then, we did faux-Native American ceremonies when I was in Boy
Scouts, and that does not mean I will sell you down the river to Aquila the
Eagle Spirit someday (most likely). Jones
seems to take the silly ceremonies pretty literally.
Perhaps the funniest – but again basically harmless, maybe
even healthy – side effect of Jones’s crusade is that there is footage of him back
then confronting one Grove attender on the street to ask him what it all means,
and that attender is the man God seemingly created to play the role of shifty-seeming
accused person, namely: David Gergen.
(He’s also the man who briefly slightly increased my fear that the Clintons might actually have
murdered Vince Foster, when he unexpectedly ended a Larry King interview in the
mid-90s by nervously pulling out a written, legalistic statement about how if he had any knowledge of inappropriate
behavior during his time at the White House it was not behavior that, to the degree he was aware of it at all, rose to the level of criminality necessitating
a report to the police – or words to
that effect – looking jowly and unhappy the whole time, as he is wont to do.)
Anyway, a very angry-sounding Gergen basically handed a
then-amateurish conspiracy-videographer a gift-wrapped documentary climax by
freaking out and saying repeatedly to Jones: “I disrespect you” for sneaking
into the Grove ceremonies without permission, knowing full well that what goes
on there is meant to remain secret, how dare you, etc.
And it’s incidents like that, I suppose, that caused Jones
to go from being a gung-ho conservative (wary of defense cuts) to being a man
who believes the whole system has to come down, from the bioengineering schemes
of the Bilderbergers to the child-molestation rituals of the Boy Scouts, if there is still time.
III. BILLY CORGAN
In the meantime, Jones has even interviewed an eager Billy
Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins at length about such matters (h/t Daniel
Velez). Interestingly, Corgan says in
the interview that he longs for the freedom-loving anarchic impulses in both
Occupy and Tea Party to grow – while explicitly denouncing wealth
redistribution, defending his own millions, and even praising Ron Paul and Ayn
Rand (albeit with the fitting caveat that he worries Ayn Rand might be one of
the Illuminati).
Sounds kooky, but, hey, conservatives, it helped give him
the courage to argue with Al Gore and question the shaky global warming
narrative (“you’d think I was skinning
babies alive,” Corgan says of reactions to his global warming skepticism).
Corgan says that as a Gen Xer he’s keen to help worried and
confused millennials understand what freedom is. He overhears people asking about the Federal Reserve in restaurants lately thanks
to people like Ron Paul and the late Aaron Russo criticizing it, and he thinks
we’re closer to rigorous debate than ever before, near a tipping point in
public consciousness. He says happiness
and freedom are not what we’re being taught to think they are: “It isn’t like these jerk-offs writing these
articles ‘The Constitution doesn’t work anymore.’ You start to see those articles popping up.
‘The Constitution’s outdated.’ The
Constitution’s not outdated...So [we need] a return to constitutional values,
emphasis on liberty and freedom, not being afraid of innovation, new ideas,
rigorous debate.”
He and Jones both worry about hipness – such as the
anti-Kony crusade – being the new veil for impending military or other
governmental action, and that’s not so crazy.
Tactical paranoia of this sort
(to coin a phrase) may have its positive uses in a world that really is, after
all, ruled by pervasive authoritarian regimes.
Hey, it’s better than the anti-capitalist brand of paranoia
touted by a respectful academy when it takes the form of French literary
theory, such as Deleuze and Guattari’s book Anti-Oedipus. They think ideology is like marking on a
giant metaphorical egg that controls our minds – and they get cited with
respect constantly in literary journals.
Gotta admit the expansive, polycentric cover of their book A Thousand Plateaus always looked
intriguing to me, but I suspect it’s not a celebration of diversity and freedom
within free markets.
IV. SANDER HICKS AND
THE 9/11 TRUTHERS
This month Obama, far from singing the Internationale, spent
May Day justifiably celebrating the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden
(as Bush surely would have) – and we’ll all likely be further celebrating that
event in movie theatres on December 21, 2012 (coincidentally the day the most
pessimistic and mystical conspiracy theorists have been anticipating as the end
of the world), when Kathryn Bigelow’s movie about the raid on bin Laden comes
out (too late to give Obama an election boost, which must irk him at least a
little).
I have to admit that when bin Laden was killed, I was
curious how my leftist 9/11 conspiracy theorist friend (yes, I have one) Sander
Hicks would react. After all, Obama was
Sander’s fellow leftist, but wasn’t he now confirming Bush’s story about who
the culprit in the 9/11 attacks was – and how to deal with him? Within days, Sander began reporting his
theory that Obama has always been a tool of the CIA. Sander sums up his latest thoughts on the
issue – and how it became a spiritual transformation for him – in his new,
second book on the subject (out today), the spectacularly-titled Slingshot to the Juggernaut: Total
Resistance to Secrecy and War Is Total Love for the Truth.
Like the folks at Popular
Mechanics and Skeptical Inquirer, I am unpersuaded
that any of the admittedly weird, free-associative connections that can be
traced between various nations’ – and stateless movements’ – intelligence
branches add up to the qualitatively very different claim that the U.S. wanted
to blow up the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon (a messy and
stupid-seeming hypothetical strategic move if ever there was one), though
Sander does provide some useful reminders of how oddly entangled those forces
are.
(The allies and foes sometimes blur together enough to make
it sound like that scene in JFK where Joe Pesci starts freaking out and ranting
about people switching sides and everything being impossible to keep track of –
inevitably, some of these intelligence and military types know each other, like
ostensible foes who meet at the Gridiron Dinner – or Marvel and DC staffers.)
In fact, by the free-associative method – one might perhaps
call it tendency of mind – favored by the conspiracy theorists (this guy knew
this other guy who used to work for a holding company that once employed this
other guy who back when he was in the military, etc., etc.), you could argue
that I am part of the
conspiracy.
I mean, hey, I just talked to a former Rumsfeld staffer last
week, I went to a music performance by Elliott Abrams’ daughter-in-law-to-be
(who tracks potential terror groups for the NYPD) shortly before that, and I’ve
previously described the disillusioning encounter I once had on the street with
then-unemployed William Kristol colleague Ellen Bork (who, for a
globe-manipulating conspirator, also devoted a lot of time to blogging about
how peeved she was at the company that sold her a bad mattress a few years
ago).
I even told a Cheney speechwriter once that he should start
watching 24! (So I practically created Gitmo!) I was briefly romantically involved with an
NIH scientist, now converted to Mormonism, who was a bit obsessed with an
ex-boyfriend of hers, an ex-boyfriend who’s (A) been accused of indirect ties to
terror-supporting groups and (B) worked for the Bush White House!! (That’s her in the photo when we dressed
gaudily on a wacky trip to Vegas.) Do I need to connect the dots here,
people?!?
But then, it’s a small world. In fact, Sander (who, in his capacity as a
carpenter, built the odd Occupy shrine/altar that was down at Zuccotti, by the
way) is himself the son of a World Bank economist, an economist one of whose
closest friends seems to work for the CIA – and warned Sander not to make himself
a target!
Not that such ironies – or any number of absurd claims by
Truthers – make the hawks and neocons correct about everything, either. See, I’m increasingly resigned to the view
that every faction is a bit nuts (without necessarily calling them equals, I
should add). Many of them deserve each
other.
And some of these connections seem to cancel each other
out. I noted my neocon-sounding ones
above, but I’m also friends with a campaign worker for congressional candidate
Karen Kwiatkowski, who the Truthers tend to admire for criticizing her
ex-bosses at the Pentagon. (In fact, I
think I recall knowing someone who worked on a movie with Kevin Bacon. Seriously.)
Hell, my libertarian friend Danny Panzella, who shot the David Friedman video
from the event I hosted at (still beloved) Lolita Bar a couple months ago and who
plans to do the same for our Thursday talk with Brian Doherty, is sufficiently
immersed in the world of conspiracy theories that he even crops up in one scene
in Slingshot to the Juggernaut (I
think he expressed sympathy for the metaphorical
value of the theory about reptile-men once – and recently invited people to NYC Rally Against Water Fluoridation, which
is the sort of unscientific cause I spent eight years debunking when I was
working at ACSH).
Still: who besides me isn’t wrong about something?
V. A Gathering of
Suspects Worthy of The Thin Man
I recently saw Hicks talk about his book at a Buddhist
Zendo, since he’s into that too now, along with punk, Gandhi, Christianity, and,
crucially, Alcoholics Anonymous (he said one realization from his spiritual
journey was that he had to stop smoking pot daily). There were only fourteen people at this
book-launch event total, including me and the author, but, as I realized at one
point, even in that tiny sample were conspiracy-like connections, if one were
inclined to see things in that spider-web-like way.
Seated to my left (and coughing frequently) was former St.
Martin’s Press editor Jim Fitzgerald, who put the book Generation X on the map back when I briefly worked there – and gave
my age cohort its name – for he is now Sander’s agent (and other things as
well, presumably). Seated to my right
was, yes, Mitch Verter, left-anarchist and former member of the Brown University
Leo Buscaglia Society, which, when I was an undergrad, went around hugging
strangers to spread peace and love, or something.
I don’t know that I learned much about 9/11 that night, but for
the record, if I had to guess the
craziest and most unorthodox-sounding things about that tragic day (I mean the
attacks, not the book event) that are nonetheless true, I might go with: (A)
Flight 93 shot down by the U.S. (quite understandably, under the circumstances)
and (B) mild White House interference with investigators due to reluctance to
have the extent of wealthy Saudi
involvement in the attack detailed. (I
mean, they were Saudi
terrorists. You hear so little about
Saudi Arabia, considering. Fascinating place, Saudi Arabia.)
One amusing wrinkle in all this weirdness is that the
Truthers are now stalking Cass Sunstein, the law prof and Obama regulatory
czar, since he unwisely wrote an article about how the government
could undermine conspiracy theorists and now pretends not to remember the piece.
Hicks’s book ends – in a tone similar to some things said by
me, Andrew Breitbart, and Gavin McInnes, whatever that tells you – with the
desire to infuse a new hybrid political/philosophical movement with the
anarchic spirit of punk rock, transcending old right/left boundaries. Well, he also ends by noting his guilt-wracked
decision to donate $5,000 to the GOP in order to meet Cheney – who is sort of
punk rock himself, at least when he says things like “Go fuck yourself!” right
there on the floor of Congress (that line should probably be broadcast
in combat as psy ops to frighten the enemy).
As an atheist, I get very worried once anything becomes a
spiritual crusade, of course. My
libertarian colleague Austin Petersen – himself a veteran of the Ron Paul
campaign – has launched a Non-Religious Right page on Facebook, so the
syncretic impulse can take different forms, thank goodness.
Oh, and just in case after all these odd tangents, you still
think (like Seth MacFarlane, judging by the most recent Family Guy) that the recent Tea Party/libertarian wave of activism
is just typical Bushites in funny hats, note pieces like
this one from Wall Street Journal
about Tea Party activists working with the ACLU, which I think is no small
thing – and if you want to feel what it’s like to distrust the establishment,
note how negative the Journal sounds about it all. Authoritarianism will naturally breed both
rebellion and paranoia. I say focus on
getting rid of the authoritarianism and the rest will take care of itself.
Have I mentioned that the Kochs donated $20 million to the
ACLU to combat the PATRIOT ACT, by the way?
There are more than “two sides” at work in the world, thank goodness. Stick that in your preconceptions and adjust
your conspiracy theories accordingly. Or
buy Ron
Paul’s Revolution and join us at 2 Havemeyer St. on Thursday to make
sense of all of this once and for all.
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