A tinfoil hat comes with every issue.
The rantings of the nut job known as Alex Jones has gained attention thanks to his public meltdown on CNN and the Boston bombers being listeners. Sometimes you’ll see bumper stickers for this inanity around Austin because he is on the radio, oddly in the ‘Big Gubmint’ part of the FM spectrum.
I was really disappointed to see Jones’ paranoid writings being distributed at a chain restaurant I enjoy. Sure the Austin Chronicle can be found there and their Liberal bias is well known. That would be true of the editorial and news sections. However, over 80% of the AusChron is non-essential, rather apolitical content so few object to it. Besides, it’s free unlike the Austin American-Statesman, aka the PR arm of the (uncontrolled) growth is good for Austin movement. Just substitute growth for sprawl and the One Percent for Austin, then you know what the Statesman perspective is.
Anyway…
The tagline of “And the War on Reality” is comical. Which reality would this be? There’s many paranoid delusions of all political stripes to go with! Given Jones’ bluster, it’s probably the “New World Order who will take away me guns!” version.
I have my skepticism and doubt in government too. The difference between Jones and me is I know the problem lies in human nature not a monolithic conspiracy. I hated George W Bush very much (still do, his library at SMU is an affront to higher learning everywhere), I won’t deny it. He was the worst president in recent history and pending an alien invasion, he may be judged the worst ever. Yet I never compared him to Hitler or his regime to the Fascists. There were definitely aggressive attempts to squelch dissent on top of some rather unconstitutional decisions, torture namely. Choosing Hitler was inaccurate and lazy. Bush and his intellectually-challenged nature are more akin to the numerous inept monarchs of Europe, England’s Charles II is my immediate choice.
Seeing Bush and his cronies as a cunning, Emperor Palpatine level organization would be too flattering to Dick Cheney.
Alex Jones caters to people with serious chips on their shoulders who suffer from stunted emotional/mental development. Their higher numbers around Austin are an unfortunate side effect with more Liberally inclined communities. Sometimes, you get former Liberals-Moderates whose brains go off the rails and/or get sucked into the empty rhetoric of Ron Paul.
As long as they’re not shooting at anyone from their Dale Gribblesque compounds, let them have their silly fantasies of a Red Dawn invasion. Few of them vote since they see this as futile, prefer to just bitch instead or fear the polling station is actually a DNA-gathering facility. Having worked alongside a couple, I vote “all of the above.”