Note: This is the last time I’ll be devoting a post to Alex Jones on this blog, because I’ve started up a separate blog just for him: Leaving Alex Jonestown. It won’t contain play-by-play analysis of every single one of his broadcoasts, ’cause even I am not masochistic enough to listen to Alex Jones more than 2-3 times a week, but it will contain examinations of his documentaries and some of his more outrageous claims.
As usual, I can’t find one shred of information about Alex Jones’s latest goofiness. After interviewing Lt. Col. Greg Hapgood of the Iowa National Guard on yesterday’s show and giving him a hard time about a training exercise scheduled for April in Arcadia, Iowa, Jones said twice that The Matrix was based on actual government plans (I think he said “military”, but I’m not entirely sure; though the Hapgood interview is available, it doesn’t include the rest of yesterday’s broadcast). Jones says the government has plans to raise humans from birth in tanks, just like the vats of strawberry Jell-O in The Matrix. Frankly, if I had the choice between living in a vat or living on Morpheus’s ship, I’d take the vat. That ship makes Das Boot look like a freakin’ spa.
Anyway, if any of you can shed any light on this weird little tidbit, kindly let me know. Not so we can defeat the New World Order; just so I can remind myself that Alex Jones is a complete and total dumbass.
On a loosely related note, when o when will conspiranoids stop referencing The Matrix every five minutes? Some conspiracy theorists – Jones among them – continually whine that they aren’t being taken seriously. Well, guys, I think that might be (in part) because you won’t stop talking about a crappy sci-fi movie that contains some of the most pathetic dialogue in movie history: “I know Kung Fu!” and “Kansas is going bye-bye.” It might be (in part) because the movie is a rip-off of Stanislav Lem’s novel The Futurological Congress, with some Gnostic symbology and New Age hooey thrown in. Why don’t I ever hear conspiranoids talking about Kafka? Pynchon? Pale Fire? I have yet to hear a conspiranoid note the similarities between the conditions of Huxley’s utopian Island and his dystopian Brave New World. I’d take Jones et. al. slightly more seriously if they talked about Orwell novels other than 1984.
But only slightly.
Swallowing The Camel 
Evidence, Jones. Where’s the evidence?
I actually can’t help but admire this theory of his. I mean he’s managed to develop a form of thinking that is so baffling that I can’t think of any way of articulating a sensible argument against it. How does one respond to something this absurd?This actually reminded me of seeing him the film version of Philip K Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. The film wasn’t particularly great but seeing him in it added a particularly bad taste to the proceedings. The funny thing is that I really enjoyed the original novel and I seem to recall that there were quite a few examples of paranoia and conspiracy being seen as a symptom of characters who had completely lost their minds. Seeing Jones in the film suggested to me that Richard Linklater (the director) had completely missed a lot of the points in the book about there being an explicit connection between their madness and their speculations. It also seemed slightly insulting to PKD, who by all accounts appeared to have a lot of slightly odd beliefs himself owing to various mental health problems. Presumably Jones would see VALIS as a non-fiction novel. I’m surprised he hasn’t brought it up before.
Aww. I kinda liked the Nebuchadnezzar. Reminded me of a grimy version of the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine or Hagbard Celine’s wondersub. Yes, The Matrix has been over-used by conspiracy theorists. I was hoping they’d start claiming that “V” was an expose of real events (scrupulously covered-up of course). I really hope they’ll all go see Watchmen – there’s great potential in that story for false claims: “there really IS a Dr Manhattan” or “the military really is working on bringing Cuthulhuesque creatures to earth from another dimension”…
Well, technically VALIS is a non-fiction novel. As Robert Anton Wilson said (I’m paraphrasing), “It could be a novel about Philip K. Dick encountering some extraterrestrial intelligence, or it could be a true story of Philip Dick going crazy.”Linklater likes eccentrics. I try to remind myself of that when watching Jones’s cameos in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. Otherwise, I would probably cry. Nothing’s sadder than an otherwise intelligent person who respects Alex Jones’s ideas. Though paranoia is, to an extent, a valuable adaptive trait, it is more often a sign of imbalance (not necessarily mental illness, mind yout). However, some take the view that paranoia is the purest form of awareness. They foster it in themselves and encourage it in others because they believe they’ll attain a sort of enlightment, that they’ll”break the Matrix”. Meanwhile, as Dick knew firsthand, their lives go downhill faster than Kjetil Aamodt. SoG: Good news! I’ve heard a few Reptilian theorists reference V. They’re also fond of John Carpenters They Live. And Jeff Wells likes Watchmen, so I’m sure lots of conspiranoids do too. The funniest one I’ve ever heard was from “former Illuminati Satanist” (read: Christian con man) John Todd, who said The Dunwich Horror with Sandra Dee was the most accurate representation of witchcraft he’d ever seen on film.
“It could be a novel about Philip K. Dick encountering some extraterrestrial intelligence, or it could be a true story of Philip Dick going crazy.”This is a very interesting point not just about Valis as a novel but about conspiracy nuts in general. Wilson is right about the book but there is definitely an element of self-awareness present throughout the book (something I seem to recall that was also present in RAW’s work). It’s been a few years since I read it but I remember more than one chapter ending with some single sentence of sudden clarity from the author about some incident that could be construed as “mad”. One in particular that stood out to me was to do with Horselover Fat seeing animals changing and hearing things on the radio that suddenly ended with a single sentence paragraph of “Mental illness is not funny”. Jones and co appear to have no sense of this self-awareness (although I’m not suggesting for one minute that I know for a fact that with Jones it isn’t all put on to exploit people with this lack). Is this the reason I keep coming back to this site? Do I see something entertainingly similar between works of fiction I have enjoyed and the insanity that is Alex Jones? Not that I find it funny. After all “Mental illness is not funny”
Mental illness isn’t funny, but it’s certainly interesting…
Have you seen the latest? Jones apparently brought this up the other day. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/02/dtv-converters.htmlHe really is crazy.
That theory’s been around for a while; I came across it in a Vanity Fair article in ’04. I joke that if it’s true, all the alphabet agencies are gonna see at my house is bunny-butt, ’cause my rabbit sits in front of the converter box all the time. Jones would fall for that. The turnip truck that dropped him off is still in sight. You almost have to feel sorry for the guy sometimes…