The Accidental Gentrifist: New Word Order: I Believe (in) Alex Jones

In 1998, a friend turned me on to Alex Jones’ show on channel 15. Not that I paid much attention. Actually, at first I only knew him as ‘That Black Helicopter Guy,’ for his diatribes about the impending ramifications of what seemed like a daily criss-crossing of military helicopters flying low over Austin. He was just idle amusement. Even when he played footage of troops practicing urban and suburban raids in Oakland, mass-arresting actors portraying American citizens, we’d have to get stoned first, if we wanted Alex to really scare us.

I distinctly remember turning on a friend’s t.v. just in time to hear Alex lament how he can’t even eat a chimichanga at Trudy’s without some Neo-con giving him shit. A week later I was driving down I-35 listening to a Jones radio broadcast, in which he was emotionally relating that a smirking group of haters ruined an attempted dinner at Chuy’s. I remember thinking, “Dude, Alex. Your problem’s with Tex-Mex, not the New World Order!”

If I was derisive, it was because I was adrift, as I suppose most are in their early-twenties. Remember Tyler Durden’s monologue from Fight Club? The one where he says

Our ‘Great War’ is a spiritual war. Our ‘Great Depression’ is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

Now, momentarily push aside the inherent irony of Brad Pitt being paid millions to say those lines. That movie was how I felt. I know, a lot of overgrown man-boys loved that movie. But the film’s detournemonts and overtones of Debord-style Situationism (and clever, seemingly significant dialogue) resonated with me and my great fear that nothing important would ever happen in my lifetime.

And then the whole 9-11 thing went down. Suddenly, I felt acute guilt for wishing something ‘big’ would happen. But there was still Alex Jones, who in one day went from filling a niche to finding his very raison d’etre. As the Patriot Act passed, as we began to be stripped of privacy and civil liberties, as talk recommenced about NAFTA needing to unionize economies and start printing Ameros to stop the dollar’s slide against the Euro, as prisoners became ‘enemy combatants’ warehoused in Cuba, as the federal government consolidated its information-gathering and law enforcement agencies—there was Alex. Only he wasn’t packing his bags and saying I fucking told you so, morons— He was using the new current events as examples of his previous prognostications, beseeching a growing audience to please start believing in what he sees as impending doom, even though he would inevitably remain, in the minds of many, a ‘conspiracy nut’. Something of a cottage industry in central Texas, actually. (“Release the Piles, Filot!”).

Of course, the only group whose numbers outweigh the ‘nuts’ are the people who call them nuts. By now you've most likely heard at least one of several elaborate theories claiming that 9-11 was (in some part) designed by elements within our own government. Critics of these theories are quite correct in pointing out that ‘black box’ theories require the theorist to make an initial assumption that our leaders and protectors would even act in such a way. However, this kind of criticism itself assumes that such assumptions are never correct, and that any manner of investigation must always be both objectively well-informed and objectively rational in order to unearth a hidden fact. And that simply isn’t that case. Facts aren’t chemical reactions or mathematical solutions, only produced by the right kind of query. The notion that ‘It's not a conspiracy theory if it's actually true,’ is about as spot-on and useful as ‘Golly, she ain’t a witch if she done drown.’ Worse yet, another tacit implication is that the aforementioned (and hypothetical) critics’ assumption—that through design or restraint, our government is generally moral, if not virtuous—should be ensconced as the standard. And I just can't buy that either.

I’m not saying I believe a secret cabal of senators and private bankers were behind the sinking of the RMS Lusitania and the USS Maine, or that NWO satanists perpetrated the bombing of Oklahoma City, or that we never landed on the moon, or that Paul is dead, or that the WTC collapsed due to strategically placed explosives (or that Osama Bin Laden, at this very moment, is lounging poolside under a fake name at a luxury hotel in Miami Beach, chatting with retirees from New Jersey about where to find the best challa and lox next time he happens to be uptown.) But we do know the government listens to conversations we’d prefer to keep private. We also know that they do this despite questions of legality, much less morality. We also know that in America today, whether or not torture is morally acceptable is a largely semantic argument. We know outspoken Russian journalists sometimes get murdered in their homes. And that troublesome former spies sometimes die from radiation poisoning. And then the whole thing about Saddam Hussein stockpiling WMDs and being some kind of terroristic godfather. So please forgive me if I don’t exactly see a dearth of reasons to believe in a conducive pretext to many conspiracy theories.

But to be honest, Alex did lose me for awhile when his reasonable explanation for the behavior of the law firm of Bush, Bush & Cheney was that their ultimate objective was mass enslavement of the human race and the perfection of life-extension technology. Now, I’ve gone down some conceptual rabbit holes with Mr. Jones before, but for this one I’m going to need to see some blueprints.

Also, I find it hard to believe Alex hasn’t seen Red Dawn, which everybody knows is a thinly disguised allegory of liberals repossessing firearms toward the ultimate aim of world domination, and not, heh heh, soviets. (Geez, you didn’t get that part?) And what happens? Fuckin’ teenage partisans totally kick them some commie ass, just like in For Whom the Bell Tolls …well, except for the communism part. (But, in Hemingway’s defense, I think he also intended the Franco fascists to be symbolic stand-ins for rifle-snatching liberals.)

Then again, the appeal of Red Dawn is much like the appeal of conspiracy theories: it puts the regular guy in the crosshairs. Just like Tyler Durden's lamentation. The average civilian is special because he is both the victim of injustice as well as the potential champion of its overthrow. Google Jones’ Infowars site and the first thing you're told is that “There is a War on for Your Mind!” Yes, even yours.

For a brief period, maybe three times in half as many months, the big man himself started showing up at the bar I used to frequent. I just walked in one night, my little dog on a leash and a pint in my sights. In lieu of a greeting, the bartender said simply, “Alex Jones is here.” I kind of stalked him to the outside area and sat down with friends at the next table. Then my puppy—who consistently pays for herself—started sniffing Alex Jones’ leg. Then Jones picked her up and started loving all over her. I’m like, Holy Shiite. Alex Jones is playing with my dog. The last time I'd seen him, he was crimson red and screaming in Linklater’s Waking Life. Now he was quite enthusiastically showering adoration upon the pooch that sleeps curled at the foot of my bed.

Alex turned out to be a modest and friendly guy. He was funny, approachable, and generally good company. Although, at a later encounter, I related that I’d often witnessed a newly of-age Bush daughter visiting the same bar, usually with an only slightly subtle entourage of Secret Service hench-persons. I asked Alex what he thought might go down if they all happened to show up at the same time. He looked me straight in the eye and said—Well, never mind what he said. Because A, he could have been joking. And B, it’s not like I was wearing a sign that read, ‘Someday I shall blog about whatever it is you’re about to tell me.’ So I’ll keep mum. Fair is fair, somewhere. (And if not, let me be the first to propose that all bars be declared intellectual sanctuaries— especially since it's one place memory and judgment only rarely join hands.)

Those brief personal encounters renewed my interest in Mr. Jones, allowing me to see him as something other than an entertainer, a Chicken Little, or a man haunted by Neo-cons at every taco cart and burrito stand this side of the Dallas Book Depository. As trite as it may sound, meeting him humanized my idea of him, in a world where dehumanization seems to be the trend (in case you haven't noticed). Although, at the end of everything, all I really know is that conspiracy theories—in part becasue of who they appeal to and in part because of what they purport to expose—shall remain the much-maligned little brother to institutionalized investigation, often rightfully—but sometimes wrongfully—having to sustain being deemed false until proven 'true'.

...That, and Jimmy Hoffa’s body is always in the last place you look.