Fear-mongering has a shelf life.
Glenn Beck lost over a million viewers in 2010 and the slide is continuing. Does this mean that the sky is not actually falling?
Of course it isn’t.
The Glenn Beck Conspiracy Theory that suggests America will be turned into a country completely unsuitable for overweight racists could not be more complex if it were designed by German engineers channeling JFK conspiracy theorists. The sad thing is that the structure of his conspiracy theory ended up being a lot like a circular firing squad.
Glenn Beck’s phantasm of paranoia was titillating at first – especially if you were an idiot. There is nothing an idiot likes more than a target. It allows them to focus their basal intellect towards the simple act of hating something they find frightening to begin with. Like Frankenstein and fire.
The problem with this is that the Glenn Beck target audience – the virtually mindless – came to be aware that his rants had a certain cadence. The massive conspiracy theory became too complex to follow, but brought them back to what they understood to be true in the first place.
“Democrat bad. Pelosi bad! Fire baaaaad!”
So, as Glenn Beck’s haughty flight begins to auger into a distant field, let us remember his impact with reality. It should be remembered as the cautionary tale for our time.
Let us steel ourselves and commit that we should never condone anyone animating the brain-dead and filling them with a confounding resolve.
