obama is evil

Watched Alex Jones's new documentary "The Obama Deception". It's tin hat stuff, the boogeyman is out to get you, they're trying to build a prison FOR YOU AND ME TO LIVE IN (Oh yeah, I put the SOAD on rotation after this), Obama is a puppet and a liar, etc.

The movie is hard to follow, there are many tangential tirades, a lot of them given by a bald guy who looks kind of like Philip Seymour Hoffman, only paler and fishier. Jones himself gives a couple embarassingly worded megaphone speeches. He spouts facts, he accuses "the elite" of being scum, so you've got your anger, and suddenly it's righteous, and then, he goes back to anger. Scene in point: Jones is yelling outside the Fed about the Fed. He gives you fact A. Good so far. Fact B rolls in...still with him. Then "AND THESE BASTARDS ARE TRYING TO ENSLAVE YOUR CHILDREN." And I'm thinking: dude. I was with you, but you jumped the gun. You bought me a drink, you said all the right things, and then I look down and you've already come all over my new jumper. This is the one with the TRAINS on it, goddammit. And for any of you that have a problem with jumpers, I've got one word: footies.

A few things did push the right buttons for me. The Fed, for instance, is ridiculous. The notion that they give loans to 3rd-world countries at 30% interest then pay off the dictators to default on the loans, subsequently placing these countries and their people securely in the pockets of some Old White Dudes is probably true. The fact that they did it to us, too, is also probably true. The fact that Obama gave the Fed and the banks a massive bailout and then BORROWED THE MONEY BACK, with interest, to fund the stimulus package is something I will have to look into. If it's true, it's one of the most dumbassed (or, if you're Jones, sinister) things I have ever heard of a government doing.

Other stuff I don't buy. Obama is a puppet for the secret NWO. Who puts people in positions of power only to knock them down four years later. Make Bush 1 bad, bring in the Clinton, Clinton got 8 years and hummer, bring in the retard, the retard fucked everything (or did everything exactly right...again, depending on who you listen to), bring in the champion, the hero. The savior. And they do play up that image in the papers. Hell, Obama's one of my heroes.

And he's a lot of people's heroes. The big crowds they show worshipping him may have been to prove a point, but it has a subtle effect on the filmmaking. It makes the Jones crew look smaller, and crazier. When you can only get 5 or so interviewees (one of which is KRS-One, who is cool) and a few sign-wavers, it does something to the viewer's psychology. It's evolution: we want to be with the giant crowd, go with what everyone's so excited about. Not with a tiny group of loonies.

On that note, the camera work in here is honest: when a couple of crazy conspiracy folks go out to protest the secret meeting of the world's elite in a Best Western...Holiday Inn...I forget which chain it is, but it's got this marble columned lobby that is straight classy, when these protesters show up, it really looks like that: a handful of extremists heckling powerful people. What's with the awful signs? Cheap 8x11 rose pink cardboard paper with inane block-lettered Rage-isms do not inspire, guys.

There's a great scene in the movie where Jones is Blair-Witching to the camera in his hotel room. See, the government set the fire alarm off...and there is something sinister going on, something that Jones predicted would happen. What exactly that is, I don't know. Maybe I should have paid more attention. I was watching it though...fuck it, I blame poor editing for my confusion. De-flected.

Another thought: when they are explaining all of Obama's broken promises, I couldn't help but think "The guy's been there for three fucking months, people." Let me use Iraq as an example. As a campaigner, Barack said that he was going to get soldiers out ASAP. Right now. Right? Well, he gets into office, and that turns into 19 months, last I heard (they say 23). You can look at this one of two ways: Obama is an evil manipulator who bald-faced lied, or, he didn't understand the intricacies of the office at the time, and, woops, it turns out you can't just pull out of a country and jet. It just depends on what you want to see. It's like the God argument. I see coincidence, you see God. I see a guy who said things to get elected but meant them, too, who's now facing down a laundry list of things that have to be prioritized. They see someone who was lying the whole time. I don't know. We can both look at each other and see how the other person's an idiot. I'd prefer beer.

Was that a non-sequitur, or a cleverly placed segue? Because that's what's next: Non-sequiturs. This movie has a couple, most notably a rant about global warming, how it's all a scam. Come on, guys. That's not an argument I'm going to have, because I have science on my side. And when you're talking science, scientists, NOT conspiracy theorists, have my vote.

I mean, this is kind of a sickness. They see it everywhere. The government is in your food, your TV, your mind. It wants to eat you. And maybe it does. But why? Why would a shadowy organization want to poison your food? Let's take this back to square one, Descartes-style. How do you know these super-secret cabals are inherently evil? Is it because you're not a part of them? How do you know that the powerful goons meeting in that hotel weren't just there to swap info, make sure everyone was on the same (evil?) page, or orgy it up or pay respect to the Old Gods or any number of things? Why does it have to be about you, conspiracy theorist? Or us? And if it is about us, how do you know it's for the worst? I dislike rich white people as much as you do, but I'm also stupid. Don't assume that I just know the minds of the world's supervillains.

And Obama is not a supervillain. Not yet. He hasn't destroyed my spirit, or any of the things you claim he was put in office to do. I know I've given an absolutely stirring defense in the face of your facts (which I have not fact-checked, but my dog needed walking so I'll take your word), but what it comes down to is that I feel we need more time to see if he really is the fuck up that you say he is. Come back to me in a year, or two, and I'll give you my honest-to-God opinion.

Random endnote:

Whilst explaining Obama's evils to us, at one point they show his face, distorted, with lights shining from his eyes. My throat dried up and my stomach flipped, I don't do well with sudden, scary faces. When Lynch stretched out Laura Dern's face, then segued to the one creepy bleeding mouth thing in "Inland Empire" I was wrecked. Scariest moment in a movie ever, just in this weird paralyzing kind of way. Eesh.

Edit: I went to go find the picture from "Inland Empire" for you, and I saw it only momentarily and had to click away fast, that same indescribable fear coming back to me. I know, I'm a pussy. It's like the homeless guy in the diner scene from "Mulholland Drive" times ten.