{"id":9739,"date":"2015-02-10T00:05:37","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T08:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/franklycurious.com\/wp\/?p=9739"},"modified":"2015-02-07T18:29:00","modified_gmt":"2015-02-08T02:29:00","slug":"my-doppelganger-glenn-beck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/franklycurious.com\/wp\/2015\/02\/10\/my-doppelganger-glenn-beck\/","title":{"rendered":"My Doppelganger Glenn Beck"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GlennOn this day exactly 51 years ago, radio personality Glenn Beck<\/a> was born. That just happens to be the exactly day that I was born. In most ways, I am not pleased about this. As I discussed yesterday, his attempt to co-opt the legacy of Thomas Paine was vile. Of course, he’s done the same thing with Martin Luther King Jr. Like a lot of modern conservatives, Beck thinks that he<\/em> is the real radical. In a sense, he’s right. But the radicals of the past who he looks up to were working to help the weak. Beck is a radical in the name of helping the powerful.<\/p>\n

I am impressed with Beck in that he is a searcher. Unfortunately, some time ago, he discovered The Truth™. And so all his searching goes into the service of discovering what he thinks is the truth. And it has sent him down the rabbit hole that is the world of conspiracy theories. The basis of everything for Beck is Cleon Skousen’s The 5,000 Year Leap<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n

But you have to give the man credit for combining his own bizarre collection of beliefs with a messianic sense. While my father’s girlfriend laid dying, she was glued to Beck’s television show. She had to be there every day — the same way as people in cults. She felt that Beck was transmitting secret truths to her. She died before seeing his downfall. But he’s still hugely successful on the internet. There are a lot of people like my dad’s girlfriend. They never tire of the oracle. I, of course, see him more like this:<\/p>\n