I really think it's fascinating to see how people like Glenn Beck work. Take a popular series about zombies, very real and ugly international events, and smash them together randomly with a little conspiracy glue around the edges.
Citing the recent beheading of 21 Coptic Christians, as well as the attack carried out in Copenhagen over the weekend, Beck used his television program last night to deliver a "wake-up call" that "we are now in the early stages of World War III" ... and that is why the show "The Walking Dead" is so popular.
"I think that we all know that the world is about to come undone," Beck theorized. "We all know, there is something in us that tells us the world is out of control but I don't want to watch that ... and so why are we watching 'The Walking Dead'? We're watching 'The Walking Dead' because we know the zombies aren't real. And so it allows us to connect with what we're really feeling but allows us to be in a safe zone because we know zombies aren't real. Zombies are ISIS. Zombies is our economic peril. The rest of the show is what we say is coming":
Wait, what? How is ISIS putting us in economic peril? How does that work? For Beck's viewers it really doesn't matter how it works. ISIS is bad, therefore ISIS means economic peril and war.
The galling part of this peek into Beck's brain is how utterly binary his thinking is. ISIS is bad, therefore war. Unrest exists in the world today, therefore war. There can never, ever be an outcome other than war. Peace is only possible if some group -- whoever is on the blacklist at the time -- is obliterated.
The Becks of the world always look at history as a blueprint to the future instead of a way to avoid past mistakes.
