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Tea’s Weird Week: Trump is a Goblin Shark
Happy Shark Week to those who celebrate. (Note: Highlighted words=sources.)
I was a real weird kid. When I was around 7 or 8, I asked my dad if he would read entries about U.S. Presidents from a set of Funk & Wagnall’s encyclopedias to me at bedtime. I drew portraits of at least of dozen of the Presidents. Then, as now, I would become a little obsessive about a topic until I felt I had understood it. I’m not sure where the President Phase came from. The Hall of Presidents at Disney World? I think I viewed them as being like superheroes.
A couple years and a few obsessions later, my focus changed to a new topic: sharks. I spent a lot of time reading books and writing my own notes, learning everything I could. I dreamed of cruising around with Jacques Cousteau and becoming the world’s youngest foremost authority on these amazing creatures. One thing I found fascinating about sharks was the wide range of sizes, shapes, and unique features across the seas. There was the beautiful gentle giant, the whale shark; the powerhouse predators like the great white and mako sharks; the elegant, torpedo-like blue shark; the strange, almost extra-terrestrial looking members of the hammerheads and wobbegongs.
The most grotesque shark is the rare deep sea goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni). Wikipedia notes that this odd, pink-skinned species has a “flabby body and small fins,” a benthopelagic (bottom feeder) predator, the goblin inhabits a world that U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service reports is “utterly alien and inhospitable to humans.” Doesn’t all this remind you of a certain President of the United States of America?
Trump is a Goblin Shark.
Note the creature’s Pinocchio like snout, symbolic of a liar. There is one thing Trump is good at– lies. Many politicians are, but Trump shoots so many lies out of his blowhole like a firehose that it’s impossible to keep track before you’re blasted away again. Some of the lies are racist, weaponized conspiracies– his bloviating claim that Obama was born in Kenya and couldn’t be president, the whole “they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs” bullshit. Some lies are feeble attempts at self-preservation, like his claim that he didn’t draw a nudie for Epstein because he’s never “wrote a picture.” And some of the lies are just idiocy, take his story about chatting with his uncle about the Unabomber or his declaration that windmills cause cancer. Those are just a few grains of sand in his murky seabed of lies.
Trump is a Liar of a Goblin Shark.
The goblin shark has a horrific array of needle like teeth, which it uses to chomp on cephalopods. Another toothy animal is the unwitting mascot of one of Trump’s tributes to cruelty, his Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp. This will be looked back at in horror and disgust in future history books (maybe– unless books, education, and empathy are banned).
Trump is a Cold-blooded Goblin Shark.
First they came for the immigrants. But that is only the beginning. Make no mistake, hate and revenge is Trump’s only goal as President. If Trump could (and maybe he’ll succeed) he would fill his gulags with the many people he hates– political opponents (even from his own party), journalists, comedians, lawyers, judges, late night talk show hosts, scientists, professors, musicians… eventually that’ll maybe extend to people who beat Dear Leader at golf. You’re all getting a one-way ticket to El Salvador!
Trump is an Orange-assed Sadistic Dictator Goblin Shark.
Who will stand up to him? Democrats are hiding in the reef. Corporations are out at sea. Maybe his ground base of Christians? Nah, Trump bamboozled them long ago, one of the greatest cons of this or any other century. Trump is not a Christian. He does not know a single Bible verse, only worships greed and power, and embodies all Seven Deadly Sins rolled together in orange dough.
Trump is a Pink Devilfish, the Goddamned Goblin Shark.
Now that I think of it, this comparison is pretty unfair to the goblin shark. Old Gobby is just slowly cruising along in the deep sea looking for squid to snatch as they’ve done for millions of years. Compared to Trump’s soul, this strange fish is a beauty queen… don’t tell that line to Trump, though, he might try to force his way into their dressing room and sexually harass it.
SEE ALSO: Political Monsters: How Presidents Influence Horror Movies reveals the correlation between Trump and killer clown flicks.
“The Jewish Space Laser Bill,” TWW, July 9, 2025.
“You are Geraldo Rivera, high on ecstasy, looking at a UFO in the Bahamas,” TWW, May 20, 2022.
American Madness talks about Trump’s rise to power harnessing conspiracy theories.
Tea’s Weird Week: The Jewish Space Laser Bill
In 2020, the year the conspiracy tsunami broke loose, I had a book published titled American Madness. In it, I got to know an intense conspiracy theorist named Richard McCaslin (also known as the costumed vigilante Phantom Patriot). Richard died in 2018. I still think about that story frequently and how much conspiracy culture has changed since I first met Richard in 2010. Conspiracy is mainstream now. It is the party in power. And now the QAnon Party is writing legislation.
Marjorie Talor Greene aligned with QAnon early on until she realized she should distance herself, but she kept those beliefs moving forward. She recently revealed that she has been “researching weather modification,” and using her new DIY knowledge of climatology, has drafted a bill that would make “altering weather” a felony. She made this announcement right after the deadly flooding in Texas, which some conspiracists have speculated was caused by cloud seeding. Cloud seeding is a real thing, where particles are introduced to certain types of clouds to enhance precipitation. But cloud seeding would not cause precipitation of this magnitude.
Greene didn’t mention that theory or her infamous “Jewish space laser” conspiracy, which suggested wealthy Jews were starting California forest fires with a frickin’ laser, or “chemtrails,” a classic conspiracy that she’s waxed poetic about in the past (she suggested they were the cause of hurricanes Helene and Milton), but that is what’s between the lines. A Deep State weather program being used for nefarious purposes. Ok, sure. Who has it, specifically? Where? Why does the Deep State want to create hurricanes and forest fires? To what end? And isn’t the Republican Party the Deep State now?
“I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity,” MTG says. “It will be a felony offense.” This is some “they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs” level of ridiculous bullshit, but I predict this is just the beginning. Expect to see legislation regarding Reptilian aliens and an official proclamation that the moon landing was fake in the future. We are quickly hurling ass backwards into the Dark Ages.
If Richard McCaslin was alive today, he’d probably be elected to Congress or a Cabinet position.
By the way, I have a conspiracy MTG and company can look into. Stop me if you’ve heard this one, Marj: Attorney General Pam Bondi tells the press in February that the Epstein File client list is “sitting on my desk right now to review.” Trump hems and haws on Fox & Friends about releasing the files (and more recently scolds a reporter to move on from the story) and then voila the DOJ says there is no list. Kinda strange, huh?
UPDATE (07/10): Why this is dangerous. Much like Richard McCaslin was inspired by Alex Jones or the “Wolverine Watchman” seized on COVID/ election conspiracies to plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a militia group called “Veterans on Patrol” is “targeting” Oklahoma weather radars over this nonsense: “Anti-Government Militia” Says It’s Targeting Oklahoma Weather Radars.”
And awaaaay we go.
Buy: American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (2020, Feral House)
TWW: The Late, Great Hannibal Lecter
Political Monsters Week Continues
One of the many bizarre things to come out of this election cycle is the Trump campaign’s racist fearmongering and spreading of false internet stories about immigrants eating the dogs, the cats, the geese, everything in sight– maybe even you. Trump says the countries south of the border are not only sending criminals, but highly intelligent forensic psychiatrist/ cannibal serial killers like “the late, great” Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the character who originated in novels by Thomas Harris and was adapted to various TV shows and movies, most famously The Silence of the Lambs (1991), played by Anthony Hopkins, who won an Academy Award for his portrayal.
Rolling Stone’s Miles Klee outlines the history of Trump referencing the killer in an article titled “Why is Trump So Obsessed With Hannibal Lecter?: A Complete Timeline.” Klee pinpoints the first reference at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania on July 29, 2023, where Trump claims immigrants are “pouring” out of “mental institutions, from insane asylums,” adding “that’s like Silence of the Lambs stuff.” Trump continued to work on the bit, like a comedian refining a joke, over the months and by May 11, 2024 he referred to the character as “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” for the first time. As Rolling Stone notes, this is a strange reference as there’s no Hannibal Lecter related book or movie that depicts him as dying off.
Rolling Stone points out that perhaps Trump “initially conflated the term ‘insane asylums’ with ‘asylum seekers'” or maybe identified more with Lecter than the FBI agents who locked him up. I think that latter idea is the key here– Trump is a fan of the character. Much like he fawns over dictators like Putin, Jong Un, and Orbán, he admires Lecter.
In fact, I’m going to use Trump’s playbook of fearmongering lies here– the Trump family isn’t sending their best. They’re eating the public, they’re eating the people! They’re shooting people on 5th Avenue, then eating their livers with some fava beans and a nice chianti and the crooked Supreme Court is granting them total immunity. Horrible!
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See yesterday’s post for more on the Political Monsters project. Tomorrow I’ll give a monster forecast: “4 More Years: Vampires or Evil Clowns?”
You can get a copy of Political Monsters…
In person: Saturday, Oct. 19: Milwaukee Paranormal Conference, I’ll be on the vendor floor 10am-5pm at the Irish Cultural & Heritage Center. Register for a free ticket here: milwaukeeparacon.com
Sunday, Oct. 20: Political Monsters Party at Lion’s Tooth, 3-5pm. Admission is free. I’ll talk briefly about the project, we’ll do a round of horror trivia, and if you dress like a zombie, vampire, or killer clown, you get a free copy of the Political Monsters zine!
You can also buy copies at Lion’s Tooth here in Milwaukee and Quimby’s in Chicago. You can order a print copy via the QWERTYFEST MKE Etsy page: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1778576030/political-monsters-how-presidents
And an e-book version is available through Kindle/KU: https://www.amazon.com/Political-Monsters-Presidents-Influence-Horror-ebook/dp/B0DFJ7DZKQ/ref=sr_1_1
Tea’s Weird Week: Who Said It–Phantom Patriot or Marjorie Taylor Greene (Revisited)?
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was busted flying an American flag upside down (a form of protest to indicate dissent or that the country is in distress) outside his home as well as the “Appeal to Heaven” flag flown by J6ers outside his vacation home.
Don’t worry, Alito. Marjorie Taylor Greene has your back. Fresh off her conspiracy that the FBI was going to assassinate Trump, Greene rambled on X (aka Musk Twitter) about Trump and Alito.
“WE SHOULD ALL BE FLYING THE FLAG UPSIDE DOWN!!!” she concludes.
Hmm, that reminds me of someone. I can’t quite place it. I seem to remember he had a skull for a face. Raided the Bohemian Grove, charged with five felonies. Conspiracy theory ended up taking his life. Oh right, it’s this guy…Richard McCaslin, aka the Phantom Patriot.
About two years ago, I wrote a TWW column titled “Who Said It– Phantom Patriot or Marjorie Taylor Greene?” The quotes I provided were identical in ideology. The only difference– Richard was considered a “crackpot” and “domestic terrorist” while Greene for some reason is a member of Congress.
Read the story of the Phantom Patriot in my book American Madness: https://bookshop.org/p/books/american-madness-the-story-of-the-phantom-patriot-and-how-conspiracy-theories-hijacked-american-consciousness-tea-krulos/12625126
Please Clap Dept.: QWERTYFEST MKE is happening June 21-23. Check out the schedule here: https://www.qwertyfest.com/qwertyfest-2024-schedule.html
Tea’s Weird Week: The Land of Lemuria
Feral House published my 2020 book American Madness, which I consider my best, and I was excited to work with them as they’ve published many fantastic titles exploring the strange corners of the world. I think they knew that Lemuria: A True Story of a Fake Place (by Justin McHenry) would be up my alley in particular, because they sent me an advance copy and asked for a blurb. Here it is:
“Lemuria: A True Story of a Fake Place is a fascinating history of a land that doesn’t exist. McHenry takes us on a journey explaining how this strange theory materialized, from the rainforests of Madagascar to Madame Blavatsky’s drawing room to the hidden city in Mount Shasta and a plunge into the depths of 4chan. It’s a wild ride!”– Tea Krulos, American Madness
That blurb just scratches the surface of how weird this story is, and it’s one of my favorite types– stories where you’re not sure where reality ends and other people’s fantasies (or sometimes delusions) begin. That’s a theme in most of the books I’ve written so far.
You should order Lemuria if you want to fall down a rabbithole reading about how one crackpot after another cobbled together pieces of fake history and mythology to build this strange, non-existent land. And yes, those rascally lemurs are a key part of the theories.
You can buy a copy online here or wherever good books are sold: https://bookshop.org/p/books/lemuria-the-true-story-of-a-fake-place/19663689?ean=9781627311472
New in 2024: I’m writing a new column, “Madcap Milwaukee Calendar” every two weeks for the Shepherd Express. It’s just short blurbs about unique, unusual, nerdy, or just weird events you can check out in the Southeast Wisconsin area. Hey, I like giving fellow weirdos some ink. The columns can be found here: https://shepherdexpress.com/culture/madcap-milwaukee-calendar
Tea’s Weird Week: I’m Going to Talk About my Adventures in Writing at Lion’s Tooth on April 16
My first book, Heroes in the Night: Inside the Real Life Superhero Movement, was published ten years ago. Time flies! That book was followed by Monster Hunters (2015), Apocalypse Any Day Now (2019), American Madness (2020), Wisconsin Legends & Lore (2020), and Brady Street Pharmacy: Stories and Sketches (2021). In April I’ll be publishing a short e-book, Chicago Mothman: A History and Cultural Study of a Monster Case under my own imprint, Tea Set Press.
I work sometimes filling in at the wonderful Lion’s Tooth bookstore and talked with Cris and Shelly, the owners, about setting up a date just to hang out and talk and have all of my books available. I decided it would be fun to talk about some adventures and key moments in my writing career both in authoring books and freelance magazine writing.
It’s going to be happening Sunday, April 16 at Lion’s Tooth, 4-6pm (5pm is when the storytelling starts). I’ll talk about the time I almost got expelled from high school for publishing my own satire newsletter, an assignment to make the White Pages interesting, both times I got pepper sprayed in Seattle, why the British tabloids were calling me early in the morning for awhile, my story that won a Milwaukee Press Club award, and what I’m currently working on.
I’m really looking forward to grabbing a drink from the Lion’s Tooth cafe and telling these stories to you. Some of these are tales I’ve never told publicly. Check out the list of what I’ll be talking about below!
TEA KRULOS: LIVE AT LION’S TOOTH set list
- I Was A Teenage Underground Newsletter Publisher
- Famous Names
- People Fighting and Superheroes and Pepper Spray and…I Don’t Know
- Pepper Sprayed in Seattle Again
- London Calling
- That Time I Went on a Bigfoot Expedition But Saw a UFO Instead
- Doomsday Bunkers of the Rich and Famous Revisited
- An Award-Winning Idea
- The Phantom Patriot Lives
- How One Mothman Led to Another
- Where is My Mind? 2023 Edition
- Loose Bruce Destroyed My First Typewriter
I’m going to try to get to all of those and I’ll answer questions and of course will be glad to sign books. I hope to see you there!
Facebook event page: facebook.com/events/621847019771594
Please Clap Dept.: The documentary I’m a producer on about Kenosha-area horror hosts, I’m Your Host (which won a Milwaukee Film Brico Forward Fund grant) will premiere at the Twisted Dreams Film Festival, Oct. 20-22, 2023.
Follow me on: Substack//Facebook Group//Twitter//Instagram
My latest books are:
Brady Street Pharmacy: Stories and Sketches (2021, VA Press)
American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (2020, Feral House)
Tea’s Weird Week: Alex Jones in His Own Hell (UPDATED)
I first began to learn about Alex Jones in 2010. Through an odd twist of events, I was introduced to a man named Richard McCaslin, a conspiracy theorist who attempted to raid a club for the rich and powerful in the redwood forest of California called the Bohemian Grove. Richard was the Patient Zero of someone who listened to Jones and took his bloviating seriously. On Jan. 20, 2002, he was arrested in the Bohemian Grove, wearing a superhero costume with a rubber skull mask and heavily armed.
100% of Richard’s decision to go on his raid was from watching a “documentary” Jones had produced called Dark Secrets: Inside Bohemian Grove, which suggested human sacrifice– maybe even children– was happening inside the Grove. It followed the Jones Method– a pinch of truth, a lot of speculation, some far-fetched interpretation, and a scary Satanic, baby-killing, New World Order cabal of those in power. I detailed Richard’s spiral down the rabbit hole and Jones’s influence over him in my book American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked America’s Consciousness. Richard died by suicide in 2018. I believe conspiracy theory is what pushed him over the edge, and the first domino was Alex Jones.
Two things repeated after Richard’s raid– first, Alex Jones and Info Wars would pop up regularly like a bad penny as a motivator in other cases of extremist violence.
To mention just a few: Byron Williams, who had a shootout with California Highway Patrol on I-580 in 2010 and was an avid listener of Jones. He was on his way to shoot up the offices of organizations associated with conspiracy boogeyman George Soros.
In 2011 Oscar Ortega-Hernandez did a drive-by shooting of the White House. He was influenced by the Jones directed “documentary” The Obama Deception.
Starting the year after that, there was a league of Info Wars followers who harassed and sent death threats to Sandy Hook survivors online, by phone, on the street and at their homes as Jones promoted theories that they were “crisis actors.” That’s how a total of $49.3 million was awarded to Sandy Hook parents this week. And that’s just the beginning.
He also promoted Pizzagate conspiracy, which led to a raid of the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria by Edgar Maddison Welch, armed with an AR-15, in 2016. Like Richard McCaslin, Welch was hoping to save human trafficking victims after watching the Pizzagate theory he saw laid out in an Info Wars video.
The second thing that repeated is Jones’s pattern of attempting to weasel out of responsibility every time he incited someone. It started with McCaslin– when asked to comment on his case, Jones said he thought McCaslin “sounded insane,” yet Dark Secrets not only gave McCaslin a clear motivation, but Jones stands outside the Grove at the end of the doc to tell people driving instructions to get there. And on January 6 (he was there as an organizer) he riled the mob up with his bullhorn, but when the shit hit the fan and people started beating cops to death– you guessed it, he tucked tail and ran.
And now, after years of dodging the court for the many cases surrounding his lawsuits from the Sandy Hook families, Jones is finally cornered. What a circus this week has been! Jones is in his own personal hell– trapped in a courtroom confronted with the truth and little chance to bloviate and spin it like he can on his rambling, 4-hour long daily radio show. He actually has to shut up and listen and his words here have real consequences.
The wildest revelation came this week when the attorneys for Sandy Hook parents Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis revealed that Jones’s defense had mistakenly sent two years of data off his phone, and that this clearly pointed out that Jones is guilty of multiple counts of perjury. Jones tried to file for a mistrial. The judge said “nah.” Now the January 6 Committee is attempting to get access to that data to see how big his role exactly was in the J6 Q d’etat.
The jury awarded the victims $4.1 million, and then an additional $45.2 million in punitive damages.
That’s a good start, but not enough. A billion dollars isn’t enough.
Here’s what I hope. I hope there’s a string of trials that goes on the rest of his life, where he gets sued over and over– 4 million here, 40 million there– by everyone he’s ever slandered and that he slowly loses all of his ill-gotten money. I hope he has to sit there and hear every one of of his victims give testimony about how he stoked his fanbase to terrorize them, and all the horrible things he’s caused.
I hope it’s long and excruciating- but sadly it’ll never, ever be as painful as what those families and other Jones victims had to go through.
UPDATE, 10/12/2022: After $49.3 in damages at his Texas trial, a Connecticut court found he was responsible for a whopping total of approx 967 MILLION in additional damages today. He’s going to have to sell a lot of his bunk Info Wars Super Male Vitality pills to cover that! Is a billion enough? Nah, what the hell, keep suing him.
My book American Madness can be found here: American Madness : Feral House
They’re also available on these platforms: Spotify//Soundcloud//Google Podcasts//iHeartRadio//PlayerFM//Apple//Stitcher//Pocket Casts
Tea’s Weird Week: Who Said It–Phantom Patriot or Marjorie Taylor Greene?
My book American Madness (2020, Feral House) tells the story of Richard McCaslin, who, inspired by conspiracy peddler Alex Jones, bought an arsenal of weapons, created a costumed persona– the Phantom Patriot (complete with a skull mask) raided a place called the Bohemian Grove in 2002, had a standoff with the cops, and went to jail. He died by suicide in 2018.
Sound crazy? Sure. But is it more so than supporting the armed Q d’etat of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in which 5 people died? That’s what Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG), who represents Georgia in the House of Representatives, has done.
That’s my point of this column– when I originally met Richard in 2010, I thought he was the fringest of the fringe. Now, in the Trump era, I think he was somehow ahead of the curve, the zeitgeist. He was conspiracy hip before it was hip to be hip. Could Richard have been elected to Congress? In 2010 I would have laughed at that idea, but these days I think he’d be a shoo-in if he found the right district. Hey, MTG did it (and it looks likely she’ll win reelection this year).
Richard and MTG have some pretty big differences– Richard always despised Trump, for example, and he was suspicious of QAnon (the cult where MTG got her first boost). I think he was a true believer that wanted to help people by exposing the “Deep State,” while MTG is just a hatemonger. But still, they have similar ideas– they believe 9/11 conspiracy and hate Hillary. I don’t know if Richard would go for the Jewish space laser thing– probably. They’re so similar, that I thought I’d show you six quotes. Who said what? Answers are below.
One) “Bill Gates wants you to eat this fake meat that grows in a [petri dish] so you’ll probably get a little zap inside your body that’ll say ‘No, don’t eat a real cheeseburger, you need to eat the fake burger.’”
Two) “The Illuminati controlled CDC lies to the American public, 24/7. Just look at all the money being made on these shots right now… the microchips will definitely be in those shots. Anyone who refuses to get vaccinated will be ‘quarantined’ indefinitely in a FEMA residential center, a concentration camp.”
Three) “As far as our so-called ‘elected’ officials in Washington DC and California are concerned, the Luciferian Doctrine dictates their motives and actions, not the Constitution!”
Four) On the 2017 Mandalay Bay mass shooting in Las Vegas: “How do you get avid gun owners and people that support the Second Amendment to give up their guns and go along with anti-gun legislation? You make them scared, you make them victims and you change their mindset and then possibly you can pass anti-gun legislation. Is that what happened in Las Vegas? I don’t believe [mass shooter Stephen Paddock] pulled this off all by himself.”
Five) On the same 2017 shooting: “Most of the photos taken inside the hotel room look staged; especially the one supposedly showing Stephen Paddock dead on the floor…Paddock was/is obviously a Project Monarch patsy, who was used by the CIA, to get those 13 suitcases of guns and ammo up to the hotel room. Paddock was a high roller in Vegas, so nobody would question the excessive luggage. The motive for the massacre is simple…more gun restrictions, to effectively disarm the American people.”
Six) “Probably, in about four or five generations, no one will be straight anymore. Everyone will be gay or trans or non-conforming or whatever list of 50 or 60 options, which there are.”
ANSWERS!
One. This is a MJT quote from this week and the inspiration for this column. She said this on her “MTG Live” social media show, though in her exact quote she called it a “peach tree dish,” similarly to her botched attempt to call out “Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho.” Marjorie Taylor Greene warns of meat grown in a ‘peach tree dish’ while peddling Bill Gates conspiracy (yahoo.com)
Two. Letter to me from Richard, dated Oct. 25, 2010. He was talking about H1N1 and Swine Flu, but mentions there will be a pandemic with mandatory vaccines, an eerie prediction of COVID-19, which he didn’t live to see. He didn’t mention Bill Gates in this, but he did tell me he believed Gates vaccine charity programs in Africa were an attempt at microchipping and/ or genocide for population control.
Three. Letter to me from Richard, dated Dec. 23, 2010. It does sound like a variation on QAnon’s popular “Democrat/elite Satanic baby eating pedophile cabal.”
Four: That’s MJT in a video she posted 4 days after the shooting, on Oct. 5, 2017: (129) Marjorie Taylor Greene video – YouTube
Five: Email to me from Richard, Oct. 6, 2017, the day after MTG posted her video! As you can see, Richard and MJT’s “mass shooter hoax/ false flag” theories were very similar. This is one conspiracy I WISH had a grain of truth to it. When? When will the Deep State take all the guns? For that matter, when will they pass a piece of legislature that will put any sort of reasonable limit on gun purchase whatsoever? I’ve been hearing Obama or someone is “taking the guns” for a solid 14 years now. C’mon, Deep State– do it!
Six: Haaaa, I hope so! Better than a generation of stupid hateful bigots like MTG, who said this. I never heard Richard spout off homophobic shit. And at least he had a cool costume. Marjorie Taylor Greene says straight people will soon be extinct / LGBTQ Nation
Please Clap Dept.: I wrote a feature focusing on commercial fisherman Ken Koyen titled “The Last Fisherman of Washington Island,” for the June issue of Milwaukee Magazine. You can read it here: www.milwaukeemag.com/meet-the-last-fisherman-of-washington-island
Follow me on: Substack//Facebook Group//Twitter//Instagram
My latest books are:
Brady Street Pharmacy: Stories and Sketches (2021, Vegetarian Alcoholic Press)
American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (2020, Feral House)
Tea’s Weird Week: Jurassic Lark? Are Dinosaur Deniers for Real?
I see there’s another Jurassic Park movie out soon (June 9) to kick off summer blockbuster season, so I thought it was as good a time as any to talk about a special breed of conspiracy theorists sometimes called “dinosaur deniers.” Me and Heidi talked about this on the Tea’s Weird Week podcast after I joined a viral Facebook group called Christians Against Dinosaurs. There were quite a few laughs. The group says that “Big Paleo” is the force of greed that perpetuates the “Dino Lie” to eager “dinophiles” so they can rake in the big money selling phony fossils to museums.
But in scrolling through the group it was really difficult to determine if these people truly held these beliefs or if it was a master class of trolling. And if it was trollcraft, it seemed likely it had inadvertently attracted some people who do believe that dinosaurs never existed.
Their have been legit dinosaur deniers in the past, and the main talking points are either religious– fossils were fakes created by Satan to bolster evolution theories or some such, or are theories cherry picking hoaxes and scientific error.
While working on my book American Madness, Dr. Daniel White of University of Sydney was helpful in explaining the appeal of conspiracy belief. Here’s a quote from him in the book:
“Those ‘selling’ conspiracy theories are better at selling themselves as experts than their mainstream alternatives, as well as what their ‘research’ finds. Science is very self-doubting in its presentation; usually, a finding is put forward as something along the lines of ‘based on our findings we can predicte that the most likely explanation is…however, here are the limitations of our study.'”
Compare that to someone like Alex Jones slamming his fist on a desk screaming about how he has “irrefutable proof” of some “false flag” attack. A lot more confident!
American Madness also took me to the International Flat Earth Conference in Dallas. Although there obviously were some other media types there and maybe a couple of undercover “globehead” (that’s the term for dum dums that believe the world is ball shaped) gawkers, I can say that the majority of the roughly 500 people there were legit Flat Earthers, so dinosaur deniers is not far fetched by comparison.
But there are several examples of conspiracy movement hoaxes. Before the modern wave of Flat Earthers, there was a Canadian group in the 1970s called the Flat Earth Society, based out of Saint Thomas University, a satire group of poets and philosophy students. A more recent example is the Birds Aren’t Real, a group of jokers who say they believe birds are actually government surveillance robots. But these days, things are so fucking nuts, who can tell what is real and what isn’t?!
I read a good article about all this from 2015 titled “Poes, Trolls, and Dinosaur Deniers” for skeptic.com, written by a paleontologist named Dr. Donald Prothero. He warns of Poe’s Law, described in this passage:
This (the Christians Against Dinosaurs group) seems so over the top that it immediately struck me as another example of extreme satire and parody which are so common on the internet. Often referred to as a “Poe,” these satirical pieces are intended to mock the bizarre beliefs of many groups of people from the extreme political and religious fringes. According to RationalWiki, the idea was first coined by Nathan Poe in a 2005 post, and “Poe’s Law” is the “observation that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between parodies of fundamentalism or other extreme views and their genuine proponents, since they both seem equally insane.”
He points out solid evidence that the Christian Against Dinosaurs group started, at least, as a joke, with admins tied to other satire sites. Kristin Auclair, who recorded videos for the group talking about dinosaur denial, claims on a post that her videos were “satire,” though like third-rate knock-offs of The Onion, it’s hard to see the satire because of Poe’s Law, which makes it pretty unfunny, in my opinion.
To add to the confusion, Christians Against Dinosaurs encouraged a protest against a Tucson McDonald’s that has a statue of a dinosaur outside it on Tanque Verde Road in August 2020. Someone inside the group encouraged people to call the franchise’s management and a “spokesperson” told the local Patch.com affiliate (one of several local media outlets to pick up the story) that “We’re fed up with everybody acting like the people of Tucson are imbeciles and we want to help.”
This was certainly more trolling, but as Dr. Prothero notes:
We are also in the tricky position demonstrated by all Poes: the crazies out there are so bizarre that it’s often impossible to tell a well-crafted parody from the real thing.
Yes, indeed.
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My latest books are:
Brady Street Pharmacy: Stories and Sketches (2021, Vegetarian Alcoholic Press)
American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (2020, Feral House)
Tea’s Weird Week: “The Superhero Complex” Podcast Examines the Phoenix Jones Story
It’s been almost ten years since my first book, Heroes in the Night: Inside the Real-life Superhero Movement (2013, Chicago Review Press) was published. Writing that remains one of the great adventures of my life. For years I worked my day job(s) and spent many nights on patrol with people who had adopted their own homemade superhero personas, a secretive subculture of Real Life Superheroes (RLSH). I went out on patrol or participated in RLSH events in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York City, New Bedford, Vancouver, San Diego, Portland, and Seattle. More on that last city in a moment.
During that process I met several people that I still consider to be friends today. I also learned how to write a book and a lot about the writing process in general. After many rejections from agents and publishers, I sold the book to Chicago Review Press in 2012. Since then, I’ve had five more books published. My book American Madness, which I think is my best, also spun out of this work (though it went in a very different direction). I’m currently working on what I hope will be books 7 and 8.
One of the most memorable moments of working on Heroes was a rather terrifying night I spent following RLSH Phoenix Jones in Seattle. I wrote two chapters about him: “Mr. Jones and Me” and “People Fighting and Pepper Spray and Superheroes and…I Don’t Know,” the last title a quote from someone on the phone with 911. Phoenix Jones, who claims he is a “perfect crimefighter” doesn’t like me, because when I described the “Pepper Spray Incident,” the total shitshow of him attempting to break up a fight (alluded to in that chapter title), he became upset that it wasn’t a flattering portrayal. I only wrote what I observed firsthand (though through a cloud of pepper spray, of course.) As I mentioned– it was a terrifying night. There were a couple moments that night where I thought my goose was cooked.
Now, a new podcast, The Superhero Complex, reported by David Weinberg (and produced by Novel for iHeartRadio) delves deep into the Phoenix Jones story. It’s highly recommended by me. In Heroes I largely just shared my experiences being out on patrol with Jones, but David digs into his past (Jones is an amazing bowler, it turns out), documents the falling out with his team, his arrests, and his misadventures in the years beyond when Heroes was published, so I learned a lot listening to it. It’s revelations about Phoenix Jones are interesting and, many times, disturbing.
The Superhero Complex has got a great mix of people weighing in on the Seattle story and this unusual subculture I was engrained in for many years– and still have some contact with.
I was interviewed for the podcast and am featured in a couple episodes so far. In episode one, “Out of the Shadows,” I talk briefly about the Bald Knobbers, a masked vigilante gang in the Ozarks from the late 1800s. The Knobbers started by hanging livestock thieves, but devolved into doling out punishment to unmarried couples living together and whipping people accused of “being ornery.” In episode four, “Under the Spotlight” I talk about the infamous “Pepper Spray Incident.”
The first episodes are out and you can listen to it here: www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-superhero-complex-94326228
SEE ALSO: Heroes in the Night: Inside the Superhero Movement is still available here: www.ipgbook.com/heroes-in-the-night-products-9781613747759.php
Follow me on: Substack//Facebook Group//Twitter//Instagram
My latest books are:
Brady Street Pharmacy: Stories and Sketches (2021, Vegetarian Alcoholic Press)
American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (2020, Feral House)
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