Overton Window: Chapter 16-18
Aug. 25th, 2010 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyChapter 16
Beck keeps quoting a guy named Carroll Quigley, so out of sheer perverse curiosity, I looked him up. Historian, wrote about secret societies, apparently was a huge influence on the John Birch Society. Apparently, Quigley was less than thrilled about this, but conspiracy nuts are not to be dissuaded even when an author they like tells them that they’re full of shit. That just means that the author is in on it too.
After the quotes, the tone takes a turn for the hard-boiled as we meet FBI agent Stuart Kearns, one of those hard-living tough guys with a string of ex-wives.
I am increasingly convinced that multiple authors were responsible for this abortion of a novel. He’s waiting to see a prisoner (any guesses as to whom?) and reading over the guy’s file in the meantime. Despite having only done minor things like hate speech, tax evasion, running a grow-op, and so on, he’s a big enough deal that the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Domestic Terrorism Working Group, and the Weapons of Mass Destruction Working Group are interested in him. Yeah, okay.
I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover that Danny Bailey’s middle name is Carroll. There is even a quote from Carroll Quigley at the beginning of the chapter in case you wouldn’t otherwise get the reference.
Nothing at all happens once they meet, except that Kearns endears himself to me a teensy bit with his closing line:
Heh.
Chapter 17
We really aren’t going to find out what happened with the non-sex for several chapters, are we?
Anyway, now Kearns is smoking on a jet, because we’ve not only had an abrupt genre switch from bad romantic comedy to neo-noir, but we’ve also been transported back to before 1998. He has a Plan for Danny. We’ll see if I can make sense of it, because it’s a bit incoherent. The FBI sets up a fake website, www.stuartkearns.com (by the way, that link redirects to the actual FBI website). Fake!Kearns was fired for whistleblowing on a plot to cause a global financial collapse and usher in a one-world government—amazingly, this fake plot looks a lot like the “real” plot in this book. The villains are the International Jewish Banking Conspiracy, the Masons, the Vatican, and so on. He’s popular with what Beck calls—unironically—the Patriot underground. The website advocates violent revolution.
You’ll like this next bit:
I clearly don’t know as much about this mysterious series of tubes called the internets as Glenn Beck does, but I’m pretty sure that trolls are named for the mythological entity that lives under bridges and gobbles up billygoats. But what do I know? Beck, after all, makes a career out of IRL trolling.
Kearns’ site catches the attention of some other IRL trolls, who want to go all Anonymous on some federal buildings, Tim McVeigh-style. They organize via a “private chat room” on the site.
The internet does not work that way. Terrorism does not work that way. But why let realism get in the way of a good yarn, that’s what I say.
Danny denies that he’s ever encouraged anyone to do violence, despite the fact that less than 30 pages ago, he was calling for armed revolt. But he agrees to stir up the “small-time desperadoes role-playing Red Dawn in their living room” (which sounds like fun, I gotta say), in exchange for his freedom, so that Kearns can arrest them all and be done with it. There’s a complete non sequitur about Kearns dressing up like Colonel Sanders to get a meeting withNicolae Carpathia Ali Treki, president of the UN General Assembly, which makes less sense in context than it does here. I can only assume that the climax of this story will involve fried chicken somehow, as it seems to be a running theme and is also making me a bit hungry. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried, people.
Chapter 18
Speaking of which, the first sentence of this chapter is: “Bacon.”
It’s all downhill from there. Molly and Noah do a crossword puzzle like hip twenty-somethings with whom Beck’s audience—composed primarily of non-hip old people—are supposed to identify. Molly says she’s leaving town, Noah still carries around a poem he wrote out in penmanship class. (Seriously.)
Guess which poem it is. No really. Guess.
Then they kiss. It’s the most awesome kiss ever. There is yearning! And hunger! And quickening and urgency! I don’t need to tell them to get a room because some guy does it for me.
But of course Molly is immediately all business, and asks Noah what he’d say if she and the *cough* Patriot Underground *cough* hired his PR firm to help them save the country. He proposes a platform: spending cuts, a flat tax, cutting the tax code down to “four or five bullet points,” and a mealy-mouthed immigration policy. I don’t think I need to tell you what a bad, not to mention unrealistic, plan this is. It’s like reading a paper that a 14-year-old who’s just picked up Ayn Rand for the first time wrote for Civics class.
She proposes that they go to his office and eavesdrop on yet another secret meeting but not so secret that it can’t be eavesdropped upon. He’s unwilling, but she imposes a few austerity measures of her own and tells him that she will forever withhold the golden vagina prize unless he does this for her. He calls her bluff and she walks out.
Conspiracy count: 9.5
Chapters in which nothing happens: Most of them.
Tasty bacon: Is tasty.
Beck keeps quoting a guy named Carroll Quigley, so out of sheer perverse curiosity, I looked him up. Historian, wrote about secret societies, apparently was a huge influence on the John Birch Society. Apparently, Quigley was less than thrilled about this, but conspiracy nuts are not to be dissuaded even when an author they like tells them that they’re full of shit. That just means that the author is in on it too.
After the quotes, the tone takes a turn for the hard-boiled as we meet FBI agent Stuart Kearns, one of those hard-living tough guys with a string of ex-wives.
I am increasingly convinced that multiple authors were responsible for this abortion of a novel. He’s waiting to see a prisoner (any guesses as to whom?) and reading over the guy’s file in the meantime. Despite having only done minor things like hate speech, tax evasion, running a grow-op, and so on, he’s a big enough deal that the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Domestic Terrorism Working Group, and the Weapons of Mass Destruction Working Group are interested in him. Yeah, okay.
I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover that Danny Bailey’s middle name is Carroll. There is even a quote from Carroll Quigley at the beginning of the chapter in case you wouldn’t otherwise get the reference.
Nothing at all happens once they meet, except that Kearns endears himself to me a teensy bit with his closing line:
“I’ve got nine words for you that I’ll bet you never thought you’d be so glad to hear,” he said. “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Heh.
Chapter 17
We really aren’t going to find out what happened with the non-sex for several chapters, are we?
Anyway, now Kearns is smoking on a jet, because we’ve not only had an abrupt genre switch from bad romantic comedy to neo-noir, but we’ve also been transported back to before 1998. He has a Plan for Danny. We’ll see if I can make sense of it, because it’s a bit incoherent. The FBI sets up a fake website, www.stuartkearns.com (by the way, that link redirects to the actual FBI website). Fake!Kearns was fired for whistleblowing on a plot to cause a global financial collapse and usher in a one-world government—amazingly, this fake plot looks a lot like the “real” plot in this book. The villains are the International Jewish Banking Conspiracy, the Masons, the Vatican, and so on. He’s popular with what Beck calls—unironically—the Patriot underground. The website advocates violent revolution.
You’ll like this next bit:
This site and its inflammatory content formed what’s known as a troll in the parlance of the Internet culture. Trolling is a fishing term; you toss your lure over the side and forget about it, letting it drag behind the boat in hopes that something you want to catch will eventually take the bait.
I clearly don’t know as much about this mysterious series of tubes called the internets as Glenn Beck does, but I’m pretty sure that trolls are named for the mythological entity that lives under bridges and gobbles up billygoats. But what do I know? Beck, after all, makes a career out of IRL trolling.
Kearns’ site catches the attention of some other IRL trolls, who want to go all Anonymous on some federal buildings, Tim McVeigh-style. They organize via a “private chat room” on the site.
The internet does not work that way. Terrorism does not work that way. But why let realism get in the way of a good yarn, that’s what I say.
Danny denies that he’s ever encouraged anyone to do violence, despite the fact that less than 30 pages ago, he was calling for armed revolt. But he agrees to stir up the “small-time desperadoes role-playing Red Dawn in their living room” (which sounds like fun, I gotta say), in exchange for his freedom, so that Kearns can arrest them all and be done with it. There’s a complete non sequitur about Kearns dressing up like Colonel Sanders to get a meeting with
Chapter 18
Speaking of which, the first sentence of this chapter is: “Bacon.”
It’s all downhill from there. Molly and Noah do a crossword puzzle like hip twenty-somethings with whom Beck’s audience—composed primarily of non-hip old people—are supposed to identify. Molly says she’s leaving town, Noah still carries around a poem he wrote out in penmanship class. (Seriously.)
Guess which poem it is. No really. Guess.
Then they kiss. It’s the most awesome kiss ever. There is yearning! And hunger! And quickening and urgency! I don’t need to tell them to get a room because some guy does it for me.
But of course Molly is immediately all business, and asks Noah what he’d say if she and the *cough* Patriot Underground *cough* hired his PR firm to help them save the country. He proposes a platform: spending cuts, a flat tax, cutting the tax code down to “four or five bullet points,” and a mealy-mouthed immigration policy. I don’t think I need to tell you what a bad, not to mention unrealistic, plan this is. It’s like reading a paper that a 14-year-old who’s just picked up Ayn Rand for the first time wrote for Civics class.
She proposes that they go to his office and eavesdrop on yet another secret meeting but not so secret that it can’t be eavesdropped upon. He’s unwilling, but she imposes a few austerity measures of her own and tells him that she will forever withhold the golden vagina prize unless he does this for her. He calls her bluff and she walks out.
Conspiracy count: 9.5
Chapters in which nothing happens: Most of them.
Tasty bacon: Is tasty.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-08-26 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-26 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-26 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-26 09:23 am (UTC)I still think of trolls as the things that live the under the bridge
no subject
Date: 2010-08-26 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-26 02:42 pm (UTC)I don't know the Actual True Etymology, but from the
firstsecond or third time I heard the term, I had the image of a troll trolling associated with it.no subject
Date: 2010-08-27 05:24 pm (UTC)"Trolling" came first (as in fishing, you are trolling for a response), then people who were doing it started being called "trolls".
no subject
Date: 2010-08-26 10:43 am (UTC)well I like them anyway
and I'm twenty-something
and I sure as fuck have hips
vOv
no subject
Date: 2010-08-26 12:26 pm (UTC)(I like 'em too, but I'm 31 and desperately uncool.)
no subject
Date: 2010-08-26 02:15 pm (UTC)