Finding Happiness in Los Angeles

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  Anyway, Brian was convinced that aliens were behind absolutely everything that happens. He told me there were five different alien races fighting each other over who gets earth. One of the alien races lives underground, in the center of the earth. One looks like the greys we know from the movies. And one alien race is a bunch of lizards. Like in the old sci-fi miniseries, V.

  When I pointed out that a lot of his alien conspiracy theories were carbon copies of actual sci-fi shows on TV, he said that was no coincidence: "They're preparing us. The aliens give information to the illuminati, and they give the information to the CIA, and they pass it on to TV producers. A lot of the stories on The X-Files are actually real. The aliens told the producers of The X-Files what to write."

  That made absolutely no sense to me: "If the aliens are hiding, why would they want to reveal all their secrets on TV shows?"

  "They're hiding in plain sight. They're purposely spreading misinformation and confusion," Brian explained. "To discredit those who have seen them in real life. Everyone will think they're just crazy people who watch too much TV."

  He was dead serious. None of this seemed even the least bit strange or funny to him. It all made perfect sense in his head.

  Of course he also mentioned the New World Order. He said all the rich and powerful people all over the world are conspiring to overthrow the current world we live in now, seize power, and create a new world.

  That made no sense to me either: "The rich and powerful are already in control of everything. The term New World Order implies that things will change. Old rulers will be overthrown and replaced by new rulers. Why would the people who already rule us want to overthrow themselves? People in power like the status quo. The people who are oppressed are the ones who start revolutions. Not the ones who are already in control."

  I guess Brian had never thought that part through. He wasn't really thinking about any of this stuff. He was just repeating stuff he had read on conspiracy websites.

  He said the New World Order was plotting to destroy the electric grid, and then mankind would go back to the Stone Age.

  I said: "But that doesn't really make sense either. Why would rich people purposely want to destroy the world we live in now? The world is their oyster. It's a lot more fun for them to be rich in a nice, functioning world, where they can park their yacht in St. Tropez, than to be rich in a destroyed world without yachts and fancy hotels. There's no point in being rich if your money can't buy you nice stuff in a shitty, destroyed world."

  "I don't know," he admitted. "I'm just telling you what's gonna happen."

  He started taking Kung Fu classes and bought a gun, so he could defend his wife and toddler after the apocalypse. He was literally preparing for the end of the world. He was now a doomsday prepper.

  There's a big overlap between conspiracy theorists, racists, gun nuts, doomsday preppers, fans of the rapture and poor white Republicans. They all have one thing in common: They feel like the oppressed underdogs.

  They honestly believe they're being oppressed by liberals, feminists, globalists, atheists, muslims and other minorities. They honestly believe they're in a fight for their own survival. Because they're being brainwashed and manipulated by a daily diet of right-wing propaganda lies. Pre-packaged brain fast food for people who have no time to think for themselves.

  Poor white Republicans hate the world the way it is right now, because they're at the bottom. They get a big dopamine kick out of the idea that after the world is turned on its head during a cataclysmic event, they will come out on top. They're actually wishing for the end of the world. That's why they love the chaos Trump creates with his irrational, ignorant behavior. They like the idea that one of Trump's thoughtless tweets could start World War 3.

  The gun nuts, who get a boner when they see an AR-15, fantasize about being the only ones equipped to defend white people in the coming race war, revolution, or globalist invasion they keep fantasizing about. And then they will be heroes!

  The doomsday preppers dream of the day when they're finally on top, when everyone else is dead, or begging the preppers for help, because only they are equipped to survive in the great wasteland of the future. They will go from grumpy losers hiding in the woods, to being the kings of the new world! Finally they will get the respect they think they deserve.

  And for religious fanatics the rapture can't come soon enough. They get a kick out of the idea that God will finally punish all the sinners who dared to mock religious nuts. Finally the nuts will be on top! And then they'll have a front row seat in heaven, while all the non-believers burn in hell. Muahaha! What a satisfying thought. For Christian extremists anyway.

  All of them dream of being the winners in a post-apocalyptic doomsday world. The thought makes them feel good. It's their way of living in a fantasy world like World of Warcraft.

  Brian had all kinds of apocalyptic theories. Many of them contradicted each other, or had massive flaws in their internal logic, but he didn't seem to mind. According to him, the world was about to end any day now.

  First he was convinced the world would end in 2000. Remember Y2K? People used to be so scared the world would go up in flames.

  Later he said the world would end in 2012, because that's when the Mayan calendar was gonna end. He said the Mayans had all kinds of lost, secret knowledge, and they knew more than we did about the end of the world. Of course he was privy to all their ancient wisdom somehow.

  I told him that the end of the Mayan calendar was simply like the end of our own calendar. After December 31st comes January 1st. Not the end of the world. But he told me I was wrong. We argued about it for hours. He told me to heed his warnings and prepare for the end of the world.

  A few months later, in 2013, I said: "Told you so!"

  But then, instead of admitting his mistake, he claimed that I had misunderstood him. He claimed that he never said the world would end in 2012.

  A few years later he said the world was gonna end right after Hillary gets elected. The stars told him so.

  At this point he was convinced that he was a gifted master astrologer and that he had psychic powers. He was convinced he could see the future, thanks to the stars.

  Never mind that the starlight we see is thousands or millions of years old. The stars are not where we see their million-year-old light. They've moved since they emitted that light. Everything in the universe is constantly moving.

  Brian and I only talked to each other once a month or so. And every time he was crazier than the last time I spoke to him.

  His theories started out fairly reasonable. But each time I talked to him a month or so later, his theories had gotten a lot more bizarre. It was like he was a character in World of Warcraft and he was leveling up. The first time I talked to him, he was level 1 crazy. And the next time he was level 7 crazy. Then he was level 15 crazy. Then level 21.

  The things he said were getting more and more bizarre, the deeper he delved into the fantasy world of conspiracy theories.

  Do conspiracies exist in the real world? Of course. Just look at the Trump White House. But just because some conspiracies exist, doesn't mean every freakin' conspiracy theory is true.

  Sometimes conspiracy theories are true. Most of the time they're not.

  Brian's world view was actually pretty simple. Nothing that happens is really in our own hands. And nothing is ever just a coincidence. Everything that happens, happens for a reason, and is being controlled by one omnipotent force.

  The lizard people!

  He couldn't cope with a multicausal world, where all sorts of random shit happens for a million different reasons that have nothing to do with each other, and have no greater purpose. Way too complicated. He tried to make sense of the chaos and confusion in his head, by blaming everything on only one cause.

  Just like religious nuts. Why does stuff happen? Because God! What's the meaning of life? God! Where do we go after we die? God!

  "The aliens hide among us," Brian said. "They can make
themselves look like humans. A lot of politicians are not really human. They're lizard aliens in disguise. Like Hillary."

  Gee, what a coincidence.

  And Brian thought he knew everything that was about to happen next, because the stars told him. He constantly made cataclysmic predictions. He loved to talk about the end of the world. It obviously made him feel good to play the role of the all-knowing oracle. He felt respected for his superior knowledge.

  And whenever he turned out to be wrong, he had some excuse for it. Either he supposedly overlooked a star on his astrological charts, or I had misunderstood him.

  What do you say to someone who is that crazy?

  He wasn't the first person I had encountered who believed this steaming pile of nonsense. Read the comments from avid readers under the articles on alt-right sites like InfoWars or Breitbart. A lot of their regular readers believe the most insane conspiracy theories you could imagine. And somehow, everything is always the liberals' fault. It's their answer for everything.

  Nice and simple.

  At first I tried to argue with Brian, without stepping on his toes. I tried to reason with him: "Don't you realize that all these alt-right conspiracy theories are designed to make you hate liberals? The pedophile pizza parlor nonsense. The stories that Hillary is a mass-murdering, devil-worshipping, demonic, baby-eating lizard lady. And you seriously believe all this stuff? And that aliens are behind it all?"

  He replied: "You'll see. Don't say I didn't warn ya!"

  He was convinced that evolution was just a hoax, too. Perpetrated by aliens to confuse us: "Have you ever seen a monkey turn into a human? No, you haven't. See?"

  I tried to explain that that's not how evolution works: "It's a very slow process. A bunch of tiny changes over many generations. It takes too long to observe with the naked eye. Unless you look at species with a very short life cycle, like bacteria. You can literally watch bacteria evolve under the microscope. That's why there are antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

  First the antibiotic kills most of the bacteria. But some of them have random mutations. Some of these mutations might accidentally make them immune to the antibiotic. And then the mutated bacteria that's antibiotic-resistant thrives, while the non-mutated bacteria die. And then you have a new, resistant strain that spreads like crazy. Every doctor will tell you that evolution is 100% real, because they're dealing with it on a daily basis, when they prescribe antibiotics or develop flu shots."

  Of course he was convinced that vaccines are a hoax too. Perpetrated by the freemasons, for population control.

  So I gave him a few more examples: "The same goes for exterminators. They use poison to kill rats. But sometimes a rat gives birth to a baby rat that has some random mutation. And if the random mutation just so happens to make the baby rat immune to the rat poison, it will thrive, while the other rats die. And eventually you have a whole new type of poison-resistant rat. Every exterminator can tell you that.

  And dog breeders use the same principle to grow new dog breeds. They manually mimic what happens randomly in nature. They favor some mutations over others, and after a few generations, you have a new dog breed. The ideal German shepherd looks different today than it did a hundred years ago."

  But Brian would not listen to any amount of logic or reason. He firmly held on to his beliefs, even if they were proven wrong by reality.

  He thought global warming was just a hoax, too. Perpetrated by the globalist illuminati, to control people.

  I tried to explain that there is no longer a debate about global warming. The whole world knows it's real, except for some brainwashed poor white Republicans.

  "Then how do you explain that it's getting colder?" Brian asked me.

  "Because winter is coming," I said. "You're confusing weather with climate. When it's cold in the winter, that's weather. When it's cold in Alaska, that's climate."

  He wasn't convinced. So I kept going: "Think about it. North Korea and South Korea agree that global warming is real. They don't agree on anything else, but that they agree on. Israelis and Palestinians hate each other. But they both agree that global warming is real. China, Russia, Australia, France, Belgium, Sweden, South Africa... they all agree that global warming is real. Even countries who hate each other. Friends and foes alike. They all agree that global warming is real. Tens of thousands of climate experts all over the world, people who have studied the climate their whole lives, they all agree that global warming is real. It's not a massive worldwide conspiracy. It's simply true."

  "No, the globalists are behind it," Brian insisted. "They're controlled by the United Nations. And the United Nations are illuminati and freemasons. And they're controlled by the lizard people."

  I tried to explain to him that I had seen global warming with my own eyes: "My parents and I used to go on vacation in France a lot when I was a kid. I saw the glacier on Mont Blanc back then. And recently, years later, I was on Mont Blanc again. And I saw with my own eyes how much ice had melted since the last time I saw the glacier years ago. The same thing is happening everywhere. A bunch of German ski resorts in the Alps have been going out of business, because they haven't been getting enough snow for years. People are literally losing their jobs because of global warming."

  But Brian didn't want to hear anything that would contradict his opinions. He was like a religious zealot.

  I think, apart from being brainwashed by diabolical Republican lies and manipulation, there's another reason why Christian fanatics in America don't want to admit global warming is real:

  They think global warming can't be real, because people are too tiny and insignificant to damage God's perfect creation. Admitting that we're breaking the planet is the same as admitting that God isn't perfect, in their mind.

  Or if global warming is real, then it doesn't matter anyway, because good Christians will be raptured before the earth falls apart. And who cares if non-Christians have to live on a shitty, broken planet after the rapture? It's what they deserve! Hell is too good for them!

  Or if global warming does exist, then God made it happen on purpose, for a good reason. It would be a sin to try to go against God's perfect plan. If God is playing with the thermostat because he wants the planet to be a couple of degrees warmer, he must have his reasons. We're just too puny and stupid to understand it.

  And on the off chance that global warming actually is a real, unintended problem that God didn't anticipate, then he could simply snap his fingers and fix it, before it gets out of hand. So, no reason to be alarmed. If it needs fixin', God will fix it.

  See how religion can be poison for the mind? You end up doing things that might kill you or others, because you believe it's the right thing to do. God wanted it this way.

  In 2016, Hillary was far ahead of Trump in the polls. Everyone was sure she would be our next president, for better or worse. Nobody believed that Trump would actually become president one day. Not even Trump himself.

  He was just a troll. People looked at him as an orange-faced evil clown with silly hair. Like the Joker in Batman comics. Make Gotham great again! When people looked at him, they saw a sideshow freak. A bizarre oddity, to be laughed at, because he kept saying such obviously stupid and hateful things. He sounded like a supervillain. He was so over the top, nobody took him serious.

  Since Brian was convinced that he could see the future, he "knew" that Hillary would win the election. Because the lizard people had engineered it that way. And he could see it clear as day in his astrological charts, he claimed.

  Brian said: "Trump is a friend of the Clintons. He even donated to their campaigns! Trump is controlled opposition. A fake opponent that can be easily beaten. A friend who pretends to be an adversary. To give Americans the illusion of choice. To make Americans think they live in a democracy, and that their vote counts. But of course Trump will not win. His only job is to look crazy and make Hillary look good by comparison."

  I guess the lizard people didn't count on the stupidity of Trump vote
rs.

  The problem with Trump voters is, they're so dumb, they don't even know how much stuff they don't know. They just assume nobody else knows more about evolution or global warming than they do. If they don't understand how it works, they think nobody understands how it works.

  Whenever Brian told me one of his bizarre theories, I could tell in his voice how proud he was. Proud that he could see through the alien conspiracies. Proud that he was smarter than everyone else, because he thought he had secret, forbidden knowledge. It made him feel good about himself. Superior. It gave him a big dopamine kick.

  THE UNIVERSE DOESN'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU

  "If one were to bring ten of the wisest men in the world together and ask them what was the most stupid thing in existence, they would not be able to discover anything so stupid as astrology."