A part of what makes this so pernicious is that, unfortunately, my brother's own bad choices led to a big part of it as well, but that doesn't change the fact that people like this, and the Alex Jones' who followed in Bell's footsteps, took advantage of a lot of disaffected, and troubled people.

My brother was also, unfortunately, the first of five siblings brought into the very real crazy that my parents created when they got married; and only so they could have sex because one of the few things that stuck with my mom in her orphanage upbringing was a few of the Catholic Church's views on sex. Being disciplined, and understanding delayed gratification, however, was not something they taught very well. Not a good thing when you are as unbelievably creative, and perceptive as she was.

The old man was already a good deal more than walking wounded emotionally because of the Great Depression. And I mean really really broken as a man who could stand up for himself. The only thing two things he got out of growing up, as far as I could tell, was, firstly, a horrible sense of life as only a terrible ordeal one had to plod through, without question or complaint, because that's all life is, and questioning, or complaining, would yield you nothing. And the second thing was that all he ended up being comfortable doing was selling things, in the worst, hand to mouth, hardly getting by way, you could imagine. Even after he acquired very high end, aerospace mechanic skills.

In any case, as I said, my brother was the first into this mad coupling. What he suffered as a result was never something he could share with me, or my two sisters. And of course, my youngest brother only lasted six years, most of which my brother was no longer around much anymore, having turned delinquent in about as big a way as you can without actually going to prison (though he was arrested several times for petty crimes). And then the Vietnam war happened and my brother's luck really started getting bad.

Oddly enough, it was my younger brother's eventual death that allowed my older brother to come home early from Vietnam, but the extra damage was already done. Which was, of course, a great deal more he would not talk about.

The main theme here that I want to point out to you, however, with this background, is this Nation's inability to deal with the economic roller coaster that is Capitalism; the very regular boom and bust cycling that has created the horrible thing that we now refer to as the "cycle of the generations;" the thing that has served to create the ever onwardly rolling, destructive rise of inept individuals who create even more inept offspring, who then grow up to begat even more ineptness still. That inability laid the groundwork for people like Art Bell to begin to fashion careers out of selling fear based mysticism, and a super tanker, boatload of wishful thinking, on cause and effect, to try to give people like my brother a sense of sudo understanding of how the world works. And boy did he take to it. And once he started down that path, regular facts, and ordinary truths, just started to take a backseat to his ever more troubled sense of reality. Something that would become self reinforcing because his bad life choices along the way would only serve to isolate him further into the fantasy world that people like Bell, and people a lot worse, could weave fairly well.

They found my brother only a few days ago wandering, quite out of it, and nearly starving, many miles from his home in Graham Washington. Apparently, some of the fellow misfits he had let stay on his property finally ended up taking serious advantage of him. Stole all of his bank cards. His Id. And his diminishing mental state made him unable to do anything about it. This despite the fact that we have been begging him for years to leave the place and come back to live closer to my younger sister and I.

And now the system treats him like a pariah that has no institutional reference point at all. He isn't fit to fend for himself anymore, but the ER room that took him in initially just dumped him back out on my sisters doorstep, because they won't take the responsibility for getting the VA to help him. And the VA waiting list to get someone in to receive this kind of evaluation is something you have to experience in fighting with to believe. And because his home is no longer livable because of neglect (which were the first signs of his growing dementia, which we saw and then reported to a host of agencies, and help hotlines, but to no effect), he now exists in a kind limbo of non personhood. A limbo that none of us has the resources to do much about (my younger sister is the only one still not retired, but is barely making it, even though she works two jobs, one for the Kent School District, and another part time gig cleaning homes). She was also the only one here in Washington with a house with a spare room in it.

This is where this nation is at in so many ways now it makes me want to cry even more than I already have been crying. So much is missing. So much does not work. And so much is made up for it by those who only see an opportunity to take even more advantage of people who have had all hope, dignity, and health just stripped from them because this ongoing ineptness just keeps growing in all areas, and aspects, or our social, and economic life. And even if that weren't enough to make you weep, you surely will be doing so soon because the planet itself is dying as well. And do not for a moment think that is something you will be able to escape feeling, as a natural part of existence, even given all of your distractions, and addictions now. You will feel it, even if only subconsciously, because that will be a big part of what is driving you to avoid feeling anything at all, that's real, anymore.

How do you keep any sense of meaning in such chaos. How do you keep any sense that there can be a way out of this? The only answer I can give you is never stop trying to find it. Never. It is the only thing that has kept me going. And because I was the second kid in that whole crazy mix, the one who had empathy burned into him by helping to take care of our youngest brother, I can't, and won't, ever give up. Because to give up would mean that it was all meaningless, and pointless and just an exercise in futility, and pain management. And I do not believe that. I can't because I have felt the possibility of so much more in coming to see what our place in existence really means. And so I won't. I owe it to both my brothers, and my sisters. And to this wonderfully beautiful planet.

BEFORE 'THE X FILES'

Art Bell Turned Conspiracy Theories Into A Theater Of The Mind

2 diggs theoutline.com Entertainment

A late-night radio host with a — pun sorta intended — cult following who passed away this month at 72, Bell covered a constellation of topics relating to strange phenomena, pseudoscience, and niche concerns of the tinfoil hat sect.

See Also: