Like last year, 2014 gave us another cavalcade of bold proclamations, failed predictions, bizarre conspiracy theories, and all-around craziness from Glenn Beck.
After starting off the year by declaring that he, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh would be hosting a massive pre-election “conservative summit” that never materialized, Beck spent a good bit of time patting himself on the back for supposedly being opposed to bigoted anti-gay laws being passed in Russia, while simultaneously aligning himself with bigoted anti-gay activists in America, including many who openly supported the very laws that Beck claimed to oppose.
But Beck couldn’t be bothered to worry about that bit of hypocrisy when he was busy facing off against demonic powers that were trying to keep his network off television, probably because the network is being led by God, who had big plans and “absolute miracles” lined up for Beck this year.
As the year went on, Beck began to fancy himself as something of a prophet who had been sent by God to issue all sorts of dire warnings that were now all coming true. America has become engaged in full-fledged demon worship, he warned, and now Christians and God are under attack and the nation is just begging to be destroyed. Obviously, the Bible was the only possible solution and should serve as the foundation of our politics and our education system.
If the nation did not finally start listening to him, Beck warned, America was doomed.
Oddly, 2014 was also the year in which Beck openly soured on America, declaring that this nation is “the stink on the crap pile” and asserting that it has become a badge of “eternal dishonor” to be an American. At one point, Beck even threatened to burn an American flag because our society has gone completely insane and become a danger to the entire world.
One of the main reasons why America had become so terrible was because President Obama is a sociopath and a dictator who has been fomenting revolution and was on the verge of rounding up conservatives and sticking them in internment camps. Pretty soon, he warned, revolutionaries would begin pulling people from their cars and executing them in the streets.
And these sorts of warnings should obviously be taken seriously, because Beck has the ability to see the future, about two years ahead of everyone else.
None of these sorts of things would happen if Beck were president, he assured his audience, because he would be able to fix the problems in the Department of Veterans Affairs in an hour and would defeat ISIS by dropping a fuel air bomb on them and pounding the Middle East into glass.
Predictably, Beck was also a constant source of bizarre conspiracy theories and dire warnings, such as his theory that the missing Malaysian airplane had been hijacked for use in a terrorist attack against America and his warning that immigrants crossing the southern border would lead to an Israeli/Palestinian-type of conflict in the U.S.
In addition to delivering a few of his trademark incoherent messages, Beck also found time to praise parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated, accuse the Associated Press of “raping” Bill Cosby, liken the U.S. government to Nazi Germany and warn that America is headed toward mass starvation.
After predicting that the Ebola virus would become airborne and be brought into the United States by Nigerian prison workers, Beck then spent a week in October completely freaking out after a handful of American healthcare workers contracted the disease, warning that it could spell the end for this nation and telling his audience not the listen to anything the government says. Instead, Beck called upon millions of Americans to march on Washington demanding a ban on travel from West African nations, screaming that failure to do so was “literally going to be the death of us all.”
Perhaps the biggest story of the year was Beck’s revelation that for several years he had been suffering from a variety of mysterious ailments that nearly ended his career, but somehow instead merely convinced him to re-focus his energies on becoming the Walt Disney of Jesus movies.
All the while, hanging over Beck’s head has been a defamation lawsuit brought against him by a victim of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing whom Beck repeatedly asserted was actually an al Qaeda operative responsible for orchestrating the attack. Beck’s lawyers tried to get the case dismissed, but their novel legal arguments failed to persuade the judge, who has allowed the suit to move forward.
Rather fittingly, Beck closed out the year with a special television program in which he sent a dire message from forty years in the dystopian future, recounting how 2014 was the year in which “we all went dead inside” and the entire world began to completely fall apart:
