Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura

The initial thought we get if a person believes a conspiracy theory is they are paranoid and gullible (because somehow in our own gullibility, we believe our politicians tell us the absolute truth and act only in our interest), so when a former US governor puts his name to a show that is investigating these mad allegations we should take heed. I've just watched the first episode about HAARP and while the information given is vital and informative, American TV fails again. The information and whole point of the show becomes lost and irrelevant as the makers try to focus and capture the viewers imagination with spooky misleading music and narration, really annoying sound effects makes this show (like most US documentary shows) completely artificial, pompous and patronizing. The most annoying thing about this is that instead of the angry shock of what the investigators discovered, the viewer is left with a sense of comfortable normalization of the topic discussed. I don't blame Jesse Ventura, instead I blame the makers for making it more of a reality show about him than the topic at hand. However, Jesse should take responsibility for some of the rhetoric one-liners he used such as "I don't get intimidated, I get angry" which was used at least 3 times. I'll give this a rating of 4 or 5 for drawing credible attention to topics that have become sneered at in a world with an easily controlled status quo. But I would honestly recommend YouTube for these topics instead.

How do I put this.

Lets say you go to Church, the priest is trying to sell you god and all the bible stories, but he does this while wearing a red nose, Pink John Lennon glasses and a head made of a dead skunk.

Jesse Ventura is such a bad actor and such a bad 'face' for this show that it becomes more difficult to believe these conspiracies.

9-11. A relatively OK episode but of all the things Ventura could have done Ventura stupidly chooses to yell at a closed door of a hanger where some debris lies around, and has a half ass interview with an FBI agent. The subject remains interesting and the truth isn't out, not at all.

Bilderberg. Dummy Venture meets with Alex Jones. Alex Jones is the least credible person on this earth. Bilderberg is a group of globalists who discuss whatever they discuss. It was created by the Dutch Royals, people not powerful or big enough. Queen Beatrix had no power, has no influence in business or government, in 2012 whatever little power she had was stripped away from her. What use could she be for the group she herself (and Bernard) have started? None. There is no conspiracy here. As a member of the Bilderberg said: If we are a secret society that want to dominate the world, we are doing a horrible job at it.

Manchurian Candidate, another BS episode with BS people. Surely mindcontrol has been explored, why wouldn't they? But Jesse makes a big old mess of it by interviewing a bunch of lunatics.

If one wants to do a show on CT, do it seriously and leave out the bloody Hollywood element. Above all, have a credible person with an IQ higher than a goldfish present it.

Oh boy.

Watch a few of Jesse Ventura's debates, and you'll see that he has a hard time dealing with anyone challenging his facts, and he often will tell you you're wrong, pretty much because he said so.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree here. It IS entertaining and slickly made, but it's about as fictional and one-sided as it gets. You're basically listening to Jesse give his many paranoid (and poorly researched) crackpot theories an hour of unopposed banter.

Jesse has also flip flopped on if this show is a "documentary" or "entertainment" (basically depending on how much shaky ground he's on when asked). The "experts" are highly suspect, and it gives "eyewitness" accounts a baffling 100% credibility rate.

What makes the show hard to swallow is the OVERWHELMING narcissism of The Governor. He basically couches himself as the head of The Mission Impossible Team, as well as its loose cannon and muscle (Jesse, you're still a huge guy but the tough guy act doesn't work like it did before you were pushing 60). In fact, the whole "crack team" seem to be random goofs with no credentials whatsoever.

And THAT is probably the most fictional part of all.

There aren't many series specifically covering popular conspiracy theories, but Ventura seems to cover the broad strokes well enough for the runtime. The nature of the subject matter is polarizing but Ventura is an interesting enough character who doesn't bring too much of the wrong baggage to this subject matter - some of the people he interviews for the show are perhaps a bit unsuitable and detract from the serious inquiry of the stories they are trying to convey, but his team's adversarial approach to scrutinizing the accounts and motives seems to ground the presentation well enough while being playful and accessible - you're never going to be able to go over all the details in the time allotted, and all the pieces matter usually when it comes to conspiracy so armchair experts will find much to be desired, but otherwise it's decent edutainment.

This show is very much a product of its time (simpler times of 2009) and probably not the sort of thing a lot of networks would be comfortable airing in the 'post-truth' era, certainly not without a lot more careful editorial oversight - some of the people interviewed for this show have been so thoroughly cancelled that we're not going to see them again; personalities like David Icke are arguably so demented that even back in 2009 he shouldn't have been platformed on this show at least not without a strong disclaimer; because popular conspiracy theorists like Icke and Alex Jones are important to the story of how CT's are sustained and propagated, whether they be dangerously ignorant peddlers like the aforementioned, or whistleblowers or journalists whose suppression might not be fully realized today these characters are relevant to the stories so there is an argument for their inclusion in any holistic presentation even if you were making this show today, but since a lot of those guys make their money peddling disinformation and selling products off their personal brands they should come with clear disclaimers.

It's great show. The big problem is its overly dramatic and like all American Reality show it feels fakeish. Take June Sarpong only just gone over to the US. In the UK she was a Presenter on a kids show T4. So could she have developed "the man in the white van" contact who worked in almost every secret project. That felt fake to me. But are there people like that and would help investigators, take deep throat, so yes. Then every show starts with a clandestine encounter that felt a little fake to me until the Manimal and a guy on a BMX shouted at the contact. But if you Google search moat of these people turn out to be what they claim. I think the investigations are factual but the slip in filmed bits that are fake as hell, to make it feel like a deep throat style show. The main point in all the investigation is its all plausible, the ones that they prove are possible. Take "The Reptilian Elite" there was literally no evidence except for 1 psychic running away as she claimed she could "hear" them. There was no proof the video expert guy said 90% of them on the net had been artificially changed. Yet the one person who came up with it is raking up millions a year on the conspiracy. Conspiracy theories are notoriously hard to prove out right but you cannot completely disprove then 100%. Also the first 2 seasons were better. They had 2 different Guys a Daniel and Alex who were sceptical of all of it at the beginning but with the right evidence would start leaning and be like OK the evidence isn't 100%. Sean Stone and Tyrrel Ventura started taking the group into areas that didn't need to go. But overall its not bad.