Oh how the mighty are not yet behind bars, homeless, or dead from a self-inflicted bullet to the brain.
It's been almost a year since MCR returned to the U.S., after having fled it; after having vowed to never return and to henceforth take being "part of the solution" to the next step by being either the chief of some indiginous tribe somewhere (like Martin Sheen at the end of Apocolypse, right?) or possibly even consiglere to Hugo Chavez. He wasn't yet quite sure at the time.
But the world is a delicate place for a leader with no cult. He had a good thing and screwed it up. I wonder if he wishes sometimes that he had never moved to Oregon, but rather stayed in his apartment on Magnolia: writing his stories, manning a small staff and, although not exactly importing barrels of money, making just enough chedder to justify being one's own boss. Most importantly, above and beyond everything else, is that when MCR lived in L.A. he was able to enjoy the right amount of privacy and anonymity required for him to maintain the following he possessed, enjoyed, and wholey took for granted back in those days.
You see the thing about MCR is this: he's a bad internet date. He's that all-around perfect guy or gal you've been looking for all your life. He says all the right things, and surprises you frequently with a few more. He gets your blood pumping and makes you feel alive and hopeful. That is, of course, until you meet him and very quickly realize that he is, in every way imaginable, the exact opposite of what you'd expected -- to an almost menacing and predatory degree; in many ways, kinda like a child molester.
It's been almost a year since MCR returned to the U.S., after having fled it; after having vowed to never return and to henceforth take being "part of the solution" to the next step by being either the chief of some indiginous tribe somewhere (like Martin Sheen at the end of Apocolypse, right?) or possibly even consiglere to Hugo Chavez. He wasn't yet quite sure at the time.
But the world is a delicate place for a leader with no cult. He had a good thing and screwed it up. I wonder if he wishes sometimes that he had never moved to Oregon, but rather stayed in his apartment on Magnolia: writing his stories, manning a small staff and, although not exactly importing barrels of money, making just enough chedder to justify being one's own boss. Most importantly, above and beyond everything else, is that when MCR lived in L.A. he was able to enjoy the right amount of privacy and anonymity required for him to maintain the following he possessed, enjoyed, and wholey took for granted back in those days.
You see the thing about MCR is this: he's a bad internet date. He's that all-around perfect guy or gal you've been looking for all your life. He says all the right things, and surprises you frequently with a few more. He gets your blood pumping and makes you feel alive and hopeful. That is, of course, until you meet him and very quickly realize that he is, in every way imaginable, the exact opposite of what you'd expected -- to an almost menacing and predatory degree; in many ways, kinda like a child molester.
To this date, as far as I've been made aware, MCR has continued to reside in NY with Jenna Orkin (or, for those who need refreshing: "the dyke that loves me" "[that girl] I fucked in the ass when we went to that ASPO conference in NY..."). None of us ever thought that relationship would last two months. Lucky for Mikey that it did, or one hard-assed rite of passage it would have been until his trust fund kicked in -- which it finally did, I think, sometime in August or September.
Say what you want about MCR but he is lucky. For instance, there was so much evidence proving that he (not the government, meth-dealers, ex-employees, or who-ever-the-hell) was the actual perpetrater of that burglary in Ashland, Or. Again, I don't think many people thought it would turn out the way it did, but it did. To this day the APD, although having named MCR as having been its only suspect, hasn't done anything whatsoever to do anything at all about it. I think MCR was probably just as surprised, being that he fled the country and all, in my opinion, as a direct result of his botched plan to make some easy money -- i.e. committing insurance fraud. This is just one example of how lucky MCR has been. Or, more acurately put: lucky-enough, as more bad has befallen him than good -- most usually by his own doing; in fact, I'm not aware of anything bad that's ever happened to him that wasn't the direct or indirect result of his own power-hungry, desperatley sadistic, cosmocentric self. That being the case then what happened in Oregon, i.e. MCR's supposed "downfall" and humiliation, was bound to happen in one form or another at some time, regardless of whether or not he had decided to move out of L.A.
Say what you want about MCR but he is lucky. For instance, there was so much evidence proving that he (not the government, meth-dealers, ex-employees, or who-ever-the-hell) was the actual perpetrater of that burglary in Ashland, Or. Again, I don't think many people thought it would turn out the way it did, but it did. To this day the APD, although having named MCR as having been its only suspect, hasn't done anything whatsoever to do anything at all about it. I think MCR was probably just as surprised, being that he fled the country and all, in my opinion, as a direct result of his botched plan to make some easy money -- i.e. committing insurance fraud. This is just one example of how lucky MCR has been. Or, more acurately put: lucky-enough, as more bad has befallen him than good -- most usually by his own doing; in fact, I'm not aware of anything bad that's ever happened to him that wasn't the direct or indirect result of his own power-hungry, desperatley sadistic, cosmocentric self. That being the case then what happened in Oregon, i.e. MCR's supposed "downfall" and humiliation, was bound to happen in one form or another at some time, regardless of whether or not he had decided to move out of L.A.
The longer MCR stayed on the activist scene the more his true colors bled through. His days were numbered. To put it one way, he wasn't the genuine article -- a concerned citizen selflessly slaving away to expose and fight the wrongs commited by the United States government. Anyone not a complete sheep whose known Ruppert is well aware of his lust for social status and power. This is where his actions belied his words, his writings and all his friggin' footnotes. He despised fellow 9-11/Peak Oil activists, attacked and dismissed them. Only he was the expert. Only he was worth listening to. As a result, the number of his followers shrunk over time, and increasingly so, as his narrisistic frustration and anger swelled. It's always been my belief that, when you get down to it, most rebels are just individuals who're pissed off that they aren't the ones in charge. For all his seemingly endless ranting and raving about the corrupt elite that control the world I have no doubt in my mind that Mike would give his balls for a seat at the conspirator's table. Being that most of the people involved in the 9-11 and Peak Oil activist movements are truly concerned and well-meaning people who are genuinley selfless in their cause, an animal like Ruppert could only move among them undetected for so long. Again, as it was, he was on borrowed time, and as said time passed it was clear that some changes were about to take place. Knowing this, to one degree or another, Mike was determined to remain in the game and shift gears. Now it was Peak Oil that he began to singularly focus on, but with much more of a doomsday bent than others in the field ("others" such as university professors, geologists, people with the qualifications necessary to address said topic, etcetera etcetera etcetera...), which again served to allow Mike to be special and stand apart.
Mike once said, "Oregon is the promised land for me." He could not have been more wrong. His reasons for wanting to move aside, it never was a practical venture -- at least not in the way it was approached by Ruppert. First of all there wasn't an actual plan...for anything. It was as if Mike assumed that things would natually fall into place when the times were right. "The Universe will guide me," he said on more than a few occassions when either myself, or a whole bunch of us were trying to talk sense into the man -- trying to get him, for the love of god, to change his mind out moving north. He talked about the universe a lot and how much clout he had with it, being that he was such an awesome guy and all. To the rest of us it seemed that if the universe did have Mike's back then it was for sure going out of its way to send message after message warning him that moving to Oregon was bad ju ju. Take the business, for example. At the time operational, sustainable, and had peaked a long time ago. There was only so much money that could be made from Mike's beloved following who, as a demographic, aren't characteristically wealthy people. Just enough money was made to pay employees, rent, bills, and Mike's expenses, which to briefly state, were lavish. Since there was no plan for relocation that also meant that there hadn't been any money set aside to bankroll the expenses. Being that FTW was a sole proprietorship, Mike was FTW and vise versa. Mike was up to his neck in debt. Money was owed to credit card companies, vendors. There were backtaxes to would have to be dealt with, state and federal. The whole thing was a mess.
But, No. These were just minor things not worth a second thought; things not worth expending the energy worrying about. They would be taken care of in time. Sure.
I know that what he wanted and had in mind were quite different from what reality presented him. To say that Mike wanted to take FTW in a new direction would be an understatment. His "relocation fantasy" was based on the idea that Peak Oil was going to hit and hit hard. Almost overnight it would be anarchy as the fuel that made our way of life possible simply ran out. It would be like Mad Max and Roadwarrior, basically.
It was easier to work for him then, too. MCR lived and worked down the street, but the actual FTW headquarters was set up in a one-room apartment on Magnolia Blvd in Sherman Oaks, CA. At any on time there would be two to four people (necessarily or unnessarilly) employed there, performing various tasks as delegated to them by Mike, and yeah, there were a lot of frustrating days when MCR would get so annoying you'd want to choke him, it wasn't really all that bad of a gig. He would only come into the office once or twice a week to pick up his bills and lord over those of whom I came to learn were not just merely his employees, but actual extensions of the man himself. He'd call bullshit meetings purely for the pleasure of giving orders and hearing himself speak -- b/c he thinks he sounds wise. Admittedly, looking back on those days, I really believe that he believed that we believed everything that came out of his mouth as if it were the Word of God. I have the emails to prove it; enough emails to almost make you feel sorry for the man whose employees at the very least took as a sad joke and at the very worst felt nothing but hatred towards the man.
Like I said, Lucky. Not many people that I know of are able to do that. Such turns of events allow me to be more open to the possibility that fairies, sprites, and trolls are very real and something to be taken seriously. From the time that I first learned of the break-in, all the way to the very moment I sit here writing this, I remain in awe of everything that has transpired since July 5, 2006. Why it continues to be a subject of interest for me, to the extent that the events that took place around that time still feel
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