Pirate Journalism

Conspiracy theories can be very seductive.

Given a few strange clues and some seemingly random bits of information, it is easy to raise the suspicion of something sinister going on just beyond eyesight of normal men and women.

Star Chamber, Free Masons, Rosicrucians, Skull and Bones, the Catholic Church, CIA, Military-Industrial Complex, SMERSH, Environmentalists, and Communists; They all have plots to dominate the world.

At best, these are the villains in a spellbinding tale of mystery and intrigue. Taken another way, it can lead one down a rabbit hole of paranoia and insanity. At worst, however, they can provide terrible insight into how the world really works.

Way back when, the survivalist bug bit me. With the Clinton administration burning down churches, enacting massive domestic spying programs, trying to steal the Second Amendment and annihilating the American steel industry, it was easy for a steel-town boy to buy some guns and make plans to head for the hills when everything went U.S.S.A.

However, I learned that you couldn’t live with that level of alertness for very long without going crazy. Every mysterious phone call is an attempt by the government to tap your phones. Your power goes out, and you wonder if the ATF is about to bust down your door. You either pack up and head to a cabin in the woods or go crazy and shoot somebody. Or, like I did, you find a different way to fight back. I got into journalism to fight the lies—and there are plenty of out-right lies in the news—of the mainstream media. I might not have been very successful in saving the world, but I didn’t try and blow up a federal building, either.

However, that doesn’t mean I don’t see the conspiracies that are still out there. I learned long ago to look past the Republican/Democrat puppet show to suss out what the Powers-That-Be are really trying to do.

Interestingly, the Games-They-Play are not just on the national level. They can be seen happening right here on the Grand Strand.

Consider this: Myrtle Beach has been America’s beach for decades. People of all walks of live came here to play on the beach, shop in the stores, golf at the clubs and cruise the streets.

However, someone has decided they don’t like that.

They destroy the Pavilion. They raise taxes and pass laws to drive off millions of tourists and billions of tourist dollars. They drive off conventions and work at making Myrtle Beach the laughing stock of the vacation industry.

Consider the latest fiasco to hit Myrtle Beach—the cancelation of the marathon.

A few flurries at 10 p.m., and city officials can the race, spitting in the face of logic and common sense. They claim it was because of the weather and safety concerns, but that makes little sense. Even at 10 p.m., there was no snow sticking to the roads. At 4 a.m., when I walked to the beach to take pictures of the snow, the roads were wet, but still black. By morning, the idea of snowy, icy roads was a wet dream.

Come the morning, the thousands of runners that came into town proved it by running anyway and dominating the local headlines for the weekend. It seems that the city forgot that people come to the Myrtle Beach Marathon to practice for New York, Boston and other runs often held under worse conditions.

Or, did they?

By sabotaging the annual run, this could be just another step in the systematic destruction of America’s #1 Family Beach. Just like with the bike rallies, admittedly on a smaller scale, thousands of unhappy visitors are going home and telling all their friends about their disappointment and how stupid people in Myrtle Beach are. A 25-year-old tradition is probably as good as dead.

Now, I haven’t quite figured out the whys or whos yet. However, when there are PACs and mysterious corporations making questionable, if not illegal, machinations in favor of the elected puppets who enacted these attacks on our beach, our residents, our visitors and our livelihoods, its not hard to believe that something sinister is lurking in the shadows of Myrtle Beach.