The ridiculous prologue of Glenn Beck's “factional” book, The Overton Window

In promoting his upcoming novel, The Overton Window, Glenn Beck has tiptoed around what, exactly, the book is. While he stresses that it is a work of fiction, he also frequently discusses how it is based in fact. Just this week, for example, Beck explained that he had to change the plot of the novel because “it's coming true.”

In a “note from the author” included in a book preview posted at BarnesandNoble.com, Beck says that The Overton Window is a work of “faction,” which means it has a “completely fictional” plot that is rooted in “fact.” Beck explains that the book takes place in a “time in American history” very much like the one we are living in now, but the conclusions and events in his book are “fiction,” and further confuses things by adding ominously: “Let's all hope they stay that way.” He ends the introduction by hoping that in the future everyone will be able to label him “wrong,” yet again suggesting that the plot of this book is somehow a real-life possibility, and adds that he hopes it “costs you as much sleep listening to it” as it caused him to lose while writing it.

Beck also predicts that his critics will be “fierce and unforgiving” and will accuse him of “being every kind of conspiracy theorist they can invent,” yet “they will base it all on the plot of a novel.” (Side note before we get back to detailing this lunacy: we don't need this novel to label you a conspiracy theorist. You already are one. But this is certainly more grist for that mill.)

So what, exactly, is this hopefully-not-prescient-but-maybe-totally-prescient tome about? As Simon Maloy has detailed, it follows “handsome” Noah Gardner, who uses his “considerable skills” as he tries to thwart a “frightening plan, decades in the making, to transform America and demonize all those who stand in the way.”

In the prologue, Beck gives the first hints about what this “frightening plan” may be. Stop me when this starts sounding familiar.

“Eli Churchill” stands in a phone booth and details to “Beverly” a vast conspiracy involving 2.3 trillion dollars of “unaccounted for” money that the government is using to build a “structure.” Churchill explains that it is “not like a building but a political and economic structure.” According to Churchill, this “structure” will replace the current political/economic structure after “they” intentionally collapse it.

And stop.

Doesn't Glenn Beck regularly accuse -- without evidence -- the Obama administration and progressives of intentionally trying to collapse the economy and "the system?" What a coincidence!

Continuing, Churchill explains that “they are changing the books so that in a generation from now” nobody will know the true history of the country.

And stop again.

Strangely enough, this also dovetails nicely with one of Beck's favorite subjects: how progressives have supposedly completely distorted history, and only brave people like Beck and "the most important man in America" David Barton are protecting “real” history from destruction at the hands of the left.

And lastly, in a totally original and thoroughly unpredictable twist, Churchill is shot in the head by a mysterious assassin just as he's detailing how there are 11 unaccounted for nuclear weapons, of which he has “seen two.”

Once again, this matches up nicely with Beck's frequent outlandish statements that progressives will resort to violence in order to stop him from exposing (what he thinks is) the truth. He has even said, outright, “you will have to shoot me in the head.”

Just to recap: Beck claims to have written a work of “faction” that directly echoes the conspiracy theories about progressives he has thrown around on his radio and TV shows for the past year. In this book, which he “hopes” will not come true, “they” try to intentionally collapse our economy so “they” can replace it with a new “structure,” and “they” also have nuclear weapons with which they plan to do...something. And the only person brave enough to tell the truth about all of this is shot in the head.

And that's just the prologue.