Glenn Beck fancies himself something of a prophet - not a terribly accurate one, mind you, like one that can tell you when things are going to happen, but more of a generalist who issues vague warnings about dark days ahead and then seizes upon random current events as proof that everything he has been warning about is coming true.
To honor Beck's remarkable gift for discerning the future, we decided to take a look back at some of the claims he made over the previous year to highlight his amazing record of wrongly predicting just about everything and generally just being a lunatic.
Beck began the year by boldly proclaiming that "Hank Rearden is about to pour some steel" and fundamentally transform America, by which he meant himself and his grandiose plans to create a $2 billion libertarian compound. More modestly, Beck also intended to permanently change the way the nation celebrated the 4th of July, which he accomplished by dressing up as the Man In The Moon and telling America's history from the moon's perspective.
In between those tasks, Beck spent program after program warning his audience that President Obama is trying to foment a race-based civil war and seeking to confiscate weapons in order to re-impose slavery and eventually start killing American citizens.
For a few days in March, Beck become convinced that the government was going to start seizing the bank accounts of America citizens just like what was happening in Cyprus and urging his audience to start hoarding cash. But that obsession soon gave way to a crusade that he launched against Common Core, which he called the "biggest story in American history" because it is an evil plot to turn school children into cogs living under a police state.
When not freaking out about the future of technology, Beck became convinced that the bombing at the Boston Marathon was an al Qaeda attack backed by Saudi Arabia and vowed to take down the government if it did not come clean. For days, Beck harped about this supposed cover-up ... until it was revealed that he didn't really have any idea what he was talking about, at which point he gave up and moved on.
And what he moved on to his theory that a man who shot himself at the Houston airport while the NRA convention happened to be in town was part of a "false flag" operation carried out by Occupy Wall Street in order to push for gun control. That was also entirely untrue and so Beck dropped it after a few days, never to mention it again.
Then came the IRS scandal, which prompted Beck to demand President Obama's impeachment ... because it was designed to cover up what really happened in Benghazi. When that didn't work, Beck called for Obama's impeachment over his actions in Syria, which was also designed to cover up for Benghazi as well as start World War III and establish a one-world government. Beck openly accused Obama of engaging in treason even though he, once again, had literally no idea what he was talking about.
At one point, Beck promised a story that would rock the nation, but all that emerged was some coalition of Tea Party members in Congress who refused to back immigration reform. Nothing ever came from this supposed scoop, but that didn't stop him from promising other such scoops, which likewise never materialized.
Through it all, Beck somberly warned his audience time and again that America's days were numbered because society had gone insane and been engulfed in darkness. Until, that is, Beck spoke at a Tea Party rally in Washington, DC and realized that the Tea Party is the modern day civil rights movement and the people forseeen by God and the Founding Fathers who would one day rise up and save this nation ... just as Beck has been trying to do throughout his career:
