@MrMoKelly & ‘The Rahner Report’

Chaos book. The library yanked it from me on my iPad because it was do we're living in the future, then I see Chaos. The Manson Murders is a documentary on Netflix and directed by Errol Morris. No Less, no Brainer front of the line. Here is the trailer.

had been twice as long. It's just ninety six minutes. You could fit like two and a half of them into one brutalist. If you're like me, you've gone to sleep plenty of time with true crime documentaries on TV because they're soothing, and the guys with the deep voices are also very soothing to listen to while they're talking about horrific stuff. But you're not dozen off during this documentary with the graphics and the editing. This like documentary

adderall we know. The Tate LaBianca killings back in nineteen sixty nine were so horrifying that they more or less ended the Swinging sixties, and they had an effect similar to what I understand about the Charles Starkweather killing spree a decade before that. People were freaked out and scared. Maybe you loved Quentin Tarantinos once upon a time in Hollywood like I did, for giving us the fantasy ending we wished for a lot like the one in Inglorious Bastards.

Here's a spoiler, they smoke Hitler. Chaos does a thorough and like I indicated, a hyperactive job of explaining who everyone was, where they were, how they were related to each other. The thing just barely stopped short of showing charts with red strings showing who gave each other chlamydia.

It's extremely thorough. If you've read Helter Skelter, the Chaos book and documentary are a whole different ballgame in that it sort of craps all over Helter Skelter and Vincent Boliosi, the Manson prosecutor who wrote it or co wrote it or had a ghost written that was the all time best selling true crime book. I wouldn't say I knew or was friends with Buliosi, but I interviewed him around two thousand and eight for his book called The Prosecution

of George W. Bush for Murder. Whatever you want to say about the guy, he had balls roughly the size of the Goodyear Blimp. In twenty twenty five, not a lot of people are going to argue that our invasion of Iraq was righteous or had anything to do with the nine to eleven attack. It's an objective, non partisan fact at this point, and if you got a problem

with it, go pick an argument with a historian. Not me, but back in two thousand and eight putting out a book about prosecuting a president for lying US into a war and the American soldiers who died from that, let's just say that it took some nerve. In fact, it got him blackballed from national media. If you look at the reception section for the book on Wikipedia, that's blank. The guy who wrote the all time best selling true

crime book gets shut out of national media. And I was the only person in major media at the time, at the Seattle Times, in fact, to give him some ink. And it involves sticking my own neck out a little bit. I found boog Leosi to be sharp and impressive, not just in the interview, but throughout the process that goes with that stuff, the follow ups, the fact checks. It's not like just sitting down for a tight five with Jimmy Kimmel. It's an exhaustive quality control process, and you

don't really get it with a blog these days. After the interview, finally Ran Bugliosi came to the old Seattle Times Building to thank me and shake my hand in person, which was one of those solid old school marks of class. I really liked him. Now, to be clear, this isn't some rambling bragathon about somebody famous I had a connection with. I'm admitting to you how naive I was, and how this new documentary and book have caused me to rethink

that whole scenario. Try to imagine how gobsmacked I was reading Tom O'Neil's Chaos and watching the Morris Dots documentary to be told that Bugliosi may have fudged some stuff to shape the Manson story how he wanted it, and

the real story was likely different and larger. And what that book goes into that the documentary doesn't is Bugliosi's back and forth with O'Neil, which gets a little nuts as O'Neil comes back to him with information that doesn't add up about the Manson case and Bugliosi gets increasingly bent out of shape. Now he's not around to defend himself. He's gone, so I guess O'Neil gets the last word.

But O'Neil makes a compelling case at the very least that Bugliosi was mainly interested in making himself a star and then protecting his legacy. There's lots more in the documentary that I'll point out but not completely spoil. One thing is how close Manson was to break an into the music industry and maybe becoming a star. You heard a snippet of his singing in the trailer. One of the Beach Boys was very involved with the Manson family, Dennis Wilson. He died in nineteen eighty three, so I

guess O'Neil gets the last word on him too. But some of Manson's music is played in the documentary, and it almost pains me to say this. It ain't terrible, It's of its time, and this drives home the concept that things could have easily gone the other way for him and lots of others around him. Something else O'Neil gets into, which a surviving prosecutor disagrees with, is a possible connection with Manson an MK Ultra, which was essentially

a CIA mind control program. How did Charlie go from being a somewhat charismatic X con loser who nobody really took seriously back in the hate Ashbury district to a cult leader who could make women and men do anything for him, including killing. Maybe it wasn't just the riz. How did Manson get so many breaks from the cops when he was on parole when they should have violated his ass several times over. I don't know how much I buy into the mk ultra angle, or even how

much Morris does as a filmmaker. He strikes some new ground out himself and talks to people. It's not just the straight adaptation of the book, but this is all laid out plausibly, and I didn't feel like I was listening to the babblings of some crank telling me that say,

breast milk is better than vaccines and science. This stuff has lots of resonance in the present day, not specifically Mchaeltra, but the way certain people can get their followers to become radicalized and do what you and I might consider to be the unthinkable. Based on my observation, people don't need to be coerced. Now. There's plenty of footage of Manson's family members then and later in their lives, and

that stuff is chilling to me. True believers who don't blink when they talk to you when they speak, it's in this patient, serene, even condescending voice while they're saying things that are utterly deranged more than a half century ago, but relevant now. Even if you don't have cable TV. I am not a conspiracy whack job, and you don't need to one hundred percent buy into everything you watch. But this chaos documentary on Netflix is even more worth your time than a trip to buy a horse paste

for your COVID MO. So it was compelling. It makes a compelling argument. Is that fair to say? Very absorbing? And O'Neil himself admitst some things where he doesn't have conclusive evidence. I think the thing raises more questions than it answers. But it's interesting stuff and it's not just it's not like that UFO show with the guy with

the wild hair. What is that Ancient Aliens? Yes, ancient alien I mean some of that stuff can be fun, but I think this is serious and it's extraordinarily well crafted, well put together.