Oh, a postmodern life's rough, ain't it? It's so rough, we'll connect the dots of reality in any way we can to make the disjointedness comprehensible. Damn the truth because there isn't one. Paranoia will suffice.

That's the only reason I can come up with to explain why so many otherwise rational people I know have watched Alex Jones' "The Obama Deception" -- and seem to accept it. For those unfamiliar with Jones, he's the poster child of conspiracy theorists. He hosts his own paranoia-steeped radio program and heads Infowars.com, a site with the slogan "Because there is a war on for your mind." Oh, Jones was also behind "Loose Change," a quintessential 9/11-was-an-inside-job film.

Now, as easy as it'd be to call him a whack job, tell his followers to put their tin foil hats back on and commence with my happy, yahoo-liberal life, I can't justify that. To me, fighting my own personal ignorance means delving into things I know I'll find, well, ignorant.

So I watched "Deception" this weekend, keeping my mind as open as possible. In it, Jones mongers fear that there's a bank-run, global shadow government launching a scheme to enslave the world. Jones claims Obama and every post-JFK president have been little more than puppets -- Trojan horses spoon-feeding this, gasp, "New World Order" to America and the rest of the planet. No, I'm not exaggerating.

The whole thing's classic conspiracy theory: half-truths mish-mashed and digested into a dung heap of, ironically, deception. Jones connects mostly factual dots into a pseudo-logical pattern, concluding just short of telling us the omnipotent financiers ruling this shadow government are also bloodthirsty aliens.

Here's the problem with conspiracy theories: Jones and his ilk know the sinister conclusion they're after from the onset. There are so many bits of data about the world out there that, in an obsessive haze, they can pluck convenient "dots" to suit their hypotheses and connect them in any damn way they please. These "truths" conspiracy theorists concoct for themselves -- typically apocalyptic ones -- offer a sense of orientation in an overwhelming world and help them sleep better at night. Fittingly, conspiracy-types often accuse skeptics -- people who're savvy enough to check out the facts behind the conspiracies -- of turning a blind eye to the "evil" so they themselves can rest easier.

Postmodern life's confusing. Commercialism bleeds into politics: We have newly-tweaked Pepsi logos that look oddly similar to Obama's campaign "O." Politics blend with media: cable news often seems more like right- or left-wing propaganda than genuine reporting. Media creeps into our own basements and bedrooms: self-proclaimed bloggers type feverishly at their computers, convinced someone out there must give a shit about their opinions. Every facet of our lives slams together, and it's chaotic. Amid such chaos, it's appropriate, even admirable, to be skeptical of power, whatever its manifestation. But when that skepticism becomes a blind allegiance to a paranoid ideology at the expense of being truly informed -- that's a problem.

Jones could be brilliant. He could be an incredible watchdog. (Props to him for highlighting the clandestine, frenzied way these bailouts have been handled). But Jones blows the whistle with fanatical conviction. He sells conspiracy theories to the masses, unmitigated by facts that show they aren't theories so much as hair-brained hypotheses. He's dangerous because he encourages blindness, hidden beneath a veneer of contrived truth-seeking.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not some fawning, Obama apologist. In fact, I'm downright frustrated with the way our government's handled the financial crisis thus far and think Obama's broken a few too many promises too early. But the real deceiver here is Jones, not Obama.