Behold, I Have the Truth

On Tuesday, December 26, I drove into Austin to visit some friends from childhood and college: a loafing day after the continuous celebration of Christmas. On the way home, I scanned the dial eventually settling on Radio Free Austin home of conspiracy theories, alternative news and antigovernment rants all brought to the good people of the Republic of Texas free of Charge. What little I heard, until the station went out of range 10 miles out of Austin, was the that the ‘black Pope’ was trying to subvert Protestantism and the current government under George Bush was socialistic almost communistic. A charge few would level, but the truth according to the host.

On Wednesday, December 27, I flew home to The Lou after a relaxing five day Texas Christmas. A layover in Dallas-Love afforded me a second opportunity to hear an unknown truth. A truck driver on his way to KC to pick up a load was proclaiming that there was no cure for AIDS to a disinterested terminal.

I had been reading a few rows in front of him and kept hearing a commotion behind me. A lady walked past me on her cell phone thanking the caller for saving her. After a trip to the restroom, I investigated what was causing people to flee the area behind me.

Sitting down across from the man, I made eye contact with him as I found my page in the book. A second look was all he needed for him to determine I was a willing listener.

“You a student?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Work with computers?”

“Nope, I’m a fundraiser for a non-profit. We do ministry and social work in forty-one countries.”

“That’s great.”

“What do you do?”

“I sell poems. Here let me show. I wrote this and have sold over 400,000 copies.”

He handed me a brown piece of paper. On it was a simple rhyming poem describing his definition of love. Mixing references to the Bible along with laws of monogamy, marriage and heterosexuality, he painted a picture of an intimate relationship with little Gospel.

As I read the poem, he handed me his other life work, a well-worn laminated paper, which ‘proved’ that AIDS could never be cured, because it was a lack of love in the blood. To test his hypothesis, he showed every way to get AIDS, transfusions, intercourse, childbirth and drug uses were all cursed by all religious writing including the Bible, Koran and Buddhist teachings.

I explained my organization led some AIDS work in Africa. This turned him to how Bono might have used drugs in the past, and he thought still did. For the poet, the fact that Bono did drugs destroyed any good done.

Challenging him, I pointed out that blood transfusion was safe and people could give their own blood to themselves. He agreed that giving of blood to oneself would be all right, if the hospital did not screw it up. Later as I boarded my plane, he overly apologized for any offense made about transfusions. He did not agree with me; rather, he wanted to apologize to someone, and I was the only one listening.

In a confused nutshell, he had this thought out. That AIDS would never be cured, because an act by the victim forced the love out of his/her blood. The only way one could keep love was to follow a set of rules. Love was not an emotion, but an act. That was his truth.

It always shocks me to hear a conspiracy theory nut talk. Unlike bookmakers, consultants and advisors, the truth they know is hidden from all else and is an earth changing knowledge. Like the ego to say you should be President to say you have a truth we have all missed takes an ego few have and fewer need.