On yesterday’s episode of the Glenn Beck Acute Paranoia Revue, Beck managed to squeeze in classic examples of several of his most venerated complexes: narcissism, persecution, paranoia, and conspiracy theory, all made the cut as Beck wove one of his most absurd and unintentionally funny rants to date. Now, comedian Lewis Black has disclosed a previously undiagnosed malady that is ravaging Beck’s brain: Nazi Tourette’s. More on that later.

Beck began yesterday’s program by displaying what he portrayed as an ominous quote from a dangerous person whose name he withheld:

“What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude that the principle risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? In order to save the planet the group decides: isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”

That’s troubling, isn’t it? Who would say such a thing? And what position of influence does this person hold? Is it President Obama? Or maybe Van Jones? How far along is this plot to destroy industrialized civilizations? Beck will make his audience wait almost twenty minutes for the answer. When he finally gets back to it, Beck reveals that it was former United Nations environmental official, Maurice Strong. But here’s the funny part: Strong made these remarks twenty years ago in an interview wherein he was describing to the reporter an idea for a novel. It wasn’t a plot to bring down civilization at all. It wasn’t even an initiative that Strong advocated. It was fiction.

Beck eventually got around to admitting that Strong’s comments were not part of some evil scheme, but his admission was disingenuous and sarcastic. Employing air quotes, Beck said with a knowing wink that Strong was merely “fantasizing” about the plot of a novel. He followed up by noting that no novel was ever actually written. The implication was that the novel story was just a cover and that Strong was secretly pursuing this plot. In fact, it was more than an implication. Beck actually said it explicitly:

“He hasn’t had time to do it [the novel] because he’s involved in collapsing the global economies into the hands of a global government. Isn’t that interesting? It’s almost like his book.”

Actually it’s not particularly interesting. And Beck doesn’t bother to support his allegation that Strong is busy “collapsing the global economies.” But if Beck believes that a speculative storyline for a novel is need to worry about the prospective novelist’s real life intentions, then he needs to explain his own intentions as articulated in his upcoming novel The Overton Window. In his book he “fantasizes” about “A plan to destroy America, a hundred years in the making.” Hmm. What exactly is Beck plotting?

Beck then ups the ante by implicating the White House in Strong’s conspiracy. He beseeches his viewers to fan out across the Internet to scrounge up information about Strong. He literally tells them to drop what they’re doing (which is watching his show, so that might be good advice) and to commence their research because the President was working furiously – at this very moment – to expunge the evidence of the plot. Beck invokes his silly prop phone to the White House and urgently warns that…

“The reason why this phone is not ringing now is because there are phone calls being made and they are scouring the Internet. They are sanitizing and taking it all off. Find it now, before it’s gone.”

So the White House has abandoned its whole agenda, health care, financial reform, immigration, cap and trade, and two wars, to devote their time to scrubbing information about a former UN official’s twenty year old idea for a book. I can just picture the BeckPods pausing their DVRs and scurrying to their computers to scrutinize everything they can find on Strong. It’s like a scavenger hunt for Lex Luther’s blueprint for world domination. The Cheetos bag that flew off their lap can be recovered later. Right now they are needed to march into Google at their master’s command. This is a matter of life or death. And don’t dismiss the death part. Beck is still convinced that “they” are out to get him.

“This is why the Washington Post slash Huffington Post slash Jim Wallis slash Obama advisor have been dropping bags of hammers on me for months, smearing me. Why? Because I brought your attention to the lie of social justice.”

See? They’re all in it together. I’m quite sure that Arianna has Barack on speed dial so they can order more hammers as necessary. All of Beck’s conspiracies are perfect loops, and now he has come back around to social justice, which he once again equates to Marxism. Adding to the hilarity of this episode, Beck issues a challenge to find the words “social justice” in the bible or any of America’s founding documents. The implication is that if they are not there, then his characterization of them as evil is affirmed. What does that say about “free market,” “intelligent design,” or “family values,” none of which are mentioned in the bible or founding documents either (so far as I know). Yet I suspect that Beck is not preparing a program to renounce them.

As a counterpoint to Beck’s comedy routine, I offer this bit of brilliance from The Daily Show. Lewis Black is always funny, but this is off the charts. Black reveals Beck’s hypocrisy, plus a little known malady from which Beck suffers: Nazi Tourette’s.