{"id":31440,"date":"2013-07-25T16:37:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T16:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=31440"},"modified":"2014-02-17T22:52:37","modified_gmt":"2014-02-17T22:52:37","slug":"sarnat","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=31440","title":{"rendered":"Just Like The Jones’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou walk into the room
\nWith your pencil in your hand
\nYou see somebody naked
\nAnd you say, who is that man?
\nYou try so hard
\nBut you don\u2019t understand
\nJust what you\u2019ll say
\nWhen you get home
\nBecause something is happening here
\nBut you don\u2019t know what it is
\nDo you, Mister Jones?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

-Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man<\/i>, 1965<\/p>\n

Thirteen years later, no Village loft chatterer,
\ncharismatic Big Daddy Jones knows \u2018xactly who he is,
\nfather and savior, power broker and preacher, molester and killer,
\nJim\u2019s communal now dystopian Peoples Temple relocated south,
\nsnuggled in a self-referential Guyanan jungle town.<\/p>\n

Where no one but the bosses lived well.
\nWhere kids\u2019 stomachs went empty.
\nWhere misbehavers got stuffed in plywood box torture holes.
\nWhere cult members attempting to flee were drugged.
\nWhere paranoid armed thugs patrolled the compound 24\/7.
\nWhere Red Brigades ensured all orders were obeyed.<\/p>\n

When Congressman Ryan and troubled parents
\nflew in to see for themselves, they were gunned down
\nby loyalists who exhorted a thousand followers
\nto drink the Kool-Aid which passed as mass suicide\u2026<\/p>\n

In the eighties I ran clinics in Oakland and San Francisco
\nwhich offered health services to traumatized families
\nplus a few survivors of that Jonestown Massacre.
\nCared for a comatose genius copycat teen-chemist
\nwhose breath reeked that same telltale Guyanan almond stench.
\nDespite drilling burr holes to let out the pressure,
\nthe stressed boy also died of cyanide
\nafter his cortex splattered the ER ceiling.<\/p>\n

Decades past, I still can\u2019t get rid of
\nthat sick Rommel Goering Hitler stink.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Gerard Sarnat lives in the Bay Area. He is widely published; his book <\/i>Homeless Chronicles is available here<\/a>. He may be reached at gsarnat@aol.com<\/a>.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou walk into the room With your pencil in your hand You see somebody naked And you say, who is that man? You try so hard But you don\u2019t understand Just what you\u2019ll say When you get home Because something is happening here But you don\u2019t know what it is Do you, Mister Jones?\u201d -Bob […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":31470,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-31440","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31440"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56244,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31440\/revisions\/56244"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}