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And any time Alex Jones is having a bad day, it’s good for civilization.


And any time Alex Jones is having a bad day, it’s good for civilization.  

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Author: TheCrow   Date: 8/7/2022 2:14:16 PM  +2/-1   Show Orig. Msg (this window) Or  In New Window

There was a time when I listened to Alex Jones. Then the Trump Era in 'conservatism' became a 'thing' and violated every precept or real conservatism.


Alex Jones is a rabble rousing populist who will do anything to solidify his followers. The more outrageous the better as Trumpism is not based on logic but irrational objectio.



Deplorables Are Real


The problem isn't the demagogues, it’s their audiences.






Aug 6

Alex Jones, in happier times. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)








1. Tower of Babel


 

I was unaware that Ken White (aka Popehat) does a Substack. It is magnificent. Here he is on the Alex Jones case:



When Jesus appeared before Pilate, they spoke different languages. I don’t mean that literally — although maybe they did speak different languages and used a translator, or maybe spoke Aramaic, or Latin. I mean that they used language in completely different ways. Jesus was preaching. Pilate was judging. Jesus was talking about truth with a capital T. Pilate was trying to focus Jesus on the practicalities of the case, and perhaps making a mordant quip about the futility of the process when he said “what is truth.” There was no meeting of the minds.


When modern American political culture winds up in court, the effects are similar. The participants are speaking different languages, and using language in different ways. Courts are focused on a taxonomy of words. Are they factual? Are they opinion? Are they literal or figurative? Courts also care about the literal truth of words. That’s central to defamation law — it’s not defamatory unless it was false. Courts are about analysis, and the entire project of the law is about words meaning specific things.


But modern American political culture is emotive and even artistic. It uses language like a musician uses notes or an impressionist uses brush strokes. Whether it’s Marjorie Taylor Greene talking about Bill Gates' efforts to colonize our bowels through "peach tree dishes" or Alex Jones ranting about gay frogs, modern politicians and pundits use language to convey feelings and attitudes and values, not specific meanings. If you demand Alex Jones defend the specific meaning of his words, it’s like demanding your eight-year-old defend his statement that his birthday party was the best day ever when previously that’s what he said about Disneyland.



Which brings us to the mismatch problem with having Alex Jones in a court of law:



The point is that courts are ill-equipped to deal with people like Alex Jones, and people like Alex Jones are ill-equipped to deal with courts. Jones’ catastrophic testimony in his own defense illustrates this. Jones struggled to fit his bombast within the framework of the law, within the distinction between fact and opinion. It’s a bad fit because that’s not how he uses words. If Jones had been honest — an utterly foreign concept to him — he might have said “I just go out there and say what I feel.” The notion that Sandy Hook was a hoax is a word-painting, a way of conveying Jones’ bottomless rage at politics and media and modernity, and he can no more defend it factually than Magritte could defend the logical necessity of a particular brushstroke.



But that’s only a warmup for White going full-darkness:



I suspect that a vast judgment against Jones won’t have much value as a deterrent or proclamation of truth. Jones is loathsomely rich because people want to consume his art. His landscapes of hate and fear and mistrust resonate with a frightening number of Americans. The people who enjoyed his Sandy Hook trutherism didn’t enjoy it because it was factually convincing or coherent; they enjoyed the emotional state it conveyed because it matched theirs. The plodding technicalities of law are probably inadequate to change their minds.


Defamation cases like this one — or Dominion’s case against Sidney Powell, or the parade of defamation claims against Trump — are just, and it’s just that the victims receive compensation. But they don’t solve the problem. America can survive the demagogues themselves, it’s their audience that will kill us.



This. Stare into the abyss and read the whole thing. (And subscribe.)




What White is talking about is of a piece with a conversation I had with my colleague Will Saletan on Friday.


Will asked me what I thought motivated the segment of Republican voters who are openly illiberal. Here’s my response:



I think they are voting on hating other Americans. . . . They have an eschatological view of the country. They know exactly who they hate. And who they hate are not the North Koreans, not the Chinese. It’s not the Russians. Those are the far out-groups. What they hate are the near out-groups. They don’t disagree with them. They hate them. And that’s what they’re voting on.



I’m not describing every Republican. Maybe not even a majority of them. But it’s clearly a share that’s bigger than 2 percent. It’s a share that’s big enough that it has nominated gubernatorial candidates in Arizona and Pennsylvania and a Senate candidate in Georgia. It’s a share big enough to have made Alex Jones and Sidney Powell rich and made Donald Trump president of these United States.


Take Ken White’s admonition and put it on a pillow: “America can survive the demagogues themselves, it’s their audience that will kill us.”


That’s because democracy has no solution for how to fix itself when a large enough share of the populace goes sour.




But let me cheer you up: Jones was ordered to pay $50 million in damages yesterday to the Sandy Hook parents. It’s not enough. The floor should have been 10x that number. But whatever. It’s a start.


And any time Alex Jones is having a bad day, it’s good for civilization.


 





 
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Extreme Right Idiot Finally Comes Clean... +4/-0 Jett 8/3/2022 6:54:21 PM