So what? I don’t give a crap. He’s an American citizen with rights including free speech. If you don’t like him, don’t listen. Or better yet, prove him wrong or whatever. How does his “billion dollar empire” compare to Google?!?!?!
Thanks for looking out for the rest of us. My wife tells me to be a man and stand on my own two feet. But it's hard.... and I'm very glad to have you on my side.
No, really, you're doing us all a great service. I personally haven't felt this loved and cared for since Mum wiped me bum and slapped a fresh diaper on.
If you'll just hold our hands while you tell us how fucked up we are....
"a dangerous social parasite that exploits vulnerable and low IQ people"
where have we heard this type of rhetoric before, hmmm when and where
can't get over "dangerous social parasite." the author is surely but a humble janitor, sweeping the low-IQ sand out of Society's oyster so the deserving Pearl may glow more brightly. god forbid one sand granule should listen to what another might say; it must be prevented; it's dangerous. this bivalve needs guardrails!
Howabout we replace the Soviet overtones of :social parasite" with the less fraught designation of "swindler"?
I used to like Alex, back in the 1990s. He was up on the edge of talking about phenomena like the War on Drugs, militarization of police, and other over-reaches by the State. Alex used to have some guest of actual merit to converse with, like Peter Dale Scott, who could eat anybody's lunch on a whole host of current affairs and history topics, on a show like Face The Nation. Credit for Jones inviting him on his show, which is more than any big-league national TV news network has ever done (with the exception of Pacifica's Democracy Now TV show, and that peerless primary source TV medium known as C-Span.)
I also remember Alex's Bohemian Grove prank- a daring move that got some interesting footage (although not particularly unsettling in and of itself, without the narrative frame imposed over it by ones wilder flights of imagination and/or Jones narration.) For a while, I actually felt a bit sorry for Alex, after Glenn Beck began incorporating parts of Jones act into his Fox TV show, reaping a $60 million contract for it (cut quite a bit short, but Beck got over anyway.)
All that "alternative history" shit, by late-blooming autodidacts like Jones, Beck, et. al...speaking as one autodidact to another, it has to be understood that there are some basics of erudition and scholarly discipline that are not to be dispensed with in favor of simply drawing straight lines between data points of persons, ideas, and events. Reality-based autodidacticism requires more discipline than college undergrad work, not less. Neither Jones or Beck is at that level. Sorry about that.
But what really got me to break with Jones was his descent into non-falsifiable conspiracy narratives and cartoon trap-door logic. He completely disgraced himself over Sandy Hook; a journalist with aspirations toward integrity would have done a speedy mea culpa and then shut it all down for a few years, as penance. (A real journalist of integrity would not have taken it where Jones took it in the first place.) Instead, Jones spiraled into right-wing paranoid demagoguery- and as a result, his audience exploded and his fortunes went through the roof. This in turn has resulted in Alex indulging in some documented episodes of elite deviance of his own, if I may say so. He's a rich guy now. Rich enough to know that he's sitting on top of a scam empire, as pitchman for the products that every alternative medicine fancier and survivalist needs, fueled by his rants that the sky is falling. Shrewd enough to know better than to express open contempt for the gullible audience of loyal followers with a seemingly bottomless appetite for his schlock, his twisted history seminars, and his guided meditations into paranoia.
Interesting and well written. The story of how money (and power) corrupts.
How do things like this happen in the US? I believe we are pretty unique with this sort of thing- it happens with a unusual regularity, and happens across all classes. It's a form of insanity- not just as presented by an Alex Jones or Rachel Maddow but for all their followers who can easily number in the millions. Then we wonder why civilized discussion has simply disappeared. Sure other countries through history have gone off the deep end but what excuse do we have? None that I can see- plenty of dollars floating around, plenty of opportunities, mobility- you name it and we are the envy of the world in that regard. Why the disintegration?
I think I know the source (hint, see my second sentence) and perhaps Matt will give it some attention in the future
Karl Marx- who was not all wrong- would say that this is what capitalism does: make it all about money. Grow or die, based on that cash flow.
I don't hold with Marx's Unified Field Theory of Social Organization. My view is more moderate- it isn't the existence of private enterprise and markets, it's their enshrining as an Ism.
CapitalISM is as hostile to challenges to its precepts as Leninism. (Marx himself once said "I am not a Marxist!" Indicating that he had at least some glimmer of the problems of his readers getting too dogmatic with his social prescriptions. Not a problem in my case.)
The problem is that when people refer to as "free market" principles, what they really mean is unregulated, unchecked markets. ("Free markets"- a contradiction in terms if ever there was one. As if nobody pays for anything.)
Unchecked markets are the Achilles heel of capitalism. They're inherently inertial. Diverse markets get turned into oligopolies, and even monopolies. Wealth funnels to the top. Entrepreneurialism becomes subordinate to quasi-feudal control. Facebook sees someone else's good idea, buys them out, incorporates their company into the empire, and the intentions of its creators can simply be dismissed or even suppressed. The venture capitalists and financiers who direct the investors in Big Pharma and a handful of private owners with the preferred class of stock fund the invention of a new medicine, but the inventors don't reap the profits, the funders do. Etc.
This is something that Marx intuited, even though he didn't refer to the process as "inertial." But that's how it works, if "the laws of the market" are simply allowed to dictate everything else. The most money beats everything else. Every other value. And beyond a certain level of private wealth, the person possessing it obtains autocratic power. Like a feudal lord, except that their estate is their business enterprises and purchased political influence, rather than agricultural real estate.
That's the real origin of my antipathy to the highest strata of wealth accumulation- it upsets the rule of law. Ultra-wealthy private individuals are provided with the powers of governments, minus the accountability and the restraints of democratic advice and consent. The super-rich are not necessarily nice people. But even benevolent despots are still despots. And even the well-intentioned wealthy have a tendency to lose a perspective shared in common with those who are significantly less wealthy. They're too distant to listen.
To get back to anything approaching a level playing field will require the dissolution of the current system. This is the only reason I could possibly agree with anything Antifa advocates. They would unfortunately bring in a true despotism so I could never side with them. What to do? Well, I am also a Canadian citizen and the current topic raging in the house is whether to get status up there for the rest of the family. Options in the future might be priceless.
So what? I don’t give a crap. He’s an American citizen with rights including free speech. If you don’t like him, don’t listen. Or better yet, prove him wrong or whatever. How does his “billion dollar empire” compare to Google?!?!?!
Thanks for looking out for the rest of us. My wife tells me to be a man and stand on my own two feet. But it's hard.... and I'm very glad to have you on my side.
No, really, you're doing us all a great service. I personally haven't felt this loved and cared for since Mum wiped me bum and slapped a fresh diaper on.
If you'll just hold our hands while you tell us how fucked up we are....
Dude one bit of advice. Don't wave that thick zealot stick you have poking out of your backside around in public.
When the shit you shovel stops being internet anonymous zealots like you find themselves crying & bloodied in an alley somewhere.
Y'know E....can I call you E?
You have all the personable charm of a tick lodged in a deer's asshole.
I bet you're fun at parties though.
"a dangerous social parasite that exploits vulnerable and low IQ people"
where have we heard this type of rhetoric before, hmmm when and where
can't get over "dangerous social parasite." the author is surely but a humble janitor, sweeping the low-IQ sand out of Society's oyster so the deserving Pearl may glow more brightly. god forbid one sand granule should listen to what another might say; it must be prevented; it's dangerous. this bivalve needs guardrails!
Howabout we replace the Soviet overtones of :social parasite" with the less fraught designation of "swindler"?
I used to like Alex, back in the 1990s. He was up on the edge of talking about phenomena like the War on Drugs, militarization of police, and other over-reaches by the State. Alex used to have some guest of actual merit to converse with, like Peter Dale Scott, who could eat anybody's lunch on a whole host of current affairs and history topics, on a show like Face The Nation. Credit for Jones inviting him on his show, which is more than any big-league national TV news network has ever done (with the exception of Pacifica's Democracy Now TV show, and that peerless primary source TV medium known as C-Span.)
I also remember Alex's Bohemian Grove prank- a daring move that got some interesting footage (although not particularly unsettling in and of itself, without the narrative frame imposed over it by ones wilder flights of imagination and/or Jones narration.) For a while, I actually felt a bit sorry for Alex, after Glenn Beck began incorporating parts of Jones act into his Fox TV show, reaping a $60 million contract for it (cut quite a bit short, but Beck got over anyway.)
All that "alternative history" shit, by late-blooming autodidacts like Jones, Beck, et. al...speaking as one autodidact to another, it has to be understood that there are some basics of erudition and scholarly discipline that are not to be dispensed with in favor of simply drawing straight lines between data points of persons, ideas, and events. Reality-based autodidacticism requires more discipline than college undergrad work, not less. Neither Jones or Beck is at that level. Sorry about that.
But what really got me to break with Jones was his descent into non-falsifiable conspiracy narratives and cartoon trap-door logic. He completely disgraced himself over Sandy Hook; a journalist with aspirations toward integrity would have done a speedy mea culpa and then shut it all down for a few years, as penance. (A real journalist of integrity would not have taken it where Jones took it in the first place.) Instead, Jones spiraled into right-wing paranoid demagoguery- and as a result, his audience exploded and his fortunes went through the roof. This in turn has resulted in Alex indulging in some documented episodes of elite deviance of his own, if I may say so. He's a rich guy now. Rich enough to know that he's sitting on top of a scam empire, as pitchman for the products that every alternative medicine fancier and survivalist needs, fueled by his rants that the sky is falling. Shrewd enough to know better than to express open contempt for the gullible audience of loyal followers with a seemingly bottomless appetite for his schlock, his twisted history seminars, and his guided meditations into paranoia.
Interesting and well written. The story of how money (and power) corrupts.
How do things like this happen in the US? I believe we are pretty unique with this sort of thing- it happens with a unusual regularity, and happens across all classes. It's a form of insanity- not just as presented by an Alex Jones or Rachel Maddow but for all their followers who can easily number in the millions. Then we wonder why civilized discussion has simply disappeared. Sure other countries through history have gone off the deep end but what excuse do we have? None that I can see- plenty of dollars floating around, plenty of opportunities, mobility- you name it and we are the envy of the world in that regard. Why the disintegration?
I think I know the source (hint, see my second sentence) and perhaps Matt will give it some attention in the future
Karl Marx- who was not all wrong- would say that this is what capitalism does: make it all about money. Grow or die, based on that cash flow.
I don't hold with Marx's Unified Field Theory of Social Organization. My view is more moderate- it isn't the existence of private enterprise and markets, it's their enshrining as an Ism.
CapitalISM is as hostile to challenges to its precepts as Leninism. (Marx himself once said "I am not a Marxist!" Indicating that he had at least some glimmer of the problems of his readers getting too dogmatic with his social prescriptions. Not a problem in my case.)
The problem is that when people refer to as "free market" principles, what they really mean is unregulated, unchecked markets. ("Free markets"- a contradiction in terms if ever there was one. As if nobody pays for anything.)
Unchecked markets are the Achilles heel of capitalism. They're inherently inertial. Diverse markets get turned into oligopolies, and even monopolies. Wealth funnels to the top. Entrepreneurialism becomes subordinate to quasi-feudal control. Facebook sees someone else's good idea, buys them out, incorporates their company into the empire, and the intentions of its creators can simply be dismissed or even suppressed. The venture capitalists and financiers who direct the investors in Big Pharma and a handful of private owners with the preferred class of stock fund the invention of a new medicine, but the inventors don't reap the profits, the funders do. Etc.
This is something that Marx intuited, even though he didn't refer to the process as "inertial." But that's how it works, if "the laws of the market" are simply allowed to dictate everything else. The most money beats everything else. Every other value. And beyond a certain level of private wealth, the person possessing it obtains autocratic power. Like a feudal lord, except that their estate is their business enterprises and purchased political influence, rather than agricultural real estate.
That's the real origin of my antipathy to the highest strata of wealth accumulation- it upsets the rule of law. Ultra-wealthy private individuals are provided with the powers of governments, minus the accountability and the restraints of democratic advice and consent. The super-rich are not necessarily nice people. But even benevolent despots are still despots. And even the well-intentioned wealthy have a tendency to lose a perspective shared in common with those who are significantly less wealthy. They're too distant to listen.
The Reserve Currency
The Exorbitant Privilege
The Federal Reserve
Capital vs Labor
Debt vs Savings
To get back to anything approaching a level playing field will require the dissolution of the current system. This is the only reason I could possibly agree with anything Antifa advocates. They would unfortunately bring in a true despotism so I could never side with them. What to do? Well, I am also a Canadian citizen and the current topic raging in the house is whether to get status up there for the rest of the family. Options in the future might be priceless.
Indeed, analogy overload. Though I do appreciate the effort made.
epierce, you really must get in touch with your creative writing side. Surely you can do better than using the same 8 words over and over again.
mule's right, pierce. You leapt to some conclusions from the start of the reply thread, and have just gotten rebarbative since then.
If I were the sort of person who was inclined to offer speculations about your state of mind, I'd say that you've had too much coffee.
Coffee laced with?
Not getting it here. I care little to nothing for Alex Jones and have never defended or berated him. I do believe you are possessed. Or trolling