Through the holidays I enjoyed the company of family and friends. During this period of conviviality, one can be excused for believing people are decent, caring, and sensitive.
Until the headline hits: “Judge orders Alex Jones and his InfoWars website to pay $100,000 in Sandy Hook legal fees.”
As you probably know, Alex Jones is the radio talk show nutcase who has a huge listening audience of adoring fans. He is a conspiracy theorist. He harbors right right right wing views. He claims access to President Trump, even had him on his show during the 2016 campaign. He has said so many awful things including the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 attacks, Democrats were plotting white genocide offensives, and global warming is the World Bank’s plan to institute a carbon tax and thereby control the world economy. I did some reading about him and his history for this piece, and the list of his atrocious pronouncements seems endless.
But his attack on decency reached unimaginable heights, or rather depths, when he announced that the Sandy Hook massacre did not occur, that the entire scenario was manufactured by gun control advocates. He said no one died there. To further exacerbate the horror, he accused David Hogg, the articulate Margery Stoneman Douglas shooting survivor, of being a “crisis actor.”
How low can a person get?
Alex Jones is bad enough. But if he was just some confused and disturbed crackpot, we might be able to dismiss him without undue concern. But, unfortunately, he leads an army of similarly obnoxious individuals who breathe in every one of his words, decide they speak the truth, and then enter the saner society with those views shaping their lives. And willing to act on them. The family of one Sandy Hook survivor was threatened by one of them for daring to challenge the absurd statements.
How do such zealots develop? And why are so many willing to listen?
I don’t have a clue, and I am not qualified to speak with any authority. On the other hand, when has that ever stopped me from spouting?
Early in my life, when I was still in an area where radio stations in New York City could reach my tube radio in New Jersey, there was a talk show featuring an articulate guy who attacked local leaders, exposing them to embarrassing questions on corruption and incompetence. I thought it was wonderful. There definitely was a need to bring our leaders up short on these points, just as there still is. The man was fair, attacking actual wrongdoing independent of party.
Later on, Meet the Press appeared on television and performed a similar duty on the national stage.
These early attempts were so popular that the army of talk show hosts grew. In order to build large audiences, they became more and more strident—and less and less objective. They began to be partisan, and the situation we have today was born, where facts have no importance and hatred rules.
I wish I could blame all the hatred on Trump. But it existed way before he appeared. After all, our country has a long history of hate: against native Americans, against blacks, against women, against the Irish, against the Chinese, against Italians, against Latinos, against any immigrant nationality.
A few years ago I thought we were maturing, evolving into better people. I was wrong. The hate was dormant, waiting to be aroused by the Trump ascendency.
I feel sick about it and fear for our country. Have we sunk so low that hope for recovery is gone? I guess we’ll find out in the next few years.
Until the headline hits: “Judge orders Alex Jones and his InfoWars website to pay $100,000 in Sandy Hook legal fees.”
As you probably know, Alex Jones is the radio talk show nutcase who has a huge listening audience of adoring fans. He is a conspiracy theorist. He harbors right right right wing views. He claims access to President Trump, even had him on his show during the 2016 campaign. He has said so many awful things including the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 attacks, Democrats were plotting white genocide offensives, and global warming is the World Bank’s plan to institute a carbon tax and thereby control the world economy. I did some reading about him and his history for this piece, and the list of his atrocious pronouncements seems endless.
But his attack on decency reached unimaginable heights, or rather depths, when he announced that the Sandy Hook massacre did not occur, that the entire scenario was manufactured by gun control advocates. He said no one died there. To further exacerbate the horror, he accused David Hogg, the articulate Margery Stoneman Douglas shooting survivor, of being a “crisis actor.”
How low can a person get?
Alex Jones is bad enough. But if he was just some confused and disturbed crackpot, we might be able to dismiss him without undue concern. But, unfortunately, he leads an army of similarly obnoxious individuals who breathe in every one of his words, decide they speak the truth, and then enter the saner society with those views shaping their lives. And willing to act on them. The family of one Sandy Hook survivor was threatened by one of them for daring to challenge the absurd statements.
How do such zealots develop? And why are so many willing to listen?
I don’t have a clue, and I am not qualified to speak with any authority. On the other hand, when has that ever stopped me from spouting?
Early in my life, when I was still in an area where radio stations in New York City could reach my tube radio in New Jersey, there was a talk show featuring an articulate guy who attacked local leaders, exposing them to embarrassing questions on corruption and incompetence. I thought it was wonderful. There definitely was a need to bring our leaders up short on these points, just as there still is. The man was fair, attacking actual wrongdoing independent of party.
Later on, Meet the Press appeared on television and performed a similar duty on the national stage.
These early attempts were so popular that the army of talk show hosts grew. In order to build large audiences, they became more and more strident—and less and less objective. They began to be partisan, and the situation we have today was born, where facts have no importance and hatred rules.
I wish I could blame all the hatred on Trump. But it existed way before he appeared. After all, our country has a long history of hate: against native Americans, against blacks, against women, against the Irish, against the Chinese, against Italians, against Latinos, against any immigrant nationality.
A few years ago I thought we were maturing, evolving into better people. I was wrong. The hate was dormant, waiting to be aroused by the Trump ascendency.
I feel sick about it and fear for our country. Have we sunk so low that hope for recovery is gone? I guess we’ll find out in the next few years.
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