Category Archives: Death of Truth

Alex Jones: never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like

Conspiracy Theories, Death of Truth, Right-wing Extremism, Trump

 

Unlike the ‘Never Trumpers,’ Alex Jones was an early supporter and a long-standing supporter of Donald Trump. He was all in for Trump. Bombast loves Bombast. Bullshitters love bullshitters. Trump and Jones fawned over each other in a dubious mutual admiration. Society.

In the past Jones had said Democrats and Republicans were all part of the same wicked game. He said, “the politics of George Bush and Obama are identical.” He had no use for either of them. But like so many, Jones saw something different in Trump. And he liked what he saw. Jones said that he was a populist and believe that is what Trump was too. He was not wrong about that.

Alex Jones was on the extremes. As Justin Ling said on his CBC podcast The Flame Throwers,

“So far he has stoked fear of a new world order shadow government, accused George Bush of plotting 9/11, claimed that the Sandy Hook elementary shooting was a false flag operation, claimed that  secret Satanic cults made up of government leaders who sacrificed children, vaccines caused autism, there was a Jewish cult running the world, that billionaire Bill Gates was trying to eliminate minority populations, accused Glenn Beck of being a CIA operative, said the government was adding estrogen to the tap water to feminize the population, accused George Soros of organizing a chemical attack in Syria to discredit Bashar el Assad, floated unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud, and so much more. “

 

He also believed Hillary Clinton with other prominent liberals was part of a Satanic cult to sexually molest young children in the basement of a pizza restaurant in Washington D. C. He urged his viewers to go to the Pizzeria to save the children. One of them went their armed to rescue the poor children, but he could not find any of them. He couldn’t even find a basement. You can sum up Alex Jones by saying he never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like.

 

At the time Jones was a pariah among right-wing radio hosts, but that did not stop Trump from embracing him. When Jones interviewed Trump on his show Trump said, “Great to be with you.” He also claimed Jones was very well respected.

 

The future president of the United States was pleased to be with and be interviewed by Alex Jones the man who believed, or at least claimed to believe that those first graders at Sandy Hook school were child actors who were a part of a hoax perpetrated to help government officials take away guns from extreme right! Later the parents of those children sued Jones into bankruptcy for spreading such lies.

 

Jones swooned over Trump. As Ling said, “In Jones view Trump was going into the belly of the beast, the murderous swamp beast that is the deep state.”

And this is what the next president of the United States said about this extreme bullshitter:

“Your reputation is amazing, and I will not let you down. You will be very, very impressed, I hope. And I think we’ll be speaking a lot and in a year or two years, give me time to run things, but you’ll be saying, but a year into office you’ll remember this interview and you’ll be saying ‘Wow, he said he would do and he did a great job. You’ll be very proud of our country.”

 

Watching the president of the United States fawn over one of the worst conspiracy theoriests was sickening.

 

 

 

Whacky Can be Dangerous

Death of Truth, Immigration and Refugees

 

A lot of people—me included—have been giggling about the whacky claims made by Donald Trump against immigrants. Why do conservatives believ such crazy stuff?

 

The claims were whacky. They deserved our ridicule. But they can also be dangerous.

As political commentator Ana Navarro said, passionately, on CNN,

 

“This thing that Donald Trump said about immigrants eating cats and dogs came out of left field and you thought he was completely absolutely insane. If Joe Biden had said the same thing he would have been pulled off the stage and sent immediately to a loony bin, but because Donald Trump gets away with being Donald Trump, and saying crazy things. What’s happening with Donald Trump, as Kamala Harris said, he always goes to an old tired playbook. He always tries to go against immigrants. He tries to cause fear. He tries to build that so folks vote out of fear. Last week it was about Venezuelan gangs taking over Aurora Colorado. The official of that city said that story was false. This week it is a completely made-up story about somebody eating a cat and it turning into a Haitian immigrant. It may be funny to some people. A lot of people have made funny memes. But it’s also incredibly racist and incredibly dangerous. Because I remember when a whack job triggered by things that were said against Latinos, took a gun and hunted down Latinos in an El Paso Walmart. And I remember when a whack job triggered by conspiracy theories  went to the Comet Pizza Parlour in Washington D.C. and sex ring that the Clinton’s were supposedly running there showed up there with a gun. So, its crazy. It may be funny. It may lead to a lot of memes but it’s also racist and dangerous and it is shameful that it continues to be amplified by people like Donald Trump his followers and his vice-presidential candidate.”

 

Once again Donald Trump is an instrument of ignorance and hatred. This is a deadly and combustible mixture that we must expunge from our societies. People, like me, ask where all the hatred and violence in America come from. Some of us blame guns. Others blame a lack of religion or a lack of morality. Some of us blame the other side. There is plenty of blame that can we spread around like shit from a honey wagon, but without a doubt, political leaders like Donald Trump and his cohorts, deserve a significant portion of the blame. Their actions against vulnerable immigrants are despicable and disgraceful. They really are not funny. They are dangerous.

 

Lies have Consequences

Death of Truth, Immigration and Refugees

 

There are rational claims made against allowing the current immigration system in the US to continue.  Not all objections are racist or bigoted.  For example, as an immigration lawyer said the day after the election on CNN,  in some small towns in America,  they are overwhelmed by thousands of immigrants who have been flown in to make “asylum” claims that amount really to desires to pursue the American dream. These people are not real asylum seekers at all and they are jumping the queue  when there are already millions of legitimate claims for asylum in America that should have their case heard before these.

 

This could have been debated in the presidential debate. Instead, Trump claimed immigrants are eating cats and dogs without evidence to back up his claims. He does this to rile up his base.  Fox News does the same thing. Trump does not care about evidence, or even truth. Neither does Fox News. Trump just wants to make his anti-immigrant statements as pumped up as possible. He wants to throw raw meat to his base. He does not want a rational debate. Rational debate is being obfuscated by Trump’s electioneering and “firehose of lies.’

As Laura Coates said on CNN, “such false claims lead to fear mongering and ‘otherism’ and someone purportedly eating pets.” Such lies trigger hate and make rational debate and discussion impossible. That is exactly what Trump wants to do.  The last thing he wants is to have a rational debate since he knows in a rational debate his arguments crumble like stale cookies on a hot September night.

Such lying can have serious consequences. As Chuck Rocha a political commentator said on CNN the day after the presidential debate, “This is dangerous by the way when you say this in front of 68 million people on TV, for such lies can trigger crazy people to do what they did in El Paso, and take a gun to a Walmart.”

We must demand more from our political candidates. We must not let them get away with such nonsense.

 

 

A Firehose of Lies

Death of Truth, Trump

 

We live in the age of lies. Lies are so pervasive in our society that we rarely find them remarkable.

On September 10, 2024 Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump engaged in a televised 90 minute debate broadcast on the  ABC television network.  The debate was spectacular in many ways. One was in the number of lies that were told by one of the candidates. Guess which one?

CNN’s senior reporter Daniel Dale   who reported on CNN immediately after the debate concluded said this:

“what stood out tonight was that this was a staggeringly dishonest debate performance by from former president Trump—just lie after lie after lie on subject after subject. By my preliminary count Trump made at least 33 false claims. By contrast again by a preliminary count, vice-president Kamala Harris made at least 1 false claim, though she added at least a few more misleading claims and a few more that lacked key context. I think that most Americans say ‘well all politicians lie, but no major political presidential candidate before Donald Trump has lied with this sort of frequency.  A remarkably large chunk of what he said tonight was just not true. And this wasn’t like little exaggeration or political spin. A lot of his false claims were untethered to reality. Like on abortion, saying “every Democrat wanted Roe v. Wade overturned” when actually more than 80% of Democrats supported Roe v. Wade. On crime, saying it was “through the roof” when actually it has come sharply down since 2023. It’s now lower than it was when Trump left office. On health care, saying he’s the one who saved Obama care, the law that he repeatedly tried to overturn. On Kamala Harris herself, saying that a Howard University grad, a black law students’ association president, had claimed that she wasn’t black at one point. Frankly, I don’t have enough time here to run through each false Trump claim. I urge people to go to our CNN website or our app to read our team’s detailed fact checks on this and a whole bunch more.”

 

CNN a year and half ago during a televised Town Hall broadcast by the same CNN news channel, had referred in a headline to Donald Trump saying he was spewing out “a firehose of lies.” That sums it up pretty well.  Oliver Darcy said it this way:

 

It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening.

Kaitlan Collins is as tough and knowledgable of an interviewer as they come. She fact-checked Trump throughout the 70-minute town hall. Over and over and over again, she told him that the election was not stolen. That it was not rigged. That there was no evidence for the lies he was disseminating on stage.

“The election was not rigged, Mr. President,” Collins told Trump at one point during the event. “You cannot keep saying that all night long.”

Yet, he did. Trump frequently ignored or spoke over Collins throughout the evening as he unleashed a firehose of disinformation upon the country, which a sizable swath of the GOP continues to believe. A professional lie machine, Trump fired off falsehoods at a rapid clip while using his bluster to overwhelm Collins, stealing command of the stage at some points of the town hall.

Trump lied about the 2020 election. He took no responsibility for the January 6 insurrection that those very lies incited. And he mocked E. Jean Carroll’s allegations of sexual assault, which a jury found him liable for on Tuesday.”

This debate was another such night in front of millions of American television viewers seeing him disgorge lie after lie apparently without notice or shame or regret. Trump was indeed “A professional lie machine,” as Darcy said.

Dale said instead of trying to cover all those lies live on TV he would focus on one “egregious false claim.” This was the one about migrants supposedly eating people’s pets.

This is what he said,

“In Springfield they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets—eating the pets—of the people that live there.”

 

This was a crazy conspiracy theory that reminded me a lot of another crazy conspiracy theory spread a year or so ago about young people in schools transitioning to cats and demanding kitty litter in schools. I cannot blame Kamala Harris for laughing during the former president’s presentation of these absurd claims. Why does the MAGA crowd believe so much crazy stuff? As Dale said,

 

“This is not only false, I think it is fair to call this odious. For people who have not been online the last couple of days, this claim about Haitian migrants in Springfield Ohio eating people’s pets originated with a Facebook post that attributed the claim to a “neighbour’s friend’s daughter.” A third hand broken telephone kind of thing. The city of Springfield and the Springfield police  say there are no credible reports of this happening. And even J.D. Vance the vice-presidential candidate who himself had promoted these claims, acknowledged this morning that the “rumors” might prove out to be false though he still encouraged people to spread these cat memes. Trump himself added dogs ot the equation. They had not even been part of these viral nonsense rumours before.”

 

CNN also looked at the one false claim made by Harris during the debate. She said, “Let’s talk about what Donald Trump left us. Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since       the Great Depression. And what we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess.”

 

As Dale analyzed,

“So, the Biden Harris administration was not actually left the worst unemployment. They were left a 6.4% unemployment in January 2021. That was certainly elevated by recent standards. It was pretty high, but it was significantly down from the 14.8% a level it reached in early in the pandemic. So it was already improving at the time that Biden-Harris administration took office and that 14.8% was the highest since the Great Recession. So in the last 20 years not going back decades further.

 

Harris’s lie was a pipsqueak compared to Trump’s big fat lies!

 

The Weak President versus the Lying President

Death of Truth, politics, Trump, Trumpism

 

Edward Luce of the  Wall Street Journal and David Frum of The Atlantic were interviewed by Fareed Zakaria on his show the Global Public Square.  After the recent debate between Trump and Biden, only about 25% of Americans, including about half the Democrats believe Joseph Biden is competent to be president compared to about 44 % who believe Trump is competent. Both bad numbers, but Biden is now in a much worse position. Trump is 19 points ahead on this important issue.

 

Many believe Biden performed very badly in the debate. From what little I saw I agree he performed badly. But in my view Trump performed even worse, but in a different way.  Trump released an avalanche of lies and absurd hyperbolic remarks which clearly demonstrate that Trump is entirely separated from the truth. He has been called unhinged for good reason.

 

Who is less worthy of being president of the United States?  The liar or the incompetent?  According to David Frum,

 

“What we have here is a debate between the fire brigade and the arsonists. We are in this jam because the Republican Party is rallying around somebody who tried to overthrow an election thus the constitution…Who is a proven fraudster. Who has half a billion dollars of claims against him for civil frauds and who is a convicted criminal in New York with many more trials to come.”

 

Zakaria pointed out that “even by Donald Trump’s standards it was really extraordinary how much he lied. He was totally unconstrained by even pretending to doff his cap to the truth. In the good old days, there had to be at least a kernel in there somewhere of the truth. ” CNN counted 30 major lies he made during the debate. Trump even claimed to negotiate insulin prices down for seniors when that was something Biden did, not him.

 

Luce agreed entirely. He said, “There was an unhinged unending Orwellian stream of lies from Trump, even by his standards…We have watched Mitch McConnell call Trump ‘a despicable human being there on stage.”

 

Luce said you could basically pick any one of his statements to look at if you wanted to challenge the truth. He lied from start to finish.

 

What really surprises me is how Republican supporters at least fail to take this into consideration. They know he lies, but they don’t care.

 

When 2 political candidates are considered, we must always remember such comparisons are not made in a vacuum. We must compare who is worse or who is better. This is because, as one political pundit said, “Mother Theresa is never on the ballot.”

 

No matter how competent he is, I would rather have Biden as the American president than Donald Trump.

 

 

Black Lives Matter Insurrection or not?

Death of Truth, Decline of the west, Domestic Terrorism, Extremism, Polarization, Police, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism

 

I want to talk a little about the Black Lives Matter movement.  Perhaps because the right-wing and the left in America get their information from completely different sources, Fox News and the Internet on one side, and CNN, the Internet, and traditional news media on the other. Even on the Internet both sides go to different sources that are polar opposites. The two movements (left and right) have completely opposite views of what happened in Minneapolis, or on Capitol Hill on January 6th,  and other parts of the US.  The right-wing saw insurrection in Minneapolis Portland, and other places, but not at the Capitol. The left wing saw insurrection at the Capitol.

I really think it is a matter of what images the media of choice has chosen to emphasize. Fox News likes to put the emphasis on black rebellion and CNN emphasizes right wing rebellion. This is a key source of division.

In Minneapolis, for example, the media showed graphic images of protesters, many of them, not insignificantly black, ignoring police and laws to burn down businesses, some of which are even owned by blacks. To many white Americans this is proof of the anarchy at the root of the protests against the current regime.

African-Americans and their allies on the left see a white privileged state supported and protected by police that will use all of its powers to tamp down non-white rebellion while doing nothing to protect innocent children of African-Americans.

Neither side is able to see any truth to the side of the other. The other side ignores truth in favor of its own self-serving ideology. The two sides are unable to agree on basic facts so are unable to reach any agreement about what the problem is and how it should be solved. each side is mystified by the apparent blindness of the other to obvious truths.

White spectators at a BLM rally in St. Louis brought out automatic weapons to protect their property. White vigilantes were seen bearing arms in cities to protect white businesses from perceived ruin. This is what the left saw from its media sources. Meanwhile peaceful white and black protestors fear for their lives on the streets of American cities.

It is very difficult for Americans to deal with domestic terrorism  when they cannot agree on what the basic facts are. In the “good old days,” where most news came from 3 television networks that had no strong ideological differences between them, there were no such disagreements about basic facts. As a result, there was not such strong polarization as there is now. As a result of all this the middle is being hollowed out. The extremes are growing, on both sides. I don’t know what we can do about it.

This does not augur well for America. It suggests, to me at least, ruin to come. I hope I am wrong.

A Covid Booster for Extremism

American Fascism, Conspiracy Theories, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Domestic Terrorism, Political Violence, Populism, Right-wing Extremism

 

Ware and Hoffman continued their very interesting talk talk to us via Arizona State University in a talk entitled “Guns God and Sedition.”

They pointed out, that then  in the 2020s there was not just a booster for Covid, there was a Covid Booster for radical right-wing violent extremism. As Hoffman and Ware say in their book, and Ware repeated to us in his lecture, “pandemics are basically tailor-made for conspiracy theorists.” A pandemic provides fertile soil for crazies to plant the wildest conspiracy theories. Such as a theory that a presidential election was stolen, even no evidence has been provided for that theory.

 

Pandemics, like conspiracy theories are bred and hatched in secret and then explode into public view catching nearly everyone by surprise. It is almost natural to look for secretive causes for such disturbing events.

 

As Ware said, “2020 ends up becoming this tremendously tumultuous year with covid pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, and this very contentious political moment leading up to an election in which we have 2 candidates both claiming victory in that election which leads up to January 6th which is the most important moment in our book.”   Ware says that the riot on January 6th 2021is the most serious threat to American democracy that he and Hoffman catalogued in their book. It is the first breach of the capitol since 1814 when the British and their rough and tough Canadian allies stormed the Capitol.

 

Of all the incidents described in their book and the many they mentioned to us in their talk the event on January 6th 2021 was the most significant. It was an American game changer, though now in the US only one side recognizes that. On that day American democracy nearly died. And many now many fear in 2024 we are headed for another such momentous event. Many in America believe that if Donald Trump loses the election in 2024, though that does not yet seem likely but certainly is conceivable, Trump will raise his forces of rebellion and this time it will be worse. Much worse.

 

Barbie

2024 Trip to South West United States, Death of Truth, The Sleep of Reason

 

In the film Barbie the wall between the “real world” and the “fantasy world” has been rubbed thin. Not only that, but in an absurd way, it as if the fantasy world is seen through a Fun House mirror. The “real world” is Los Angeles, which as we all know is the original fantasyland. In this film L.A.  is the gritty grim reality. The other direction is the “perfect” Barbie Land.  As we know the original Fantasy Land was invented in Los Angeles by Walt Disney.  And all you need to do to travel from one of those worlds to the other, is turn around your pink sports car and head in the opposite direction. Simple. Not?

In the world of fantasy everything from the real world is reversed. America, as we all know, has been in FantasyLand since its founding. One of those fantasies has been the fantasies of young girls. That of course, is the fantasy  that they are or can be Barbie.  The doll with the perfect life. The doll from Barbieland.

The film Barbie tackles that phenomenon with glitz, glamour, and stars from Hollywood—another land of fantasy of course. Reality’s doppelganger,  Barbieland is a matriarchal society filled with many versions of Barbie.  Each of the Barbies hold prestigious jobs such as scientists, political leaders, and professionals.  Obviously, absurd fantasies. The Kens, from Ken Land on the other hand spend their time playing at the beach. In fact, playing at the beach is their job. A nice job if you can get it. Yet Beach Ken (“Ken”) played by Ryan Gosling is only happy when he is with Barbie  or, as she is sometimes called, “Stereotypical Barbie” (Margot Robbie). In fact, Ken is not real unless she is looking at him. And he knows it.  But Barbie is constantly playing hard to get and frustrates Ken to no end. She makes life impossible for him. Though is life has always been impossible.

But one day reality intrudes and that changes everything. All of a sudden Barbie worries about death. How can that intrude into the perfect Barbie Land? At the same time, Barbie has bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet. Horrors. Why doesn’t reality stay where it belongs? On the outside! Barbie seeks out help from Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon)  a badly disfigured doll.  Far from the  perfection of Barbie. Weird Barbie tells Barbie she must find the real child who plays with her in the real world. Eventually, she does find that child Sasha (‘Ariana Greenblatt’), but it is her mother Gloria (America Ferrara), who really transforms the Barbies with a stirring speech about how impossible it is to be a woman in the real world. Here is part of what she says:

 

It is literally impossible to be a woman! You are so beautiful and so smart and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like we have to always be extraordinary and somehow we’re always doing it wrong. You’re supposed to be THIN but not TOO THIN and you can never say you want to be THIN you have to say you want to be HEALTHY but you also have to BE thin. You have to have money but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss but you can’t be mean. You’re supposed to lead but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to LOVE being a mother but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You’re supposed to be a career woman but always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is INSANE, but if you point that out then you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to be pretty for men but not SO pretty that you tempt them too much or threaten other women. You’re supposed to be part of the sisterhood but also stand out but also always be grateful. You have to never get old never be rude never show off never be selfish never fall down never fail never also always be grateful. You have to never get old never be rude never show off never be selfish never fall down never fail never show fear never get out of line It’s too hard, it’s too contradictory and no one says thank you or gives you a medal, and in fact, it turns out, somehow, that not only are you doing it all wrong but that everything is also YOUR fault. I’m just so damn tired of watching myself and every single other women tie ourselves in knots so that people will like us. And if all that is also true for a doll just representing a woman then I don’t even know!

 

How will all of this end?  Yet we have to live through the battle between the Kens and the Barbies and frankly it is not a fair fight. The Kens hardly have a chance. As Barbie says, “You play on their egos and their petty jealousies and you turn them against each other. While they’re fighting, we take back Barbie Land.” And it is amazing how shockingly easy it is to get the Kens to fight each other and make themselves easy pickings for the takeover by Barbies. that turns out.  They are just like real men in other words. The Kens look at each other suspiciously. No Ken can be trusted!

But there is another fight and that is the fight between everyone and the corporate intellectual pygmies at Mattel who own and control the Barbie franchise. This one is a fairer fight. Although the Mattel executives have power,  they lack brains. They are basically idiots. Take Mattel executive Aaron Dinks who asks a wonderful question: “Um, I’m a man with no power, does that make me a woman?”  Maybe he is not an idiot after all. The executives try to get Barbie who drove to Los Angeles to agree to get back into the box in which she had been marketed, but Barbie escapes. Amazingly, she prefers the imperfect to the perfection in Barbie Land. FantasyLand has its limitations she learns. So she bolts for freedom and we get the revolt of the dolls! And the executives chase her to get back in the box where they can sell her.

Can the Kens establish the patriarchy? Or will Barbie succeed in leading the Barbies in the pink revolution?  Barbie said, “I want to be part of the people that make meaning, not the thing that’s made. I want to be the one imagining, not the idea itself. Does that make sense?”  Her friend Ruth (Rhea Perlman) said, “I always knew that Barbie would surprise me.” She was right about that.  Whoever thought a movie about a doll would make sense?

 And I don’t want to give the results away. You have to watch the film to find out.