Alex Jones is a nut, but his being universally banned is chilling.

I’d sooner get my news from The Onion or The Weekly World News than from Alex Jones, but his sudden disappearance is cause for alarm. The underlying and inescapable message is that anyone can be scrubbed from social media without accountability. Your on-line existence can be ERASED, and we must simply have blind faith that the people who would do this, do so in the name of the good (and would never abuse that power, nor be corrupted by it).  Fat chance.

Alex Jones has been banned on Facebook, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube all on the same day, without any specific cause. The unsettling thing about this is that the social media platforms did this at the same time. I thought they were independent, perhaps with their differing agendas, platforms, biases, and so on, but apparently they are under the same ideological umbrella.

Apparently, the pressure came from the mainstream media and social justice warriors, and it’s hard to not take into consideration that this also, conveniently, eliminates business competition.  This is the biggest act of censorship we’ve seen recently, and it was executed not by the government, but by big business.

It’s worth noting that Jones’ app for smart phones is more popular than many of the major TV news outlets, and being a staunch conservative, Jones’ influence is seen as a threat to Democrats in relation to upcoming mid-term elections. [Note: I’ve never voted Republican and am not in league with Jones’ politics.]

They say they banned him for “hate speech”, but savvy people know this is really about controlling the narrative, and undermining alternative voices that challenge the official story.

The best argument for banning Jones is that some of his comical conspiracy theory slandered people, which is true (ex., accusing someone of leading a pedophile ring).  Slander is not free speech. However, the multiple bans did not occur in conjunction with slanderous content, nor was it explicitly cited as a reason, nor was an example given as evidence. Just because there’s a legit reason to ban Jones from a platform, doesn’t mean he was banned for that reason, and not a self-serving ulterior motive, especially as other content providers who commit slander are up and running.

If the social media giants wanted to take a stand against slanderous content, the logical way to do it would be to cite examples, and take down more than one person for the same offense, and not just people who are your political rivals in a struggle for power (don’t just take down conservatives/Republicans). Appeal to the higher moral ground, and the underlying principle. But if the punishment is selective, it’s like having a boxing match where only the rival boxer is disqualified for low blows. It’s not convincing that fairness or morality is really the outstanding objective, and when it is merely the excuse, than immorality and corruption are quite as likely the explanation. An obvious conclusion is that enemies of a political party or official narrative will be taken down, but not those supporting it.

I’ve known about Alex Jones for more than a decade, and nothing has changed about him. America has changed. We will no longer allow someone like him to prosper. We are less free.

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My favorite thing about Alex Jones are the parodies of him, especially of his outbursts. It’s possible to take a cherry-picked news story from him seriously, but if you watch even a few, your jaw may drop at how wacky they are. You may have to ask, “Is this real” if you aren’t sure it isn’t.

The story that made him a permanent joke in my mind was about the “fish people”. In this rant, he claimed hybrid fish people were created in some Dr. Moreau type laboratory, and  the horror of it brought him to tears. Behold:

I couldn’t believe anyone who was credulous enough to buy into that story, or much worse, disseminate it with passionate, teary-eyed conviction. Clearly, Alex either doesn’t live in the broader reality that most of us corroboratively share, or, this is his shtick.

Wait, there was one even worse, that you needed to be even more gullible to believe. Michelle Obama is a tranny! Yes, he had a 10-minute segment on that which I can’t find, perhaps because he’s been banned from YouTube.

How dumb do you have to be to entertain the notion that Michelle Obama isn’t a biological woman? The Obama’s  have children, and there are pictures of Michele as a little girl. Case closed.

I can hear the cuckoo singing in the cuckooberry tree.

He also sells ridiculous products to increase your manhood. Ah, yes, “Super Male Vitality Boost” NOW $59.99 per bottle. There’s just got to be a movie made about him, and whoever gets that role, if he can do it justice, could be Oscar material.

Despite all his outrageous flaws, Alex strikes me a quintessentially American phenomenon (ex., the snake-oil salesman). We can have a loony, conspiracy theory spewing, gun-toting, Trump supporting news anchor bursting blood vessels ranting about gay frogs!

And people can make hysterical music video parodies:

That is riotous. And so is this one about the goblins, if you want a bit more:

Then there was the time The Young Turk’s Jimmy Dore spat in Alex’s face (which was not funny at all, but sorta’ intriguing):

I laughed when Cenk Uygur yelled at him, “You don’t know shit! What do you think, that the lizard people are in charge?!” Just the idea of Cenk Uyger, if you know who he is, and Alex Jones in a shouting match — two hot-head blow-hards at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum — is potentially hilarious. Now THAT confluence of opinions, convictions, beliefs and orientations is quintessentially American. No more!

By the way, Cenk, Alex Jones isn’t the one who talks about the shape-shifting reptilians taking over the world, that’s David Icke.  Do we need to SHUT DOWN David Icke, too, because he’s got some whoppers.

Part of the appeal of some of Jone’s lunacy for me is that I love sci-fi, and especially things like The Island of Dr. Moreau, Frankenstein and The Fly. Below is my interpretation of a human fly [let me know if you want a print].

A couple years ago, I even started a drawing of Alex Jones weeping in front of a tank of human fish hybrid babies clawing at the glass.

But I have another typically American inclination, which is rooting for the underdog, or feeling sorry for someone who is ganged up on or the target of cruelty. This is why I didn’t like it when Anna Kasparian, co-host of the rabidly politically correct TYT, called Alex a “fat fuck”, or when Jimmy Dore spat in his face. I love the comedy videos at his expense, but not the cheap meanness.

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UPDATE: Check this out, while lots of lefty venues are licking their chops because Jones was taken down, Jimmy Dore, the spitter, had the huevos rancheros to oppose shutting down Jones, with a lot of the same arguments I made, and, interestingly, one that Jones himself made after being shut down. That was that the major news outlets publish their own false information, such as all the stuff about Saddam Hussein having WMDs, which helped convince the American public to support the ill-fated war on Iraq. Jones and Dore gave that same example. You can be on the left, and if you stick to your principles and fair play, you can be spitting mad about even your nemesis being unjustly terminated.

Jimmy Dore just earned back my respect. Maybe I have a soft spot for ranting loons, metaphorically speaking. Now back to the original post of yesterday.

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Perhaps the antidote to Alex Jones was Bernie-Sanders-style free upper education, because it’s kinda’ tough if you have a basic understand of how science works, or how babies are made, to swallow fish people, gay frogs, and the First Tranny. But rather than education being the answer to susceptibility to bogus new stories, such stories and their purveyors must be eliminated for us, and we shouldn’t fear that credible news that asks the wrong questions or tells the wrong truths will also be rubbed out. We can trust the mainstream news to tell us the truth, just as we were able to trust the tobacco industry to report on the health risks of smoking. We should be grateful that they are protecting us for our own good!

I don’t like that Alex Jones has been shut down. It doesn’t seem American to silence him. It says we are too stupid to see through his act, and we can’t be trusted to have the choice of whether or not to watch his videos or read his content. I feel like we are being treated like babies, and an even darker side to this is, well, just imagine this same thing happening in China. Right, no problem imagining that. Of course anyone who goes against the communist party in China is going to be silenced. Don’t get me wrong, I lived in China for nearly 5 years, and I’m quite fond of it and especially the average Chinese people. But I don’t want America to follow the Chinese example in this regard.

If too many people are buying into Alex Jone’s lunatic narrative, offer a better one. Don’t spoon feed us your own agenda and narrative. Have you noticed that it’s difficult to find any news outlet that holds to the core journalistic code of objectively reporting the news without editorializing? If you haven’t noticed it, watch another news source with a different perspective, and you’ll discover that both only tell part of the story.

What is chilling about shutting down Alex Jones is that multiple social media outlets subscribe to the same narrative, and the narrative in question took it upon itself to overturn free speech in favor of correct speech — a compromised paradigm is being used. I’m more afraid of that behavior than I am of Alex Jone’s hysterical rants.

The problem, folks, is the abuse of power. Now, we might not mind if it’s Alex Jones that got shut down. But what if it was, say, Democracy Now? What if Donald Trump gets to choose who is “corrupting the youth” or “aiding and abetting terrorism”? Then we would be in the streets protesting the curtailing of free speech, but as it is, we TRUST Apple, Facebook and others to be GOOD, and we grant them the power we would absolutely not accept in the hands of the other side.

I already said I was for Sanders, and a curious thing about Sander’s supporters is that they know that not only did the media try to vilify Trump, they sabotaged Sanders in collusion with the DNC. Many a liberal, or former liberal (the left is losing centrist liberals by the boatload every hour or minute as it slips into ever more extreme ideology) also doesn’t trust the powerful corporations that run the media to be honest or tell the truth.

I suppose it’s the same reason why I am against the death penalty. It’s not that I have crocodile tears for serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, it’s that I’m not comfortable with the government having that kind of power over citizens: the power to exterminate us. I know that the people in the highest offices are just people, they put their pants on one leg at a time, shit on a daily basis, and are susceptible to all the human vices.  I do rather believe that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Therefore I don’t want to grant some other humans the power of life and death over me.

And I don’t want to grant them the power to take it upon themselves to silence someone they don’t like.

America without Alex Jones and the brilliant parodies of his ridiculous rants is not my America. I don’t know what it’s becoming, but it has less options, less humor, less dialogue, less freedom, and more fear.

Surely, Alex is, intentionally or not, an example to others.

And now I can’t wait to see his video reaction to all this. There’s nothing like a banning to raise people’s curiosity. What is it that THEY don’t want us to SEE? Surely I can handle it. Let me see. I’m hoping he throws a tantrum.

No, don’t look at that! You are forbidden!

Perhaps I am underestimating how dangerous Alex’s rants were, but if we are going to be fair, we are going to have to SHUT DOWN a lot more people, including leftist extremists.

In the end I prefer laws that we agree on to protect free speech, no matter whose free speech it is (and it is traditionally the free speech of the marginalized and vulnerable that needs to be protected), than to trust in the goodness of CEOs to censor the bad things for us in the name of social justice, profit, or ulterior motives. It’s a bit hard for me to assume that the social media giants are doing this out of virtue, and without self-interest. I prefer checks and balances, and rules that apply to all, to having faith in the moral fiber and ultimate wisdom of unelected businessmen.

I don’t trust them any more than I trust Alex Jones. I want to be able to decide for myself what I believe or not. I didn’t believe Alex, but I don’t believe Mark Zuckerberg either, not after he sold the personal info of millions of Americans. But now I should trust him to choose for me what I can watch on my own screen. And I should trust the  media giants who pressured him, Apple, YouTube… I should trust unaccountable, and traditionally amoral, big business not to destroy its competitors, but to be acting out of sheer moral righteousness.

I don’t think so. Call me skeptical. I prefer the America that could tolerate an Alex Jones, or a Louis Farrakhan for that matter, even though the Southern Poverty Law Center asserts Farrakhan is both “antisemitic” and “a proponent of an anti-white theology”.  Maybe I’m just resistant to change or nostalgic, but I was already used to an enormous array of permissible outrageous thought.

I guess the new America is more streamlined, and at least it’s easier to figure out what we are supposed to believe so we can be good citizens and report on our neighbors before they report on us.

OK, maybe it’s too soon to trot out Big Brother, but, to end with an analogy, I’ve always preferred my peanut butter with nuts in it.

I like my reality chunky.

Now, my only choice is creamy.

[NOTE: some people will be afraid to like this post even if they agree with me.]

~ Ends