Alex Jones’ unhinged rant on Piers Morgan’s show, where the interviewer got maybe one question answered out of the three he managed to ask, tells me why I got a comment the other day demanding the rounding up and burning of antidepressants. There is now apparently a parallel narrative forming where antidepressants are responsible for mental instability, and that, combined with video games, induces people to obtain high-volume weaponry and commit mass-murder. And any attempt at taking away guns, instead of video games and antidepressants, is an attempt at creating a totalitarian single world government.
“You’re a hatchet man of the New World Order.” Someone please tell me how many guns Alex Jones owns. Actually, no, don’t. I’d be terribly frightened to know.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden hosts a press conference about gun control, and coverage of that talk is interrupted by coverage of the Taft Union High School shooting where a student with a hit list and a shotgun shot one sixteen-year-old. That this wasn’t worse, that he was talked down after shooting the one kid before he could shoot another he’d targeted, is likely because he only had a shotgun and twenty shells in his pocket. With a high-volume weapon, he’d have done a lot more damage.
I’m waiting for the attempt to link pharmaceuticals and video games to this shooting.
Also meanwhile, there’s been at least 734 US gun deaths as of yesterday since Sandy Hook. That was less than a month ago. And Biden met with video game industry leaders to find out how the ESRB works. Despite games being the most regulated expression of the first amendment, and despite how well-studied the nexus of games and violence is, we’re still talking about video games.
Could we maybe please talk about guns?
… Too much to ask for, huh?
(Oh please let that be a fake quote by @TeaPartyCat.)
11 comments
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Nepenthe
January 12, 2013 at 2:48 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Anecdotally, anti-depressants definitely cause mental instability. Without my antidepressants, I want to jump off a bridge all the time. With them, I only want to jump off a bridge some of the time. That’s quite a mood swing, no?
resident_alien
January 12, 2013 at 3:25 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nepenthe,depressive solidarity fistbump!
Seriously though,of course the wrong medication or the wrong dosage can make matters worse (le duh!).
Which according to paranoid logic must mean that that was the original intention.
That Alex Jones fellow seems past the point of no return…
Rodney Nelson
January 12, 2013 at 3:44 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
But guns…macho man…The Wild West™…gots ta have guns ta perteck me ‘gainst kids in hoodies carrying Skittles…I NEED MY PENIS SUBSTITUTE!
There, I talked about guns as much as the average gunnut will allow them to be discussed.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG)
January 12, 2013 at 4:20 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The British satirical magazine Private Eye has LePierre demanding that schoolchildren themselves be armed, and going on to call for non-human animals also to be given the right to self-defense with firearms – “the right to arm bears”.
otrame
January 12, 2013 at 4:37 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I am pretty sure I would be dead by now without those “garbage” drugs. I’ve been taking them since about 1984. Shortly after I started them I started college, finally. I got my MA and had a great career, and still do consulting work. None of that would have happened without those garbage drugs. When I get depressed (which happens, usually for understandable reasons) I just remind myself that the feelings are temporary, I’ll feel better soon. And pretty soon I do.
Alex Jones strikes me as a guy who started a schtick to make money and then started believing himself. Sad case.
WS Smith
January 12, 2013 at 10:06 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Let’s think about this for a second…
Yes, Jones is a nutcase. No question.
The question is: why would he be on a show like this?
Answer: Because Piers Morgan was desperate for a guest that made him look sane, logical and rational on the issue at hand.
left0ver1under
January 13, 2013 at 1:29 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Jones is afraid of the “New World Order”.
http://www.animated-gifs.eu/phone-240×320-smilies/0037.gif
Jones is part of the New Whirled Order.
http://www.animated-gifs.eu/avatars-100×100-cartoons-mickey/0013.gif
busterggi
January 13, 2013 at 1:47 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Paranoia is a symptom of mental illness and apparently a requirement for gun-nuts.
Nepenthe
January 13, 2013 at 4:29 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Busterggi
Paranoia can also be a symptom of wolfing down weird-ass conspiracy theories by the tureen-full. Gun-nut does not imply mentally ill.
Jason Thibeault
January 13, 2013 at 4:30 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Would love to know which came first, to explain Alex Jones’ particular flavour of crank magnetism. I’m tempted to say “conservatism”.
Lofty
January 13, 2013 at 5:54 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If brains were made of cordite he would have just enough to blow up his testicles.