Alex Jones is suffering

Poor man. His empire of lies is falling down around his ears. He can’t even sell his hokey ‘supplements’ (he was making $20 million a year off that nonsense!) because he’s finally been banned from all the social media sites he needed to peddle snake oil. His lies have been killing people, though, so my sympathy is non-existent.

Jones, who tells his viewers that his wild claims are based on “deep research” and high-level government sources, admitted that he actually relies on anonymous internet message boards and random emailers. Unable to justify his past conduct, an uncharacteristically subdued Jones blamed “psychosis.”

The deposition, filmed March 14 and published online last Friday, was released as part of a lawsuit filed by Scarlett Lewis, the mother of a child murdered in the Sandy Hook massacre. Lewis, one of several parents currently suing Jones, says that she has been a target of harassment as the result of Jones’ repeated claim that Sandy Hook was a “hoax” and no children died.

Jones accused grieving parents of being paid actors complicit in a far-reaching government conspiracy — and many people believed him. Throughout the deposition, Jones expressed little remorse.

Last week another Sandy Hook parent who faced harassment, Jeremy Richman, died in an apparent suicide.

How can one lone crank like Jones have so much impact on people? The answer is…he had enablers and promoters. There were people who were happy to have a representative of the lunatic fringe to push to the forefront, to take all the blame, while they made sure their audiences were exposed to the toxic garbage. The article names names. These are the people behind Alex Jones, who profited from the conspiracy nut and used him to advance their agenda.

Donald Trump.

In December 2015, as Jones was smearing the Sandy Hook families, Trump appeared on Jones’ Infowars show. Already a leading candidate for the Republican nomination, Trump lavished Jones with praise.

“[Y]our reputation’s amazing – I will not let you down – you will be very very impressed. I hope and I think we’ll be speaking a lot,” Trump said.

The Drudge Report. I’d almost forgotten that slimy rag existed, but I guess it has a large audience among the wrong sorts of people.

Trump gave Alex Jones the patina of legitimacy. But Matt Drudge delivered Jones something even more critical: website traffic.

One thing you learn from reading Alex Jones’ deposition is that he claims nearly every major tragedy is a hoax or government conspiracy. At one point Jones admits in rapid succession that 9/11, Columbine, and Oklahoma City were all “false flags.”

Nevertheless, Matt Drudge repeatedly links to Infowars on his popular news aggregator, the Drudge Report. Drudge’s site, which is one of the most popular in the United States, features two permanent links to InfoWars. According to an analysis by the Washington Post, Drudge links to specific Infowars stories regularly.

Tucker Carlson.

Tucker Carlson remains one of Fox News’ most popular hosts, drawing millions of viewers each night. When PayPal recently severed its relationship with Alex Jones, Carlson came to his defense.

Carlson said in February that Jones’ ban was part of an effort to undermine the First Amendment by making “it impossible for people who say the wrong things to make a living in this country.” Carlson said that PayPal wanted “utter conformity, a world where only approved opinions are allowed.”

You know, if Alex Jones is to be held accountable for his destructive misinformation, those guys have to be up against the wall next.

Cui bono, Brexit?

I understand Brexit even less now. Theresa May has offered to throw herself on her political sword to get her desired deal.

What a grotesque Faustian pact they have concocted. In the early evening, Theresa May walked into a committee room in parliament and indicated to her parliamentary party that she would quit if they backed her deal. Journalists and MPs reacted with bewildering innocence to all this. The widespread presumption – laughable when you see it written down in black and white – was that it was true. In fact, it seemed perfectly in line with her usual tactic of saying whatever gets her through the day, then dealing with the consequences of it further down the line. One thing you can always rely on with May is that if there is wriggle room, she will make good use of it. And there was plenty of wriggle room in the vague assurances she offered the parliamentary Conservative party this evening.

But put that to one side. Let’s say it is true. Consider for a moment how disreputable this is. Any deal which requires the resignation of its author in order to get is passed is by default not worth supporting. And any political culture which would require the author of a deal to step down in order for MPs to back it is plainly in a state of advanced decay.

The American political mess I can understand, even if I hate it. Some rich, corrupt parasites have figured out that they can tap into the deep vein of American racism to get the political power to loot the country to their benefit — they’ve been poisoning the black children of Flint, Michigan while lowering their own taxes. I get it. If I had no moral compass and lacked all empathy, I could imagine sucking the country dry for my own profit as a net gain.

But what are the Brexit crusaders going to gain? I’m sure someone can profit from pure economic chaos, as an opportunity to pick up the broken shards of people’s lives and put them in the bank, but it can’t be that simple, can it? If someone were approaching my car with a sledgehammer intending to smash it into scrap, I wouldn’t ask my wife to vote with me on allowing it.

Is it just weird English pride? Co-existing with other partner nations might rankle a population that still remembers being the ruler of a vast empire. Is that it? As American politicians tap into the reliable resource of our racism, are British politicians relying on the sentiment of “Rule, Britannia! rule the waves: Britons never will be slaves”?

I hope it’s not the charisma of the Brexit leadership. Nigel Farage always seems like a dippy used car salesman; Boris Johnson is a clown; Jacob Rees-Mogg…oh, god. The Etonian pomposity. I once listened to him on the internet and felt a rising need to stand on a table and sing the Marseillaise. Another question: how do the British manage to listen to that pretentious snob without rising up in revolution? I wouldn’t be able to do it.

I guess the plan here is to answer my questions by simply plunging ahead and doing the experiment: ripping the country out of the European union, and then sifting through the wreckage to see who, if anyone, profited. One has to admire their dedication to empiricism, at least.

The face of evil

It belongs to a billionaire white woman who answers every question with a polite evasion and a little smile, while cutting aid to handicapped children and undercutting public school education.

She’s not ugly on the outside. But her brain is a festering corrupt mass of greed and privilege.

Sorry. I should have put the picture below the fold. Which is worse, Betsy DeVos or closeups of spiders? I know I have a clear preference.

Ladies and gentlemen…the American senate!

Upholding the dignity and nobility of the most elite of the American legislative bodies, Senator Mike Lee, Republican from Utah, member of the Federalist Society, Tea Party representative, Mormon saint, and all-around dumbfuck, rose up to mock the Green New Deal with cartoons.

Ironically, while he thought he was being a comedian, these were pretty much all bog-standard memes and talking points used in Trumpistan. I guarantee you that there are right-wing assholes rushing to buy copies of that picture of Reagan riding a dinosaur and firing a machine gun to hang on their wall, to own the libs and declare their love for rotten politicians. The Green New Deal is not perfect, but it is a serious proposal to confront a serious problem…and Lee is a clown trying to use jokes to encourage further inaction from an already corrupt and useless senate.

He did get serious for a moment to admit that climate change is no joke, but I don’t see him offering alternative approaches. Oh, wait, that’s not quite true: he has a classic Mormon solution that he presented quite soberly.

The solution to so many of our problems, at all times and in all places: fall in love, get married and have some kids.

I did all that. I’ve got a happy home life. But guess what? Not all people want that particular life, and even those of us who do have found that it doesn’t treat global climate change. In fact, it makes it worse. What a pompous asshole.

Of course somebody fired back. And of course it was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This is what I want to hear from the entire Democratic leadership, and once again it’s up to one of the most junior representatives in congress to do the actual leading.

“Science is not partisan,” she says, but it has become partisan, because the Republican party has abandoned and denied it.

Conservatives always have pyramids in their heads, I guess

This video is really good. You should watch it. The basic message is that conservatives don’t much like democracy, equality is not a key value for them, that they’re in it to maintain the status quo, and they’ve always been this way. In many ways, Trump is not an anomaly (nor was Nixon, or Reagan, or Bush), but just representative of how the conservative brain thinks. It’s not a radical or surprising idea, simply clearly presented.

Also see the followup on the historical and philosophical foundations of conservatism.

A free society does not imply that no one has to compromise

New Zealand leads the way.

But what about Free Speech, you say. What about the right to life, liberty, and happiness, I reply, because right now there are assholes everywhere who feed off that hate and fantasize about slaughtering more people. Like this guy.

Isn’t it nice that he’s Unafraid to speak the Truth? Truly, a great Free Speech Warrior. It’s too bad that what he does with that speech is plan and incite the murder of multitudes of human beings.

Human ideals are often contradictory and none are absolute, and I’m afraid that on the hierarchy of needs, the right to live is far above the right to speak, which is in turn far, far above the right to carry around a big fuckin’ murder gun.

It’s a world-wide pandemic of brain-eating parasites

Driftglass gives a pithy summary of the American variant.

…like any other cult, Republicans have conditioned themselves not to respond to external realities any more. Public embarrassment doesn’t work because Republicans have killed the part of their human souls that is capable of being embarrassed. Bringing down a hellfire of facts and figures doesn’t work because they simply will not recognize facts or figures from non-cult members as legitimate. Same for appeals to reason, to history or to basic human decency. Hell, citing their own words back to them from five minutes ago when their cult believed the exact opposite of what they believe now will elicit nothing more than a cow-dumb stare, followed by a smirk because, Bwhahahah!, they just owned you snowflake.

But then I see their analogs everywhere: the doltish Brexiteers, Fraser Anning and his gang of thugs, and I’m willing to bet we can find similar examples in the non-English speaking world. And then there are the anti-vaxxers, who may not be Republican at all, but who see the slow painful deaths of their own children as a triumph. It’s the Zombie Apocalypse, and it has crept up on us unawares. Only we don’t get the easy out of shooting them in the head, because they’re still human.

What’s the etiquette for wearing ironic fash bling to a memorial service for people killed by the fash?

Dear Abby,

I was going to pay my respects to the innocent dead murdered by a terrorist who praised Donald Trump and made various fascist dogwhistles to online fascists. Is it cool if I wear my red MAGA hat and smirk a bit? Or will it make me look like an insensitive, arrogant ass?

P.S. I’m a Canadian in Canada. Trump2020! 14/88!

Jeez, these boys are dumb.

The meritocratic lie

That admissions scandal ripped off the bandage and exposed the suppurating ulcer of the “elite” university system, and gives me a handle to vent decades of frustration. I’ve known about this for a long time, but if you try to tell people that Harvard and Stanford are profiting off a facade rather than their actual, material quality, they don’t believe you — the names of those universities have become short cuts to an illusion of earned intelligence. Read this, Higher Education and the Illusion of Meritocracy, though.

The recently revealed admissions scandal seems to have it all: Three Stooges levels of ineptitude, crude Photoshops, six-figure payoffs, corrupt coaches, and a cadre of low-level celebrities for good measure. But those who see this scandal as anything other than a moment of levity are missing the forest for the trees. The U.S. Department of Justice filings confirm what we already knew — or should have known: Elite-college admissions exists chiefly to replicate class privilege.

This became depressingly clear to me during my three years as an assistant dean of admissions at an elite college. I saw how the system is rife with inequities and loopholes; how unscrupulous wealthy people are willing to pay admissions fixers to exploit those loopholes; and how grifters adjacent to the process cash in on whatever influence they wield. As I wrote in The Chronicle Review a little more than a year ago, “Admissions at elite institutions can make a fool and a liar out of anyone.”

It’s not just the abberrant criminality of this event, though, because the whole system is rigged.

Meritocratic admissions at elite institutions is the real scam. The idea of a phony soccer player is goofy for its novelty; Division III athletes being tipped into admitted classes through a warped quota system that benefits wealthy white men is a grim reality. The construction of a fabricated profile with illegitimate test scores and extracurriculars is tragicomic; a prep-school applicant carefully curated by elite counselors, tutors, essay writers, and independent admissions advisers is routine.

In short, the real corruption of elite-college admissions is more mundane than this scandal suggests, though far more deleterious to America’s meritocratic ideals. To view this scandal as the problem is to unintentionally reinforce the actual problem: In a truly meritocratic society, higher education should correct inequity; instead, elite higher education exacerbates inequity.

Worse — even if you get in (which is unlikely if you’re not a member of a privileged class), you’re screwed and are just perpetuating a criminally capitalistic system.

Jack outlines how top colleges and universities are and have long been havens of the wealthy. In 2017, a team led by the Harvard economist Raj Chetty found that students coming from families in the top 1 percent—those who make more than $630,000 a year—are 77 times more likely to be admitted to and attend an Ivy League school than students coming from families who make less than $30,000 a year. Furthermore, the study found that 38 elite colleges have more students who come from families in the top 1 percent than students who come from the bottom 60 percent (families making less than $65,000 a year). In other research, Anthony Carnevale and Jeff Strohl, of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, have documented how just 14 percent of undergraduates at the most competitive schools—places like Stanford, Princeton, and Columbia—come from families who make up the bottom half of U.S. income distribution.

This got me pissed off enough to make a video about it last week, although I don’t think it’s very good — it’s too long, and I could have been a lot more pithy. I should have said “fuck” more.

But then this week I watched The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, and realized that she’s just another symptom of the whole rotten system. She was a Stanford drop-out, which isn’t an indictment of Stanford … it says the system is screwed up when people attend that university, not for the knowledge they can learn there — which is the core function of the university, which they do very well — but for making the connections that will make them rich and be the entry way to the 1%. Holmes dropped out as soon as she realized that she didn’t actually need to learn engineering, or biochemistry, or medicine, or pharmacology, or any of the actual utility of a university education. She comes from a family with connections, she could make more connections with bald-faced lying. The chief lesson she learned from that “elite” university is that the pretense of merit is more valuable than the substance of merit.

She didn’t have to convince anyone in biomedicine. She knew where the power lies: in old white men. In James Mattis and George Schultz, Sam Nunn and Henry Fucking-Burn-In-Hell Kissinger. She got the backing of Rupert Murdoch and Larry Ellison and Bill Clinton. None of these people have any competence in biomedicine (one could even argue that they don’t have much competence in anything, other than leeching off the public, which they are very, very good at). The corruption runs all the way from an overly ambitious and not very knowledgeable 19 year old, to retired heads of state who’ve been coasting on wealth and power to more wealth and power.

You want to know where the rot in the “elite” universities leads? Straight to Elizabeth Holmes, the poster girl for pseudo-meritocracy. It was so predictable that on the day the Wall Street Journal broke the story of the Theranos fraud, Holmes was unavailable because she was off being inducted into the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows. Of course she was. Rich liars are exactly the kind of people they want at the top of university administration.

Seriously, look at the Theranos board. It’s a web of connections to other wealthy people, nothing more. If you see any of those names on any company anywhere, run. They’re empty figureheads who’ll screw everything up. Holmes belongs in prison, but so do all those untouchable fat cats who manipulate the system.

Is ‘litigiosity’ a word? It ought to be.

Good news for lawyers everywhere! We have managed to completely pay off our lawyer, Marc Randazza! The Carrier lawsuit is over, ending in victory for the side of goodness, he says, as he gazes out over the shambles of his finances. We paid him off, but all of us defendants together are in the hole for <gulp> $20,000, so we’re not closing our fundraiser yet, and I’m still holding out my hat for personal donations. Good lawyers, it turns out, aren’t cheap, and litigious assholes willing to sell their soul to misogynistic, racist haters can mobilize more cash than we can.

And our society does breed for litigious assholes. Case in point: Devin Nunes is suing Twitter, “Devin Nunes’ Mom”, and “Devin Nunes’ Cow” for $250 million dollars. It’s absurd. It’s doomed (although his lawyers will profit). All it accomplishes is to further promote people who are laughing at him. I would never have seen this, for instance, if it weren’t one of many insults featured in his filing:

You may be thinking that the defendants might need some help protecting themselves from this frivolous and excessive nuisance, but really, Twitter’s lawyers are laughing themselves sick right now. If you are inspired to help an underdog, donate to me instead.

Man, I’m thinking that if there were a poll to name the dumbest person on the internet, and the choices were Jim Hoft, Jacob Wohl, Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump, or Devin Nunes, I wouldn’t know who to vote for.