Alex Jones and Bullying by the Establishment

[william.scherk]

2 hours ago, jts said:

Seems to me most people trust government, even if they would say they don't.

For example licensing. A person has a licence to be a doctor or lawyer or whatever.

Electrician, plumber, home inspector, gas tank safety officer working with hydrogen sulfide, engineers, surgeons.

Training and testing, a lot like the Masons or the Illuminati, but not really.  How is an airline pilot trained and tested and subject to continuing education on safety matters?  Who the heck cares?

Air traffic controllers, trained, licensed, tested, failed. Pfft.  Standards of competence tested. Pfft. Gun men.

Phony plastic surgeons. Phony lawyers and document forgeries. Caveat emptor, loser.

Phony degrees, forged certificates, con-men, frauds and deluded cranks.  Let them take out your appendix, fly your Air Alaska plane into a mountain, 'cure' your child to death with dangerous nostrums, 'certify' your car as road-worthy just before it blows, sell you fake investments ... occupy that space in your mind of clarity and truth.

License day care aides who can pass basic first aid courses and not be drugged out child-molesters or sociopaths ...

Quote

Thus it comes about that Alex Jones is evil. [...] If he [the gunman] did [commit crimes], that would be a conspiracy theory and we all know all conspiracy theories are false.

This is a lot of lard masquerading as meat.  Not even wrong, Jerry. This might not even pass Lard Inspector scrutiny.

Look, it's okay to grieve the passing of a Great Man or Woman. It's okay to loathe with a cold flame every intrusion on human freedom that so-called civilization has come up with since the taming of fire and plucked eyebrows. It's alright to feel thwarted and unseen and vengeful when you think you have been crushed by the weight of this hideous state of affairs, be it orthodoxy, conventional  and oppressive moral climate, the grotesque profusion of Administrative Bureacracy. It's okay to feel fucked over by Them.

Alex Jones's media complex will continue to offer accessible twenty-four hour 'live' audio-visual programming and pointless and expensive social megameatavegamin  and hooey pills. The plex will gain paying patrons, build an invincible outpost of freedom on its own freaking property, be it a super-cooled underground fibre-opticked ultra-fast server-farm or satellite-connected Next Level pay-per-view Cloud 9.

Edited August 16, 2018 by william.scherk
Conflicted over orthography: what does it mean to capitalize "them"?

[KorbenDallas]

30 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

For a more pensive mood, pathos, empathy, the inimitable stylings of PINGTR1P ...

 

Dang almost had me until he picked up the phone and lied about the White House calling.

Good guy, that Alex.

Good guy!

[jts]

37 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

Electrician, plumber, home inspector, gas tank safety officer working with hydrogen sulfide, engineers, surgeons.

Training and testing, a lot like the Masons or the Illuminati, but not really.  How is an airline pilot trained and tested and subject to continuing education on safety matters?  Who the heck cares?

Air traffic controllers, trained, licensed, tested, failed. Pfft.  Standards of competence tested. Pfft. Gun men.

Phony plastic surgeons. Phony lawyers and document forgeries. Caveat emptor, loser.

Phony degrees, forged certificates, con-men, frauds and deluded cranks.  Let them take out your appendix, fly your Air Alaska plane into a mountain, 'cure' your child to death with dangerous nostrums, 'certify' your car as road-worthy just before it blows, sell you fake investments ... occupy that space in your mind of clarity and truth.

License day care aides who can pass basic first aid courses and not be drugged out child-molesters or sociopaths ...

This is a lot of lard masquerading as meat.  Not even wrong, Jerry. This might not even pass Lard Inspector scrutiny.

You didn't explain why licensing must be done by the man with the gun.

 

[Darrell Hougen]

"Context" shouldn't be used as an excuse for playing it "deuces wild."

Context dropping is never okay. That leads to rationalism. It's nice to know that people on here are cognizant of the problem of rationalism in the application of objectivish principles to questions such as immigration. And, we don't want to be rationalists with respect to the question of property rights and free speech either.

Clearly, some of the giant tech companies have been influenced by the government and have had influence on the government. In fact, part of the current problem is that the tech companies are afraid of being regulated. That's exactly why they're going after Alex Jones and other right-leaning media. They've been threatened by members of Congress. Mostly by Democrats, but also by RINOs.

This movement really got started with the revelation that Cambridge Analytica had used Facebook data to help Donald Trump get elected president. That's what really set off people on the left. That's what caused people to delete their Facebook accounts. I know, because of friend of my daughter deleted her Facebook account over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

So, when we start accusing big tech companies of being biased and calling for regulation of them like utilities, we should think twice. We may just end up making the problem worse. How do we know that those regulations won't include proscriptions against posting "fake news?" How do we know that "fake news" won't be interpreted as anything that favors Trump?

The fact is that we don't know what will happen, but we can be pretty sure that we won't control the process. Isn't it much better, in this case, to defend the right of property owners to determine how their properties will be used? Isn't it better to defend the right of Facebook to delete Alex Jones's content than to risk having the government involved in policing websites?

If Alex Jones has a worthwhile product, he will survive unfair treatment by the tech giants. Perhaps he will end up putting a dent in their profits by attracting a sizable chunk of their users away to his platform. That's how things should work in the marketplace. In my opinion, short term pain is better than the long term pain of having the government deeply involved in determining what content we can and can't view on the internet.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, Darrell Hougen said:

In fact, part of the current problem is that the tech companies are afraid of being regulated.

Darrell,

On the contrary.

They want to be regulated. Just like big oil and big pharma wanted to be regulated. (And other industries once they have become big.)

That keeps the competition out.

Smaller competitors can't afford the legal costs.

And that's just one of the things involved.

If you, Darrell, owned one of these companies, I am sure you would not want to be regulated. But, then again, you are a moral man. Those dudes are in bed with the government and not just for profit. They want exclusive power enforced by the government to ban users and competitors. They are not moral.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, Darrell Hougen said:

This movement really got started with the revelation that Cambridge Analytica had used Facebook data to help Donald Trump get elected president. That's what really set off people on the left. That's what caused people to delete their Facebook accounts. I know, because of friend of my daughter deleted her Facebook account over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Darrell,There was a moral panic over Cambridge Analytica by the left, so yes, some people deleted their Facebook accounts. But the effect out here in reality of Cambridge Analytica on the election was practically nonexistent. I doubt it swayed a single voter to switch over to Trump. There simply wasn't enough time even if they could have. Well... maybe one or two... But then... Nah... It didn't sway anybody.

 

On the other hand, the COBS covert persuasion strategies Obama employed during his two runs actually did sway voters.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

12 hours ago, jts said:

Alex Jones is a fighter. He will kick their asses so hard that they will have to clear their throat to fart. They will wish to God they never tangled with Alex Jones.

I'm quoting this one again just to be able to point to it when Alex actually does kick their asses.

I recall all the mocking of President Trump during the primaries and election. Then I remember all the long faces.

Man, what pleasure that brought me.

 

Now I get to do it again.

 

No problem for the shameless, though. They will say Alex kicked their asses because of interference from the Uzbekistanis or something... Then they will start mocking his foot size because it didn't actually get up into their asses. It just landed them on the other side of the street.

Don't forget, this is how the Uzbekistanis work...

 

Michael

[Jonathan]

17 hours ago, william.scherk said:

Electrician, plumber, home inspector, gas tank safety officer working with hydrogen sulfide, engineers, surgeons.

Training and testing, a lot like the Masons or the Illuminati, but not really.  How is an airline pilot trained and tested and subject to continuing education on safety matters?  Who the heck cares?

Air traffic controllers, trained, licensed, tested, failed. Pfft.  Standards of competence tested. Pfft. Gun men.

Phony plastic surgeons. Phony lawyers and document forgeries. Caveat emptor, loser.

Phony degrees, forged certificates, con-men, frauds and deluded cranks.  Let them take out your appendix, fly your Air Alaska plane into a mountain, 'cure' your child to death with dangerous nostrums, 'certify' your car as road-worthy just before it blows, sell you fake investments ... occupy that space in your mind of clarity and truth.

License day care aides who can pass basic first aid courses and not be drugged out child-molesters or sociopaths ...

!!!!

Billy! Are you on the verge of taking a position, clearly identifying it, and providing philosophical support for it?!!!

Or is the above field of straw men as far as you'll go?

Instead of the hostile caricature the you've squiggled above, tee hee hee, are you capable of a friendlier reading of your opponents' positions? Might there be means of establishing standards of safety and competence without the injection of the state into everything, and its use of force, and the corruption and abuse that necessarily follow along behind with the monopoly on force?

Can you imagine such means, or at least try to? If not, can you at least imagine that others might imagine them, and that their motive and attitude is not nonchalance about passengers crashing into mountains just because they don't share your comfort with the use of force, tee hee hee? Might it even be possible that they care about their fellow humans much more than you do? After all, they err on the side of freedom, where you always seem to lean toward wanting to control and punish people from afar. Your notion of virtue seems to be hoping to arrange how state force will be applied to other people. Heh. If anyone disagrees with Billy's acceptance of the status quo, they therefore have the opinion of "Pfft" about poisoned babies? You can do better than that, Billy.

Straw men are easy. But can you do philosophy?

How much government force is too much for you? And why?

How might one fairly balance and compare alternative methods of safety and competence? How might one objectively measure the pros and cons of non-force solutions versus government force solutions? Would exploring such questions be the fair and proper course of action, rather than just sneering, in effect, that Them Others just want people to die?

J

[Brant Gaede]

J--William merely displayed his innerds.

--Brant

it's fear 

[Jonathan]

3 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

J--William merely displayed his innerds.

--Brant

it's fear 

The Others are coming for Billy, so he needs big daddy to protect him? The filthy, toothless Thems can't be trusted to wash their hands before surgery, and there is no other possible way (after thinking about the problem in depth for one trillionth of a second) to ensure safety and competence other than by handing it over to clown politicians voted in by the greasy rabble? Herd those scary critters, force them into line, and keep them away from Billy?

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I marvel at how much pro-big-government people fear freedom.

It must be awful to live with constant fear as one's underlying emotional tone.

I, myself, have rarely been hurt by a freedom-loving individual. The nasty intrusions in my life came from authoritarians.

I believe in natural hierarchies and the health and rightness of accepting them.

I also believe artificially-designed human hierarchies are constantly abused by control freaks.

Give me freedom over a control freak crapping on me any time. 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

In the video below, I don't agree with Jordan Peterson's evaluation of Alex Jones, but talk about exposing fundamentals. To be fair, he said he has not seen much of Alex. Also, he's a psychologist who pigeonholes the entire thing through the lens of paranoia, which is something a psychologist would do in the absence of other input.

But even with that restriction, Jordan Peterson made Steven Crowder look like an elitist jerk. And I like Steven Crowder. Or at least I did before this interview...

 

Nah... He's all right.

But in this video, he waves the flag of freedom while advocating government restrictions on free speech masked as private property freedom. And when you boil down why, it's not because he believes in property rights. It's because he believes that he--and those he approves of--are better human beings than Alex Jones. He admitted that. So, to him, he--and those he approves of--should have more freedom than people like Alex Jones, including freedom of speech. And he covers this over with screwy examples like someone invading your house.

If that kind of vanity isn't a human nature fundamental that blocks critical thinking, I don't know what is. I see it everywhere a power-monger with a grubby little soul lurks, generally among elitists.

And if you don't think this is the case in this video, look at how many times Jordan Peterson had to correct Crowder on the issue of YouTube having the power to decide who is on the platform or not. Crowder said explicitly that Peterson wants government power over YouTube and Peterson said that's incorrect. When a person like Crowder keeps making a mistake like that, it's a warning sign of rationalization.

Granted, Crowder was referring to Peterson saying it might be a good idea for a giant social media firm like YouTube to be treated like a public utility (like where a telephone company cannot deny you telephone service because it doesn't like what you say on its telephone lines, or a power company cannot deny you power because it doesn't like your lifestyle and the appliances and gadgets you power with the electricity), but that was an idea for consideration, not a proposal. And it was based on Peterson looking at this through the lens of blocking censorship, not on telling people like YouTube owners what they could do or not with their private property. Peterson openly said this was a complicated issue whereas, for Crowder, it was simple. To him, he is better than Alex Jones and the private property argument can be used to support that, so end of story. Now turn the brain off.

But notice that this blanks out the following. Peterson also said he approves of this situation being resolved by the free market and he imagines this will happen as Alex Jones takes his massive audience to different platforms. Peterson incorrectly thinks this will take ten years (the Internet does not work that slowly, especially today), but that is no reflection on his identification and support of a free market solution.

In my own analysis and discussions of the issue of giant social media firms, I notice that people who hold Crowder's position wish away, like with a magic wand, the integration these tech giants have with the government.

Neither Peterson nor Crowder discussed this, but I am pretty sure if it were raised, Peterson would agree with me whereas Crowder would take out his magic wand.

My position is this. A company cannot pretend it's private and claim a private property moral sanction when the reality of the company show's it's a manifestation of the government through its crony corporatist arrangements.

That's a fundamental, too.

Let's put this in Objectivist terms for a minute. YouTube's platform may run great like Rearden Metal (so far), but, morally, YouTube is run by people like James Taggart.

Michael

[william.scherk]

Another knock to an Infowars 'platform'?

FCC shuts down Alex Jones’s flagship radio station

 

[anthony]

On 8/15/2018 at 6:45 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

According to some people, CNN is a private corporation that is exercising it's private property rights. 

I guess crony corporatism (especially government plus private ownership or collusion through front groups) is a proper form of capitalism to them.

Michael

 

I suppose we have to stop thinking of some big, "private" industries (e.g. some media, Silicon Valley, Hollywood) and certain businessmen as "capitalist". This has to happen, given a long enough period of collusion, regulation, special favors, cronyism, etc., -  private corporations will become ideological Leftist, as are their CEO's. In a sense, they are IN govt., as much as govt. is in them. Seamlessly, one and the same entity. Interesting parallel. Karl Marx wasn't so much against capital and industry, "the means of production", he just believed it was in the wrong hands. When the time was ripe, the proletariat would simply, logically and "scientifically" take over production from the capitalist bourgeoisie, the industry-creators, without even a revolution..

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

31 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

Another knock to an Infowars 'platform'?

FCC shuts down Alex Jones’s flagship radio station

William,

This article is iffy.

How do you pull something from the airwaves when it is not broadcasting on the airwaves?

Granted, the airwaves are the FCC domain. But, according to the article itself, the station is only on the Internet. That is not the FCC domain.

So this is a case of floating the idea that the government can control the Internet.

Rather than accept the spin of venues like MSN that you linked to, this is an issue that demands a bit more research (which, I, myself have not yet done, so something I say here may change when I know more facts).

Aslo, there is an insinuation in this spin that the Trump administration is on board with taking Alex Jones out of the public. I can guarantee you that Ajit Pai, the head of the FCC, has no problem with Alex Jones getting his message out.

Michael

[anthony]

17 hours ago, Darrell Hougen said:

"Context" shouldn't be used as an excuse for playing it "deuces wild."

Context dropping is never okay. That leads to rationalism. It's nice to know that people on here are cognizant of the problem of rationalism in the application of objectivish principles to questions such as immigration. And, we don't want to be rationalists with respect to the question of property rights and free speech either.

 

1

To be clearer, Darrell, the problem of "principle or context" I raised was not at all involving of the individual. For him they blend (are "integrated"), which is the hallmark of objective epistemology/ethics, you'll know. Here, there's no distinction between one's principles (or virtues) and factual context, an Objectivist can and does hold them simultaneously, applying conceptual method and principles to real things, continuously.

Multiply the one person by many millions, however, and he or she doesn't have that ultimate control over his own liberty and his life, as he does in his own thinking and acts. Society and Government are not the individual's to steer (although he is not completely powerless to persuade). This, the public arena and the standard of individual rights and the proper form of govt.we know is right, is where I believe a breach between principle and fact enters w.r.t. Objectivists, especially, and where ARI has often taken the purist, rationalist high road - like their advocacy of 'open borders' (ignoring several contexts) - criticizing or dismissing any positive steps in the US taken recently - regardless of the fact that we are "not there yet". "There" is not going to arrive soon. "We"/you have to work with what is there, exists, right now. While holding/propagating those standards. Gradually, many millions will have to see the value of those ideas themselves for the right outcome.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Matt Drudge very rarely tweets. And when he does, he deletes the tweet after a small amount of time.

That's why I took a screenshot of what he tweeted one hour ago.

He says about Alex Jones: "Takes a licking and keeps on ticking..."

Michael

[KorbenDallas]

27 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Matt Drudge very rarely tweets. And when he does, he deletes the tweet after a small amount of time.

That's why I took a screenshot of what he tweeted one hour ago.

He says about Alex Jones: "Takes a licking and keeps on ticking..."

Michael

I accidentally read the Drudge quote at first to be, "Takes a licking and keeps on tricking."

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

25 minutes ago, KorbenDallas said:

I accidentally read the Drudge quote at first to be, "Takes a licking and keeps on tricking."

Korben,

The subconscious is a marvel, isn't it?

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, william.scherk said:

Another knock to an Infowars 'platform'?

FCC shuts down Alex Jones’s flagship radio station

Correct information--from Infowars itself:

AP Launches Media Hoax Claiming Alex Jones’ Radio Station Shut Down

From the article:

Quote

Alex Jones released the following statement:

We do not operate any radio or TV stations anywhere in the country.

Here is a copy of the statement:

And instead of relying on the fake news MSN, here is the correct headline for the original story after correction:

CORRECTION: FCC targets pirate radio station that broadcasts Alex Jones

Michael

[Darrell Hougen]

16 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Darrell,

On the contrary.

They want to be regulated. Just like big oil and big pharma wanted to be regulated. (And other industries once they have become big.)

That keeps the competition out.

Smaller competitors can't afford the legal costs.

And that's just one of the things involved.

If you, Darrell, owned one of these companies, I am sure you would not want to be regulated. But, then again, you are a moral man. Those dudes are in bed with the government and not just for profit. They want exclusive power enforced by the government to ban users and competitors. They are not moral.

Michael

Michael,

You're assuming the tech companies want to be regulated. Perhaps some of them do. If that's true, that is even more reason to oppose regulating them. We don't want a situation in which it is difficult or impossible to launch competing social media platforms because of the regulatory burden involved in doing so.

Darrell

 

[Darrell Hougen]

16 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Darrell,There was a moral panic over Cambridge Analytica by the left, so yes, some people deleted their Facebook accounts. But the effect out here in reality of Cambridge Analytica on the election was practically nonexistent. I doubt it swayed a single voter to switch over to Trump. There simply wasn't enough time even if they could have. Well... maybe one or two... But then... Nah... It didn't sway anybody.

 

On the other hand, the COBS covert persuasion strategies Obama employed during his two runs actually did sway voters.

Michael

Michael,

I'm not saying that Cambridge Analytica had a significant effect on the election or that their use of Facebook data was even a scandal. The point is that the left considers it a scandal and it is the left that is outraged over the actions of Facebook and it is the left that is driving regulation of social media as a result of that outrage.

Conservatives (and classical liberals, libertarians, objectivists, etc.) have also complained about mistreatment by platforms like Facebook, but we're used to being mistreated. Besides, the owners of Facebook don't really care about us anyway. However, they do care about how they are perceived on the left and that is why they have been cracking down on right-leaning "fake news" while ignoring the fake news pumped out daily by big left-leaning media companies.

Darrell

[Darrell Hougen]

5 hours ago, anthony said:

To be clearer, Darrell, the problem of "principle or context" I raised was not at all involving of the individual. For him they blend (are "integrated"), which is the hallmark of objective epistemology/ethics, you'll know. Here, there's no distinction between one's principles (or virtues) and factual context, an Objectivist can and does hold them simultaneously, applying conceptual method and principles to real things, continuously.

Multiply the one person by many millions, however, and he or she doesn't have that ultimate control over his own liberty and his life, as he does in his own thinking and acts. Society and Government are not the individual's to steer (although he is not completely powerless to persuade). This, the public arena and the standard of individual rights and the proper form of govt.we know is right, is where I believe a breach between principle and fact enters w.r.t. Objectivists, especially, and where ARI has often taken the purist, rationalist high road - like their advocacy of 'open borders' (ignoring several contexts) - criticizing or dismissing any positive steps in the US taken recently - regardless of the fact that we are "not there yet". "There" is not going to arrive soon. "We"/you have to work with what is there, exists, right now. While holding/propagating those standards. Gradually, many millions will have to see the value of those ideas themselves for the right outcome.

Anthony,

I don't think that principles are out-of-context absolutes, even for an individual. Context always matters. For example, Ayn Rand held honesty to be a virtue. However, it is a virtue in the context of peaceful coexistence. As Tara Smith has pointed out, it is even a virtue when the person one is dealing with isn't entirely rational in his reasoning. On the other hand, it isn't hard to construct scenarios involving criminals or acts of war in which it is perfectly reasonable to lie --- where, in fact, honesty would be foolish. So honesty is a virtue within a particular context.

With respect to immigration the same thing is true. While the right to liberty, or specifically, the right to freedom of movement, is a right, it is not an out-of-context absolute. One generally doesn't have the right to access another person's property, for example.

There is also the right to free association --- the right to voluntarily join together with other people for moral and proper purposes. One of the proper purposes of association is for mutual self defense. So, it is right and proper that people form a country with a government and restrict the people that can enter and the purposes for which they can enter. The right to liberty can't trump the right to freedom of association. The two principles can only be understood by looking at how they interact for the purpose of protecting human life --- the act of expending one's own effort for the furtherance of one's own survival and prosperity.

While it is true that people all over the world have the right to liberty, it is also true that they don't have a right to demand that other people provide the conditions necessary for the protection of that right. If mass immigration undermines the ability of a group of people to form an association for the purpose of mutual self defense, then the right to liberty cannot be interpreted as superseding the right to association. Such an interpretation would undermine the right to life.

The right to liberty is not an out-of-context absolute. The only way that ARI and other objectivists can justify open borders is through massive context dropping. In the full context of human existence, it seems imminently reasonable to put limits on immigration.

Darrell

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Darrell Hougen said:

You're assuming the tech companies want to be regulated. Perhaps some of them do. If that's true, that is even more reason to oppose regulating them.

Darrell,

Absolutely.

The tech giants want to be regulated. That will shut out startups over time (except for crony startups run by people with pull). And this, as you say, is even more reason to oppose regulation.

We agree on that.

I have probably been writing poorly if that has not been clear.

But there is an idea I want to add to this, so let me try it this way.

The argument generally given on the O-Land side, which in this context I mean including libertarians and some conservatives, is that tech giants are private property and they have the right to determine who can use their platform and who cannot. But people use this argument to justify ignoring the bullying of Alex Jones by crony corporatists and the deep state. This bullying will inevitably lead to regulation of the Internet in some form--through antitrust laws, declaring social media platforms a public utility, etc., all of which have enough grounds in law to happen. Maybe even racketeering. It all depends on what prosecutors, disgruntled people with lawyers, and politicians can dream up.

I believe that is a bad thing.

And the fact that people in O-Land present their argument so sanctimoniously and dismiss all else just because they dislike Alex Jones shows they are blinded to this risk, thus they are not really thinking in principles, although it sounds like they are.

Is that clear, now? I want to be understood before I am judged.

 

Seriously, if you have any doubt about any lack of clarity there may be in my words, please let me know.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Darrell Hougen said:

Michael,

I'm not saying that Cambridge Analytica had a significant effect on the election or that their use of Facebook data was even a scandal. The point is that the left considers it a scandal and it is the left that is outraged over the actions of Facebook and it is the left that is driving regulation of social media as a result of that outrage.

Conservatives (and classical liberals, libertarians, objectivists, etc.) have also complained about mistreatment by platforms like Facebook, but we're used to being mistreated. Besides, the owners of Facebook don't really care about us anyway. However, they do care about how they are perceived on the left and that is why they have been cracking down on right-leaning "fake news" while ignoring the fake news pumped out daily by big left-leaning media companies.

Darrell

Darrell,

We are so in agreement it hurts.

Have I really been that poor at conveying my message?

 

Michael