Would you say it under oath?
One of our great freedoms as Americans is the right to be wrong. Totalitarian regimes demand adherence to every jot and tittle of the one-party dogma. Any deviation is punished with banishment to the Gulag or worse. Conservatives on college campuses know that all too well.
The proprietor of the Werkes makes his living off the First Amendment. Just the same, we recognize the limits of free speech: fire in a crowded theater, incitement to riot, and libel being not protected. The latter is hard to prove. New York Times v. Sullivan survived the recent session of the U.S. Supreme Court. Still must prove the speech was false, the liar knew it was false, and that he lied with malicious intent. Must prove actual damages. Even then, if you’re a public figure, you’re pretty much fair game. Which is how the Wisconsin State Journal could get away with smearing Ald. Paul Skidmore even though the forensic audio specialist hired by the City of Madison cleared the alder of uttering the infamous C word.
Nor is perjury protected speech.
Cruel but not unusual
Which takes us to Alex Jones. Make no mistake, the man would float in a toilet bowl. What kind of scorched soul could make it his mission in life to pile misery atop the grieving parents of the murdered children at Sandy Hook elementary school by lying that the tragedy never happened? (The Atlantic calls Jones “the nation’s second-most prominent conspiracy theorist.”) The parents are not public figures. I hope they soak the bastard. Even so, how are they damaged?
That aside, and more troubling, there is a thriving market for such bull schittery. We read that his InfoWars pulls in something like $70 million a year.
Mark Twain (or was it Jonathan Swift?) said a lie could circumnavigate the globe while truth was putting on its shoes. That was before the internet! P.T. Barnum said something about fools being born every minute. Every one of them is posting on Facebook!
Gresham’s Law of information
Bad information drives out good information. There remain sandal and stocking-wearing octogenarians convinced that Alger Hiss was framed as a Russian spy. True un-believers swear that Spielberg faked the moon landing. LBJ and his Texas oil buddies offed JFK. 9/11 was a controlled demolition. The Holocaust never occurred. The 2020 election was stolen. The Gandhi of Trump Towers preached “march peacefully and patriotically” but the FBI staged a false flag operation at Nancy Pelosi’s direction using paid Antifa actors to discredit him.
They started it! Democrats and the news media lied about “Russian collusion.” State Department experts vowed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was classic Russian disinformation. Education reporter Elizabeth Beyer says Wisconsin K-12 schools do not teach critical race theory. BLM lies that police go hunting for black people to fill their jails. Global winter/warming/climate change is melting Greenland, which was warm enough for Europeans to colonize up to about the year 1400.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: The slacker philosopher George Costanza postulated that “it’s not a lie if you really believe it.” Is the truth relative, for sale to the highest bidder? A personality named Demi Lovato identifies as a woman this week, pronouns to follow. It’s for the rest of us to blow the vuvuzela of truth on the BS-ers. The news media could help the cause of credibility by being more even-handed and alternative media consumers less gullible. Ultimately, the citizenry is the only jury.
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
I call to the stand … God.
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“I call to the stand … God.”
Curious; how would one swear The Almighty in…?
The Gotch
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I can share with you my disdain for Hillary Clinton’s abject refusal to let go of her claim that she only lost to Trump because of the Russian collusion.
That said, however, your attempt is false when you draw an equivalence between, on the right. the Trumper’s insistence that he won the election and, on the left, their initial concern over/adoption of the Russian collusion story.
First, there were undisputed facts about Trump that raised in any fair mind a concern that he was supporting a hostile country and its oligarchic ruler over America, at the same time he was pursuing Putin’s support for a Trump Moscow Hotel, etc. Indeed, it would have been a dereliction of duty to our country’s security to not have investigated these concerns thoroughly when this concern involves someone running for President, where, if right, he could do such inconceivable harm. Thus, the FBI was not this “deep state,” it was doing its job!
Second, after Mueller released his report of his investigation concluding that he had been unable to find that, beyond those concerning facts, that there was also active collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, at that point the mainstream press and almost the entire left (sans Rachel Maddox) stopped making the collusion claim. Note that the apparent absence of active collusion does NOT in any way mean that, if Trump were ever again elected, there would not remain a strong concern that he would nonetheless bias American foreign policy to favor Putin (by e.g. not majorly helping Ukraine) in order to win Putin’s favor for a Trump Moscow hotel in order to avoid personal bankruptcy when his bonds mature.
This is entirely different from the 2020 election, about which there never was any actual evidence to support the allegations of a stolen election, and then after multitudinous court cases and reviews and audits by election officials, many of whom were by long standing Republicans, 2/3 of Republicans continue, without any basis whatsover, to argue that Biden lost.
BTW thanks for the citation to that wonderful follow-on NatGo story about the fate of the Viking settlements in Greenland that provides a further and richer analysis of alternative hypotheses of how the settlements ended. However, your suggestion that this reinterpretation somehow shows how the present scientific understanding of climate change is wrong only illustrates my prior point.
There is no equivalence between someone who rants without facts, and in the face of conclusive proof, continues ranting; and someone else who pursues facts with preliminary investigations, but continues to, themselves, challenge their validity in order to be doubly sure, and, when those reviews find alternative views more likely, corrects their opinion. That’s called the scientific method, and Alex Jones is not a member.
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“First, there were undisputed facts about Trump that raised in any fair mind a concern that he was supporting a hostile country,” which Hillary Clinton weaponized with the fake Steele dossier and then sold to the news media.
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Apart from the fact that it was actually Jeb Bush who first hired Steele, yes, absolutely, no-doubt-about-it, Hillary’s campaign – almost certainly with her full knowledge – engaged in skullduggery based upon a bunch of manure.
Do I want to be in any way associated with her?
No. NO. N*O*!!!!!!!
That said, that kind of campaign crap, unfortunately, does not rise to any especially high level of venality compared to the kind of junk typically done by both sides. If you want to shine a light of especially venal Democratic acts, shine it at the tens of millions of dollars Dems put into defeating reasonable Republicans challenged by Trumpers. Now that stands out for specially High Dudgeon.
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You are blithering.
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So funny that local media hides name of 34 year old who beat up lady and took her car at e aside Walmart Friday am. Crime stoppers gave it though.
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KEEWAN JAMEL SINGLETON?
Sounds like a White Supremacist to The Gotch…
The Gotch
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I am anxiously waiting for Kyle Rittenhouse to sue the living piss out of every last media outlet and political figure that defamed him, up to and including the Biden campaign. Justice Thomas indicated he wants to make it asker to sue the media, and I hope he does.
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Nicholas Sandmann made the despicably detestable Lefty Press pay extra primo good for their epically arrogant stridence.
Rittenhouse saved the world from decades more costly decadence from two career PsOS (woulda/shoulda/coulda been three!), ergo, he ought be appropriately rewarded.
The Gotch
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Actually, woulda/coulda/shoulda been four. He fired on and missed Jump Kick Man who was aiming to cave his head in—I forget the miscreant’s name, but the media identified him late in the Rittenhouse trial and he had a criminal record of his own. Firing on Gaige Grosskreutz only resulted in ruining that scumbag’s sex life.
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