After Donald Trump won, I had a bit of a crisis.
I went, “God damn. I listen to podcasts four hours a day. They were all wrong. I read news in four languages, every single day. I didn’t know this was going to happen. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck….” They kept saying the polls were wrong. They kept saying that Trump would win. I dismissed it as drivel.
Election Day found me with my forehead on the floor in our locked teachers’ closet, NPR’s livestream of the results in my ears.
And then I thought, “Well, maybe I was wrong.”
Thus began my month-long quest to understand the Trumpsters. I had already been talking to them online for a long time. At least since summer. I ask them the same questions over and over on Twitter.
“Hello there. Can this flaming liberal ask you a few questions about #Trump?”
“Thanks! How do you feel, now that the election is over? Are you happy? Did you feel confident it would go your way?”
“Do you personally know any immigrants? Have you ever applied for a work visa (or any other visa) in another country?”
“Do you hold a passport?”
“What do you hope to see in the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency?”
I don’t personally know anyone who voted for Trump. I am in my bubble. Therefore, those conversations on Twitter were my only window into a world I simply do not understand.
I started listening to The Alex Jones show on 10th November, 2016. It seemed the only rational response. Everyone I listened to was wrong. He was…right?
Therefore….
for the last month, I have listened to The Alex Jones Show every day. For at least an hour. Every day.
The poison is real. I caught myself thinking, “chemtrails” when I saw a plane over Busan this week. I need to stop listening to this shit soon.
I have, however, learned a few things since I started listening to “The voice of the Resistance.” Find them below. Prepare your self-medicating alcohol now, mofos. To keep myself at a sane arm’s length from the bullshit quotes below, please know that anything in italics was not said by Yours Truly.
The advertising is woven into every single aspect of the show
“I buy some, I use some, I store some, Awesome! Lifesaving Bacon. Presidential Bacon. NASA-packed technology. ready to eat right out of the pack, or warm and serve!”
I shit you not, that is word-for-word with an advert that plays several times an episode on the Alex Jones Show.
Are you an infidel who needs to buy his wife body armour for unknown spurious reasons? Look no further than the DNA Force-Hawking Snake Oil Salesman tactics of Alex Jones and his ilk. Every ten minutes there is a commercial break, which is usually the same tired thing over and over in Jones’ voice.
“When the telomeres run out, you start dyin’… And if you buy this product…I mean, we fight the Infowar! We fight the globalists!”
And other conveniently misinterpreted sciencey-sounding bullshit. Yay. Since December rolled into town, Alex has doubled down on the advertising and now spends about five-ten minutes of the parts of the show *between* commercial breaks to talk about all the amazing sales they have going on.
It’s all personal to Alex
He gets offended over things that wouldn’t draw a blush on the greenest ESL teacher in Pusan. Somebody called me a mean name. Time to set the social media dogs on them!
The UN and the Communist Chinese are trying their hardest to censor Alex Jones!!!!!! OH THE HUMANITY
He got featured on SNL this week and he played the whole segment with his own voiceover all over the shop. He’s really angry about being in the slightly satirical piece (which, if you want to hear a searing account of how SNL’s satire is completely toothless and needs to shape the fuck up in the face of a Trump Administration…listen to this biting podcast by Malcolm Gladwell from the summer!).
His response? To say that they aren’t even funny. I swear to god, my kindergarteners sling better insults in their second motherfucking language.
He says the same lines over and over and over
and over and over and over…especially about his show’s numbers and how he’s beating NPR and CNN and the BBC (whoever happens to run an article about him that week).
“We’re making freedom go viral.”
“You’re the fake news! You are the fake news!”
“This is a hell of a time to be alive.”
“They’re openly trying to steal this election.”
This is a slightly silly article here on RR, but let’s get serious for a moment. This is the mark of propaganda. People respond to hearing the same things repeated. It makes the incredible seem credible.
He’s Still Pushing Birtherism
Yes. In the twilight of 2016. Alex Jones still believes that Obama “wears a Muslim ring” and was born in Kenya.
For fuck’s sake. Your candidate, with whom you claim to have a privileged relationship, admitted he was wrong about Obama being born in the USA.
This week, Jones invited ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio from Arizona on to the show to specifically contest the outgoing President’s birth certificate (Jones calls it “as fake as a three dollar bill.”).
I don’t know, you guys. I just don’t know.
He has a very foul, violent mouth
the day after the election:
“They thought they had us in a chokehold, but actually we have them in a chokehold…and we need to keep squeezing until the lights go out of their eyes.“
Enemies might be his favourite word:
“Defending America from enemies both foreign and domestic…”
He advocates violence against those he deems enemies. So……
He’s a Good Laugh at Times
I cut my finger off 13 years ago but this BioPQQ has totally regrown the nerves.
BAHAHAHAHA WTF I’M DYING
To be clear, I am not laughing at the thought of Alex Jones cutting off his finger.
That is unfortunate. I am laughing that he thinks severed nerves were regrown by his snake oil. And I’m also laughing so that I don’t burst into tears that MILLIONS of people are listening to his show and believing his bullshit.
When I lived in Italy, I used to watch Striscia La Notizia. It’s an Italian show that once had dancing half-naked ladies in the opening, but which mostly is known for political and cultural satire. In Italy, one has so much political bullshit that one must laugh for fear of crying. I now understand. I try so hard. I need to laugh. Laugh!
We are now in the era of the American Berlusconi.
He’s obsessed with making refrences to 80s movies like Terminator, Star Wars, ET and He also made a movie
“When I was a kid, it was ok to be proud of the red white and blue. Mom and apple pie. And beef was what’s for supper. You want to shed some tears for the Red White and Blue?”
The movie is called REVELATION: The Dawn of Global Governance and stars Alex Jones, Charlie Daniels, and others of his ilk. I hesitate to post the trailer here because it’s all obviously bullshit, but there you go.
To be serious for a moment here, in a listicle that I hate….but I am forced to use now that it’s 2016…
I’d like to post this here, to do homage to my BBC friends. The tradition of sceptical inquiry in the face of bullshit is a uniquely British tradition.
As a nomad, I am an avowed globalist. I believe that national borders are bullshit made-up things that disadvantage us all. I have a binational, no-thank-you-we-are-global-citizens family that is directly affected by people voting against immigration in the USA and the UK (and elsewhere, since we are chased elsewhere by those who would seek to restrict us further, when we are already unable to earn enough money to afford a family life in our ‘home countries’). I think that ‘global governance’ with a strong element of municipal control is the best thing that could happen to humans. Global norms, local control. Boom. 21st century, solved.
You have learned nothing and know not of what you speak