CxD #222: Thoughts on staying Objective in a time of Alex Jones + Systems Thinking Cheat Sheet
1.
I don’t consider it a virtue, but I find Alex Jones to be a malevolent social cancer, the kind of person whose behavior I would describe as Evil, with a 100% chance of defending the claim without too much hardship.
On the other hand, I’m likewise growing more intolerant of virtue signaling and intolerance of any ideas that are deemed less-than in the eyes of a self-elected elite of morality, as though morality were a heavy stone, once written, never to breathe again.
I fear for one of our great virtues, open-heartedness and curiosity. Regardless of our own political spectrum whereabouts, more of us have decided once and for all who is good, who is toxic, and we stop caring about the reasons our neighbors believe what they believe. We have closed our hearts.
This is a confession of sorts, because during the Trump years, I felt repulsed by people supporting that bloviating narcissistic dick. Consequently, I often failed to inquire more deeply about the motivations to support such aggressive toxicity.
Like so:
I encourage folks here at CxD to read Matt Taibbi’s essay about the importance of journalism that remains objective without condescending judgement before presenting the facts as objectively as possible. It’s about a documentarian who tried to understand the angry white male in middle America, turning to hatred and Trumpism as a way of being seen; and it’s about the new Alex Jones documentary.
Here’s one counterargument to this desire for objectivity surrounding the new documentary about Alex Jones:
Rebecca Onion: What is your first, bird’s-eye-level takeaway about this documentary?
Dan Friesen: To me, it was very weird, and, I think, bad. There’s a person who’s lying—Alex Jones—who’s the main subject of the documentary. And he’s the only source of information about himself, and he’s lying. And the film gives you no reason to suspect that he’s lying. And so, taken at face value, unless you have an awareness of who Alex is, you’re ill-equipped to deal with the material being presented in the documentary, and to me that’s an indication of a lack of concern—a lack of thoroughness? I’m not exactly sure what it is, but it’s an irresponsible portrayal.
There’s the inclusion of some critical voices, but they are always presented extremely briefly, and as a Greek chorus of naysayers. The documentary presumes that you, as a viewer, agree with some of the basic premises of Jones’ worldview: that there is a globalist conspiracy of elites, and so on.
Yes, the way the documentary includes critiques is not meaningful at all. There are clips of a couple talking heads, like Trevor Noah, and they’ll say, Ah, look at this asshole. And flashes of out-of-context headlines you can’t read, and then the clip of Obama joking about Alex saying he smelled like sulfur. And that’s not meaningful critique of what Alex does, and it’s not any reason to call into question the premises that Alex is delivering to the documentary itself.
I know that Alex Lee Moyer and some of her defenders, like Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi, have really been relishing the idea of the movie’s non-judgmentalness. But I honestly think it’s uncritical. I think it’s an almost comatose approach to making a film. It’s not engaging with what’s being said to you at all, as a filmmaker. You have no reason to doubt the existence of these conspiracies from the film. You have every reason to think Alex does have sources, knows all these things, can prove X, Y, and Z. It’s bizarre. It’s not earned.
https://slate.com/culture/2022/08/alex-jones-infowars-alexs-war-documentary-trial-sandy-hook.html
I hope what I’ve written isn’t confusing, despite being seemingly contradictory.
On the one hand, it’s a shortcoming to close our minds and hearts and live out of a place of intolerance and aggressive condescending “virtue.”
On the other, evil does exist, and we need to understand it in order to help find common ground with those who have embraced hatred as their only solace.
Balancing like this requires patience and wisdom. We all need more of both.
2.
This shift in our perception of Twitter as a digital town square to our understanding of it as an élite spectacle demands a different response. To argue about the details of how Musk might tweak the platform’s rules ignores the larger outrage. Our problem is not how these games are played but the fact that so many people in positions of power keep taking them seriously. There was once a moment when Twitter could provide a useful source of grassroots activism and accountability: early in the Arab Spring, for example, the platform helped topple dictatorships, and it was central to energizing what became the #MeToo movement. But Haidt is convincing in his claim that as the platform squeezed out more and more reasonable people, and intensified the moralism and outrage of those who remained, it mutated past its ability to be a consistent source of good. We’ll likely never persuade the narrow bands of Twitter power users to change their frenetic ways, but the time has come to demand that those who remain at the periphery of this scrum, and who still take seriously its ever-shifting landscape of heroes and villains, redirect their attention somewhere more productive.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/our-misguided-obsession-with-twitter
3.
Do you see the world as made entirely of individual parts? If so, do you ever consider how the whole functions and the ways trying to control that which is too complex to be predicted leads to suboptimal outcomes?
4. What spontaneous joy looks like! 🍉
