Thursday, October 13, 2022
Political Mayhem Thursday: Big Huge Lies
Yesterday, a jury in Connecticut ordered "Infowars" host Alex Jones to pay $965 million to the families of children killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting.
Jones had repeatedly, to a big audience, told a big huge lie: that the shooting was faked and was all a ploy by gun law advocates. He described the grieving parents as actors, and he mocked them repeatedly for years.
And people believed it, because it aligned with their political beliefs, and someone in the media was saying it over and over.
This wasn't someone being wrong about a policy or a slip of the tongue. It was a factual lie-- a set of lies, really-- that he repeated over and over. And those lies caused some of his listeners to try to find the parents and harass them.
It wasn't a criminal act. But some of the very worst things people do are not criminal acts. That's one problem with having your own personal values determined simply by what is legal.
There is something happening in our society and our politics right now that is making Big Huge Lies a regular part of discourse, and that may a really terrible sign for our democracy.
