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Can we have a thread about Alex Jones? Apparently the "victims" of his actions are pushing for something like a trillion dollar award.
I get it, he spoke some really shitty things about some people that just lost their children in a horrendous event. I can't imagine what they're going through. But I can't get past this mental block of "Yeah he said some shitty things, but he never directed his followers to do harassment, and the parents essentially just got cyber bullied, like just walk away from the screen, seriously. There were like two incidents of real life harassment, which have been prosecuted, and also were inflicted upon the parents who chose to engage with the public media."
Am I missing something here? Why is he being destroyed so thoroughly?
Thinking about it again, this question belies a misunderstanding of just how seething mad we'd expect Jones's victims to be. He's basically engaged in an old school feud with these people, who did absolutely nothing to provoke him besides have their lives ruined.
We live in a society where we resolve things with court cases and laws and such. For most of human history, this group of victims would probably have just murdered Jones for being a pest. We live in a unique period where we don't allow you do that just because you're justifiably angry.
A judgment like this tries to protect society from that chaos. It acknowledges that what Jones had done is beyond the pale, but mollifies the homicidal rage of the wronged.
Free speech is meant to protect citizens from a tyrannical government, isn't it? If he'd stuck to defaming the government like a normal person, I suspect he wouldn't be in nearly so much trouble.
Sounds like extortion. Give us obscene amounts of money or we may go on a homicidal rage.
within reason. Is a billion or more dollars reasonable, especially we're talking an individual who doesn't even have anywhere close to that much money? Probably not.
Isn't that the point of laws and police. Rule of law can be upheld without acceding to unreasonable demands.
Wait till you find out about taxes.
'We want Jones's head on a spike' is an unreasonable demand. 'We want Jones to pay us a large sum of money' is reasonable.
Now if it's a matter of degrees, I once more refer you to 'don't piss off the court.' Had jones conducted himself like a law abiding citizen is expected to, he probably wouldn't be dealing with such a large judgment.
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