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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3894 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What The Fuck Is Going On In Malaysia

To be fair, Alex Jones was crazy. The NSA listening in thing was first announced by James Bamford in the '80s. It wasn't a secret, it just wasn't widely known.





OftenBen  ·  3890 days ago  ·  link  ·  

He is crazy, but that doesn't mean he was wrong. Ad hominem and all that.

kleinbl00  ·  3890 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The point:

Normal, non-insane, credentialed journalists made Alex Jones' point back when Alex Jones was in 2nd grade. It is, therefore:

1) Not Alex Jones' point.

2) Not a reason to not call Alex Jones crazy.

Claiming that, for example, "the NSA is spying on us" and "NASA faked the moon landing" serves the purpose of deprecating the claim that "the NSA is spying on us" because the former is a well-documented fact and has been for decades while the other is a well-debunked paranoid delusion and has been for even longer. It certainly doesn't warrant caps lock - "stopped clock right twice a day" and all that.

It's also not an ad hominem attack. It's an appeal to logic ("People think Alex Jones is crazy because he acts like a raving lunatic, not because he's pointed out NSA surveillance"). You would do our future discourse a service by striving not to conflate the two.

OftenBen  ·  3890 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Noted. I appreciate the... lesson, for lack of a better word.