This is from a Charlie Sykes Op-Ed about Alex Jones:
Mr. Jones, Matt Drudge and President Trump himself have played a role in reviving what Richard Hofstadter called “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Reread in light of today’s politics,
Hofstadter’s 1964 essay seems eerily prescient.
The paranoid spokesman, he wrote, saw the world “in apocalyptic terms — he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point.”
At the center of the paranoid worldview, Hofstadter wrote, was a sense on the right that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion.”
Since the situation is so dire and the stakes so high, the paranoid spokesman is not interested in half-measures. “He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician,” Hofstadter wrote.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/opinion/sunday/the-danger-of-ignoring-alex-jones.html
He makes a good point, now that the crazy is out of the bottle it needs to be confronted head on. I think most people do like to ignore and keep at bay the paranoid 'crazy' people they encounter. You are walking through a park and there is a zealous religious person screaming how the world is ending or how everyone needs to repent. It's uncomfortable, nobody wants to do what everyone is thinking, walk up and tell the person they are ill and need to go home and rest. Some do an end around and show up with a saxophone or bagpipes and just continue playing loudly until the person gets the message.
The same with these political whackjobs, it's best to leave them on the fringe with their tiny fringe audience and ignore them. But now one of their own has gained some power in the political structure. What to do? Hard to ignore it now but you also don't want to legitimize it by speaking to these people as if they just have another opinion. It is like staging a 'debate' between Sarah Palin and Michio Kaku on evolution. Simply by Michio stepping onto the stage he is lending some legitimacy to Palin's batshit. Or if Neil De Grasse accepted a 'debate' with the Flat Earth Society. Just his presence gives their beliefs some weight as per "well he's there so maybe they have something important to say". No, they don't. All are welcome to their opinion in this society, but many opinions are to be ignored because they are light years from the facts.
I think it probably best to call these people out and just burn their batshit to the ground with facts. Alex Jones in the MSNBC interview with Megyn Kelly says Sandy Hook is a hoax. How many people will see that and not think 'this guy is literally crazy'.
