If you haven't seen it yet, you should watch a recent interview Piers Morgan did on CNN with Alex Jones. It revolves around the debate the Americans are having over gun control and harkens back to the good old days (I say sarcastically) of Jerry Springer, where people screaming and yelling passed for entertainment.
I wrote a post on this issue a while back - Why the gun issue will never be resolved in the US - and what you see in this interview is in keeping with my views, primarily that, regardless of how many people die from guns, many Americans view guns as their ultimate protection. So even if guns make society a less safe place, they view 'their' gun as increasing 'their' personal safety.
At the core of this is a huge PR problem that is the direct result, in my opinion, of the American government lying over and over to its population. Many view the American government as an empire that has an agenda of its own that is separate from the will of the people, and that in fact, the will of the people is an obstacle as opposed to the source from which their directives arise.
It's not hard to see where an Alex Jones gets his following from...
I wrote a post on this issue a while back - Why the gun issue will never be resolved in the US - and what you see in this interview is in keeping with my views, primarily that, regardless of how many people die from guns, many Americans view guns as their ultimate protection. So even if guns make society a less safe place, they view 'their' gun as increasing 'their' personal safety.
At the core of this is a huge PR problem that is the direct result, in my opinion, of the American government lying over and over to its population. Many view the American government as an empire that has an agenda of its own that is separate from the will of the people, and that in fact, the will of the people is an obstacle as opposed to the source from which their directives arise.
It's not hard to see where an Alex Jones gets his following from...
- Did any of the bankers go to jail? no.
- HSBC laundered money for drug cartels, did anyone go to jail? no.
- Is anyone bothered that 10-50 civilians are killed by drone strikes for every 'bad guy' they kill? nope.
- Does anyone care that Obama broke at least half his campaign promises in 2008 and is on track to break all his 2012 promises as well? nope.
- The US passed the NDAA, which allows the government to imprison you without a warrant or give you access to a lawyer, does anyone care? nope.
- The gov tried with SOPA, and continues to try, to drastically curb internet freedom. In essence they want to control the internet from soup-to-nuts, does anyone care? nope.
- Special interest groups who spend millions on lobbying get what they want from government, while everyone else gets screwed.
- Those who run the government, almost all of them, have been insider trading for years, getting rich off their positions in gov and relation to big business.
Anyway, you could add another 100 bullet points to the list above, from the BP oil spill (did anyone go to jail over that? nope) to the SEC failing to catch Bernie Madoff despite being told over and over he was a fraud.
There is an endless string of PR disasters for the government which collectively have lead to the American people simply not trusting their government.
And when you fear your government, then suddenly the idea of possessing an automatic machine gun makes more sense.
Piers Wins, Jones Wins, America Loses
A lot of folks are talking about who won/lost in the interview. Alex came off as crazy and Piers essentially gave a crazy guy 13 minutes of Prime Time on CNN.
The truth though is that both Piers and Alex won in the sense that what each of them care most about is increasing their audience. Piers' ratings have been horrible, and this Jerry Springer moment surely increased buzz about his show. And for Alex, while many may have seen him as crazy, he will pick up new listeners from his performance (the interview already hit over three million hits on YouTube).
Ultimately, Alex Jones is a shock jock. He's a different flavor of Madonna (sexuality) or Howard Stern (profanity) or Jerry Springer (voyeurism)... Alex's flavor of shock is apocalypse shock - the gov is coming to get you, they are poising the water, the NWO is taking over the world, etc.
The problem with Jones is that he takes actual facts but then fear-mongers with them, that's his schtick. Jones doesn't say anything that many reputable folks haven't said, whether it be Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Ron Paul or Martin Luther King, etc. - the difference is in how he presents the information.
And Piers knew this is what he would get when he had Jones on the show... a Jerry Springer moment.
While both Jones and Morgan win in terms of increasing their viewership, ultimately America loses as it continues to descend into irrational fears over the country's future and reducing the gun debate to extreme positions.
Guns Won't Save You
The silliest thing about the second amendment - ie. the right to bear arms - and the notion that it's the citizenries last line of defence against a tyrannical government, is that guns ultimately won't stop such a government.
The US government could today be called a pre-fascist government (ie. when business and government rule over society and make the laws according to their needs and not the citizens) that is in its infantile stages. Should its current state worsen and it become fascist in a matured sense (or communist, or a plutocracy, or an oligarchy or any of the various less-than-democracy models out there) guns won't change anything.
The resources the government has at its disposal to control the population are enormous.
Planes, drones, tanks, every type of gun you can think of, body armour, satellites, a trained army, etc.
Not to mention all the advanced weaponry they have that most people don't even know about.
All of which is a moot point in that the government can shut down / control the food supply, the ability to communicate, and other essential services (police, firemen, medical services, etc.). The government doesn't have to control you through force, they can control you through all the things you need to live (water, food, housing, traffic lights, etc.).
Point is if a government wants to take over its' own people, it can at any time. And if 20 armed government officers come to your house, your gun collection is not going to help you.
Personally I don't think the US government is trying to usher in an era of communisms. I think rather it has simply made a series of REALLY bad choices over the years / decades in combination with politicians who saw easy opportunities to get rich by selling out the people who voted for them. So basically the age old story of greed, immorality and stupidity (and the associated folly of trying to kick the can down the road when it's time to pay the piper for said greed, immorality and stupidity).
Ultimately it is the Gov who created this atmosphere
Ultimately though, from a PR perspective, when people wonder what creates an Alex Jones, it stems from a corrupt government. It's the erosion of trust through an endless series of 'spin and lies' that creates the distrust of the government among the people.
And once you distrust someone, you can come up with a thousand imagined scenarios as to what evil things they are up to.
You see this in the corporate world all the time. A CEO is doing a bad job but the board doesn't fire them for whatever the reason (usually because the only replacement options they have would be even worse). The employees can't figure out how the boss - who they think is an idiot - is managing to keep his job. Left long enough all kinds of rumours start swirling about. The distraction can actually reach such a crescendo that the CEO can end up being removed solely because the employees no longer have faith (ie. trust) in upper management.
Point is, when you remove accountability and responsibility (which the US government has done over the past 10 years), you set the stage for mistrust and fear.
So where does this go?
From a PR perspective what's annoying about this whole conversation is the real issue never gets addressed, that being mental health.
If you have a population where people with mental health problems get assistance - and by assistance I mean real assistance, not just take a pill and I'll see you in three months (more like intense psychotherapy, lifestyle assistance, education and employment assistance) - then these tragedies probably wouldn't occur at the rate they do.
You can get rid of the machine guns, but those who snap will simply use handguns. People will still die.
Now there are lots of other potential contributing factors (for certain individuals, not everyone), such as violent movies, violent video games, the erosion of the family unit, increasing poverty (put differently a lower standard of living), etc.
But you can't really make a dent in those things in the short term.
Mental health however, is the one thing that you know is a major contributor to these issues and which you can make a difference in.
Will the US go down a path towards enhancing the mental health of its citizenry? Will they start treating mental disorders the way you would treat physical disorders? Will any country in the world put mental illness on an equal footing as physical illness?
The answer, based on the conversation in the media right now, would be that seems unlikely.
As I said in my other post on this issue, I suspect they will simply remove a few guns from the market, make getting a gun slightly harder and call it a day.
It's going to take perhaps another dozen massacres before politicians and the citizens begin to realize that their society is breaking down and that to stop it from breaking down further addressing mental health issues, and the causes behind them, is paramount.
Until then, the gun debate in the US will look a lot like the Piers v. Jones interview, full of sound and fury signifying nothing (to quote Shakespeare).
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