TI vs Alex Jones debate
Critical thinking:
Watch how Alex Jones, who I think is very intelligent, dances around and evades the question by introducing other points. Red herrings, essentially. But TI is impressive here because he seems able to keep up with the misdirection and lead Jones back to the original question.
The fact that Jones strays so far off course is done on purpose. He quickly says he is not an apologist for Trump which is, in response to a particular question, an implication that there is no real defense on that issue. So he goes from the divisive language and what it represents to trying to lead the spotlight to a bigger or veiled threat that the audience will perceive to be worse than what Trump says.
We can also see the slow speech of TI is almost purposefully, if not purposefully, designed to combat and disarm Alex Jones's fever pitched word salads. He at times jumps in to correct something Alex Jones says because Jones, more than once, tries to put words in TI's mouth. People who are playing a losing hand in a debate sometimes stoop to this strategy so that they can go off on a tangent about something you didn't even say. And by the time you handle that tangent the hope is that you're distracted away from your initial question and the answer they didn't give.
When Jones starts talking about "well the media said(about Baltimore)" TI jumps in and slows down the pace of his words, which forces Jones to slow down as well because Jones knows that TI is being reasonable and he's not going to win if he can't draw his opponent into a shouting match where he will have the advantage. He cant look like he's all upset when his opponent is calm so he has to lower the volume and try to match the more calm softer tone of TI; especially while TI is explaining his own position. You can't tell someone what their position is. You have to listen to it no matter what. I don't know how many debates TI has ever been in but this is impressive against Alex Jones who is more used to debating and has developed a lot of skills to appear to be more persuasive in a debate. But you can hear it in his voice. He knows he's losing because he started with a weak hand and TI was right about what he was saying from the beginning. So he's trying. He's throwing stuff at the wall at this point (about half way through the video) to see if anything wills stick.
The last ditch effort was Jones trying to bring Elijah Cummings into it, to try and use him as a reason for Trump to say something about his district. Captain obvious, it doesn't matter. And that's essentially what TI told him by saying he is an independent thinker and politely isn't influenced by Cummings or anyone else so it doesn't matter what they said. What matters is what Trump said. And you can't say he didn't say it. So all of that and Jones finally sees he can't win on that point and admits to being wrong and that you cannot say that trump is always trying to bring people together. Now if Jones is alone on his show, not being challenged, then he can get away with these tactics. But when he's debating a person of decent intelligence it doesn't work.
So again... as soon as TI says "independent speaker" Jones quickly cuts in and says you're right he does say things sometimes that don't unify so that was incorrect what I (Alex Jones) said. Go back to 3:00 before even Jones says "its a dog whistle" and "I'm not an apologist for Trump" (right before apologizing for Trump) Alex tries to set up and support the idea that Trump could have been talking about the people who were covering (not really even on the side of the post or the counter protest) the event because he knew, and Alex Jones knew, but everyone else (because everyone being misinformed is the crux of the argument) doesn't know there were non-protesters "physically" located "on both sides" and that's what he meant. I think he wanted to see if TI would bite that apple and he didn't. Instead, TI was implying that Trump can be understood correctly because his words don't exist in isolation. There's a pattern. And honestly, Alex Jones knew TI was about scoring points on him by saying that because by saying that TI basically dunked (respectfully) on Alex's argument to try and imply some innocent meaning to what Trump said about good people on both sides. Alex may have underestimated TI but he starts adapting and looking for weaknesses in his argument and they're just not there.
5:00 - ___hole countries... rat infested... this is all part of the pattern.
And you can tell. Between the way Alex pauses and lets TI, after a pause, go in further, and how he talked about "I like doing this"... he was trying to buy a little time to think about what he could possibly say next. Jones goes into a story about the border policy (this is supposed to be a response to the __hole countries remark) and lax the US border is, in his opinion. Then he jumps into this idea that they're all getting "free stuff" and so then he jumps to Democrats are trying to bankrupt the country. LOL. This is an asinine statement that is only possible from jumping to all these conclusions. Obama didn't come in after George Bush Jr and suddenly open the barn doors of the American tax base to people coming over the border.
Obama was nicknamed the deporter-in-chief. But that doesn't fit the narrative Jones needs for this argument so he doesn't mention it. Republicans harp on Obama trying to save the Dreamers but fail to talk about how he deported so many people. You can't make both arguments at once. You can't say Obama was trying to give away the farm and at the same time say Obama was removing a lot of people who might have gotten even a patch of grass. And moreover, these are things Alex Jones is throwing out because TI could jump on any of this and the debate would then mutate to a new topic. But because its a verbal debate with time constraints TI can't take the bait which means letting him say things that are either unfounded, untrue, or things that would simply take too much time to establish one way or another. And see how Jones uses this to his advantage by saying if he had time he could show you how the Southern Poverty Law center was infiltrating and starting these groups. The whole point is to try and discredit the Southern Poverty Law Center by slandering them with a conspiracy theory to make people think they misreporting and therefore can't be trusted on their data. And this done so that no one can use their stats against him, because you would have disprove a negative in some kind of weird fantastical theory.
Fox News:
While details on the alleged relationship were not clear, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” reported that the FBI had described the group as “a well-known, established and credible” organization in 2009, and that the agency has briefed the FBI on alleged domestic terror threats in the U.S.
So the SPLC doesn't infiltrate groups. The FBI does that. Alex Jones is wrong. I also know already how the FBI will try to radicalize groups which may have the effect of taking them from non-hate group to ending up on the SPLC list. This is legal. You may not like it but if people become radicalized based on an FBI undercover officer, that officer cannot know if they would NOT have become radical without him. So if they're willing to use his connections to get guns then who is to say they would have gotten them on their own in time and perhaps actually used them? It's like temping Eve. You do it to see if she'll do it because if she does it then you know she's a threat. You could try to argue that she wouldn't have done it without your temptation but that's only your temptation. What about someone else's? See, we could argue all these little side streets if we wanted to but there's simply not time for that on the radio.
So 7:46, TI let's out a sigh and basically has had enough of the run around. He uses a slow and very purposeful voice, honestly, as though you were speaking to a small child, to remind Alex what the question was. This way the audience can see if "democrat bankruptcy agenda (even though we all know that Trump is the king of debt...because he said he was and loves bankruptcy)" has anything to do with the original question. That has nothing to do with what Trump said. And so then Jones launches into Ilhan Omar as if she's relevant and drops her name as a negative and then talks about slavery in Somalia to justify the ___hole comment.
Human trafficking exists in the US. So was Trump talking about human trafficking? No. Trump is a hospitality businessman, according to his chief of staff. I think its pretty obvious he was judging from that perspective. We can compare that comment to what he said about Cumming's district.
Let's jump to 9:00. We see TI here having to take a quick defensive stance because Alex Jones attempts to bring him personally into the argument and tell him what he's saying. When TI shuts that down, quite expertly, Jones says "well that's the feeling you got from it". TI, again, shuts that down. You can't tell someone how they feel. That was a mistake. Jones tries to walk back his mistake and gloss over it by talking over TI. And TI knows what's about to happen which is why he says "let me please because it seems like you have my message misconstrued." Again... I have to hand it to TI. He clearly has debate skills. He's not letting this debate get out of control even for a minute. He gives Alex rope but he knows exactly when to tug and reel Jones back in. And Jones is forced to comply. Otherwise, he's just going to expose himself.
I mean listen to Jones. He says Obama did xyz and it was bad, and now WE (who is we?) built it up and made it better. And why is he saying that? Because he thinks we have less reason to complain if Obama was involved. TI, again did an excellent job, not letting him spin his way into advancing his own talking points (which he doesn't provide evidence for) at the expense of not answering the question. TI also did an excellent job not trying to comment on everything as if he knows everything. If he had time I'm sure he would have done some research on Mexican immigration policy. But that's such a random thing that most people wouldn't be interested in until someone tries to make it relevant. But this is what Jones does. You have to peep game. He looks for these things that he assumes people wouldn't know and then uses those things as levers to make his point. And then he can say "oh well you just don't get it because you don't understand Mexican immigration policy."
Unfortunately this video is only 18.5 min long and in part II they go into other stuff because you have to know that Alex Jones didn't come to lose a debate. He came to promote himself. And he knows, talking to a black guy about a white man... might be a good time to throw other whites under the HIV bus and say that HIV was targeted to black people. He said he was also not in defense of white supremacy. But it's interesting that Hemp is such a big fan of Alex Jones and yet doesn't know that Alex Jones believes there is racism and white supremacy. How can this be?
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