On The Brink

A couple of slightly jolting videos, both off Infowars.com.

The first one featured Alex Jones interviewing Michael Savage: one shock jock interviewing another shock jock, although Michael Savage has been in the business much longer than Alex Jones. They’re both big supporters of Donald Trump.

They’re friends, which seems to be unusual in US right wing talk radio. Something of a civil war started in that community back before Christmas, with Mark Levin slanging out Michael Savage, and Alex Jones slanging out Rush Limbaugh.

And they’ve both got rather arresting voices. Alex Jones’ is a kind of low rumble, until he gets excited, when it goes up an octave. But Michael Savage has got a very rich voice. He calls it a “master” voice. But I think it’s more like a musical instrument, like a cello or something. It’s got all sorts of inflections and nuances. By contrast people like Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh have relatively high pitched voices, which maybe costs them a bit of their gravitas. It seems to be a law of nature that, the deeper a voice is, the more commanding it is.

Anyway, just before 6 minutes into the video, while they were discussing healthcare, and Michael Savage was pushing for high risk occupations to pay high risk premiums, Alex Jones threw in:

“You smoke 3 packs of cigarettes a day, you go in a high risk pool.”

And Michael Savage didn’t reply. Michael Savage doesn’t smoke, but he isn’t antismoking. On one of his shows not long ago he said to his listeners, “Now that we’ve reached cruising altitude, you can smoke if you want to.” I don’t think Alex Jones would ever say anything like that. He’s a bit of a physical fitness freak, even if he is a bit tubby.

I always notice any mention of smoking or tobacco. But the jolting thing lay elsewhere. At the start of the show (0:50), Michael Savage was saying that America was in a state of civil war:

“It’s a war. It’s a civil war, goddarnit. I’m sick of it.” (1)

And then shortly afterwards (8:50), in discussing ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State, he said:

“There’s only one way to win a war, Alex. It’s horrible. It’s terrible. War is horrible. It’s called Kill Them. They’re never going to see it your way.” (2)

And the jolt came from me adding  (1) and (2) to draw the conclusion (3) that if America really was in a war, a civil war, the only way to win it was to kill them, kill the leftists who were never going to see things your way. What other conclusion could be drawn?

And with lots of people calling for Trump to be assassinated, it seems that much of the US left have come to the same conclusion. So far, I don’t think there have been any attempts on Trump’s life. But it appears that at least two attempts have been made on Roger Stone’s life.

Roger Stone is a long-term member of the American right. He served in Richard Nixon’s administration. And he’s a friend of Donald Trump, and was one of his advisers in the early part of Trump’s campaign.

Over Christmas he was very unwell. He said it was Polonium-210 poisoning. I took that with a pinch of salt, and ignored it. But then yesterday (or the day before), his car was T-boned by another car with dark glass windows, which reversed away and sped off. That did seem like a genuine assassination attempt. Stone was saved by air bags inflating, but was taken to hospital. He has a slight cut on his chin in the video below.

Anyway, with all these calls for people to be killed, sooner or later somebody’s going to wind up dead. And then?