Yes, but what have they done for us lately? 
The Onion completes its acquisition of InfoWars.
I don’t think I’ve told this story since we got to the new server so maybe it is OK to repeat it:
The year: 1998
The Place: Central Texas
Fresh out of the Army; and was extremely discontent with the government. I met this community organizer; and I worked a couple projects with him. We demolished and rebuilt this WWI vet’s house in a single day; to prevent the city from taking his property (long story).
The next project was the rebuilding of the Branch Davidian church.
But about this time, he started selling all these conspiracy theory videos on his website, and when I asked him about them, he told me that is what keeps the lights on. Not long after that I left Texas to return to Nevada and lost touch. His name was Alex Jones.
I have the feeling that many of the people like Alex Jones start pushing conspiracy theories just to “keep the lights on” without really believing in the conspiracies themselves. At some point, however, they get so entrenched in the whole thing to the point were they actually start believing their nonsense.
There’s a new book about him by a former employee and it’s on my list to read. “The Madness of Believing: A Memoir from Inside Alex Jones’s Conspiracy Machine” by Josh Owens, It looks interesting. I’ve seen the author being interviewed and his take was that Jones is a bull shitter who just doesn’t care if something is true or not. It’s interesting to note that Jones apparently did do some good things at one time. I guess it’s true that no one is all bad or all good, but I’m afraid I found his pushing those Sandy Hook conspiracies unforgivable.
I suspect that’s an accurate summary. The classic book, On Bullshit, makes the case that bullshitters are worse than liars because liars at least know / care on some level that they’re lying and so are more tethered to reality and are trying to conceal their lying. Bullshitters just say whatever comes to mind that they can sell to get what they want and don’t care if they are found out because by then they’re on to new levels of BS.
Trump is an end-stage BS-er – I don’t think the absurd stuff he says is entirely because he’s getting demented, I think it is also that he has zero shame or empathy or integrity and is so good at BS-ing that it has worked well for him and his entitlement does the rest.
Virtually no one believes for instance that Iran offered him the role of Supreme Leader or that Venezuela wants him to be their new president, but in his mind, amidst his delusions of grandeur, the could have, nay, should have, and so his fantasies get translated into yarns accordingly. In other words it helps that his brain is melting but it’s not necessarily the main ingredient.