THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE AMERICA STUPIDER: THEY'RE NOT ALL ON FOX

The #1 "Hot Search" in America today, according to Google, is "obama triggers blackouts." You may know that power plants in Texas that were inadequately prepared for the unusual Southern cold shut down, leading to blackouts in the state, as well as a natural gas emergency in New Mexico. But conspiracy-monger Alex Jones doesn't think the cold is the real problem:

In today’s edition of Prison Planet, Jones and fellow lunatic Paul Joseph Watson attempt to lay the blame for the recent power outages in Texas on President Obama's clean energy policies. Lieutenant Governor of Texas David Dewhurst does not share their view. He blames the rolling blackouts on a "lack of adequate winterization and preparation" at power plants that have broken down amidst freezing temperatures, according to the Dallas Morning News. These include three new coal plants.

Here's the post at Jones's Prison Planet site that spread this cockamamie notion: "Obama's Blocking Of New Power Plants Triggers Nationwide Blackouts."

The rolling blackouts now being implemented in Texas and across the country as record cold weather grips the United States are a direct consequence of the Obama administration’s agenda to lay siege to the coal industry, launch a takeover of infrastructure under the contrived global warming scam, and help usher in the post-industrial collapse of America....

The Obama administration is conducting industrial warfare against the United States. Obama's 2008 promise to "bankrupt" the coal industry by placing suffocating restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions even as China and other countries are given free reign to pollute at will is now coming to fruition. This is all part of the "post-industrial revolution" that the global elite have promised to enforce as a means of turning the United States into a decaying banana republic....

Of course, Obama's "bankrupt" remark -- presented out of context in the Prison Planet article ("So, if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted") -- was part of Obama's vision of a future in which a cap-and-trade system would be in effect and energy companies would be making the transition to other fuel sources. Obviously, there's no such system yet, and such a transition isn't really taking place.

But the rumors fly, and America becomes an ever more superstitious, ignorant nation -- not because the Internet is full of nonsense, but because no one in America who's in a position to make a difference makes any real effort to rebut the nonsense. Some don't bother because they don't see the problem. Others find that it's useful to have the public kept angry and ignorant. Whatever the reason, America continues its decline.

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UPDATE: I missed the fact that Jones's nonsense was retransmitted by Drudge and Limbaugh. Well, they're not actually on Fox, so the headline is technically correct. Still, I was wrong to suggest that he alone can push a story like this to the top of the wingnut charts. Good to know he doesn't have that kind of clout; bad to know that people who do have that kind of clout will happily rebroadcast any conspiratorial claptrap, however specious, in bad faith and with no regard for the truth (not that we didn't already know that).