The price of freedom. Last week, a Connecticut jury ordered Alex Jones to pay nearly $1 billion in damages for defaming the families of eight Sandy Hook victims. It was a clownish penalty many times the estimated worth of Jones, with the obvious intention of permanently silencing the controversial radio megastar. For the most part, media people cheered. This is because they’re scared.

Increasingly, Americans appear to be adopting absolutely batshit crazy opinions, and Jones is seen by many as the reason. But Jones is just a man, and his destruction won’t reverse the trend of men like him gaining traction in an attention economy. To the contrary, such draconian overreach justifies exactly the kind of paranoid thinking Jones has championed for decades, and all but guarantees a future thick with guys just like him. Then, the proliferation of paranoid upstarts itself guarantees further, fear-based draconian overreach. It’s a vicious cycle, and with the most extreme commentary from both sides algorithmically amplified online, our public trust — in every direction — has shattered. So far, with the exception of pandemic discourse, the effects of the information war have mostly been benign (if annoying (and exhausting)). But today, with the threat of nuclear war back on the table, our need for sober discourse feels a little more pressing.

Now, before we get to the part about the persecution of America’s favorite conspiracy theorist possibly paving the road to nuclear apocalypse, a quick note on the giant gay frog in the room.