Alex Jones Painful Education

Alex Jones, image courtesy of Thompson Reuters

Headline at Reuters: Alex Jones loses bid to slash $50 million Sandy Hook defamation verdict

“Alex Jones failed in his bid to slash a nearly $50 million defamation verdict against him over his false claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting was a hoax.”

He and his lawyers may disagree with the ruling, and they do, as the plan is to appeal, but mitigating damages after committing egregious behavior is emotionally and financially painful.

Jones knew what he was doing when he was manipulating emotions, pushing a false narrative and showing no compassion to families who were broken over the loss of their family member.

People can certainly endure losses in court because the court system often reveals itself as broken but this isn’t one of those times. Jones received an objectively fair trial and was not able to slink away from his wrongdoing, about which he had long shown no remorse.

All this said, it’s important for others to learn from this scandal in their cases of communicating outlandish falsehoods that abuse others, lest it come back to bite them hard in the behind legally, socially, financially, emotionally and psychologically.

Alex Jones is hurting now, in part because he didn't have or didn’t listen to trustworthy voices around him when he was communicating like a lunatic.

A strong, ethical communications advisor would have strongly cautioned Jones from continuing down the dangerous and immoral communications path he was speeding down that was hurting other people deeply and going to lead to his own personal and business misery.

That professional’s knowledge, insights and advisory would have served Jones well and served him best in both a risk management and crisis prevention capacity.

Because Jones likely didn’t have such a person in his employ or he chose not to listen to them, he bypassed risk management and crisis prevention with arrogance, foolishness and a belief that “nothing bad can happen to me.”

He now doesn’t like the staggering collective financial amounts of court judgments against him yet he wasn’t willing to implement any safeguards in wise acts of prevention.

He flipped off the families of the victims at Sandy Hook, played his audience, at least at times, as fools and “marks” and attracted the misery and suffering he’s now going to endure for years, maybe the rest of his life.

Jones unintentionally has taught other loudmouths of falsehoods and abuse what not to do. Sadly, I guarantee that not everyone on a similar behavior path will pay attention, learn well and immediately and properly correct course.

A small group of people will and they will prove resilient.