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The Internet and the Ignorant
Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic. -Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution
The Internet and talk radio are like magic. They can turn nothing into something. Not all who use it are magicians, however. Some are simply hucksters hoping to beguile the gullible into parting with their money while others are part of a mindless multitude willing to give voice to anything that comports with their beliefs, even though the fictions they create or are helping to perpetuate are made up out of whole cloth.
Examples of the former abound. On September 7th I received an e-mail notifying me that I had "emerged" a winner of $2,500,000 on something called "online draws" that were "played on the year 2009." My good fortune did not end there. Three days later I was notified that my e-mail address had itself enjoyed success in some "computer Balloting." Since I own the e-mail address I assume the benefit ultimately inures to me. It won the relatively paltry sum of 750,000 Euros but if my e-mail's winnings and my winnings are combined the two of us are relatively well off for at least the next several months.
My lottery winnings are outpaced in frequency and amount only by the number of friends I have in Africa who need my assistance in transferring funds that have been accumulated over the years by their ancestors-employers-politicians and the like. For my efforts, which are not terribly taxing, I am rewarded by sharing handsomely in the transferred funds when the transfer is completed. These good luck strokes are, of course, illusory and but for the Internet, could never have been dreamt of. None of us ever received letters in the mail from Africa asking for our assistance in transferring money nor, except for the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes, did we receive notice of winnings in lotteries we did not know we had entered. The intellectually infirm are, however, a greater threat to our democracy than the hucksters.
The most conspicuous example of recent time is the host of wholly mindless bloggers and talk radio people who insist that the president was not born in the United States. Before the advent of talk radio or the Internet such nonsense would not have escaped from the prison of the narrow minds in which it took refuge. Thanks to the intercession of the Internet and talk radio, crazy ideas are reported, adopted and promulgated the world over. They have worked their magic in the debate over health care.
Although not part of any proposal, the health care proposals have been portrayed as sanctioning "death panels" that would, as Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York said in a radio interview, require people in Medicare to "have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner." The proposals provide for the kind of counseling about advance directives that many thoughtful individuals consider when contemplating the possibility of incapacity. Thanks to the Internet and talk radio, however, the fiction of a death panel is now firmly established as being part of health care reform.
A group supporting health care reform known as "Organizing for America" has as its logo a symbol about which Rush (whose facility with words easily outstrips his facility with thought) says: "Obama's got a health-care logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook."
A chain e-mail that fell into the hands of Fact Check.org has conducted an analysis of H.R. 3200, the House health care bill that Fact Check says shows "evidence of a reading comprehension problem on the part of the author." According to Fact Check, the author's examination of the first half of the bill makes 48 claims about the health care bill of which 26 are false, 18 partly true and only 4 accurate. That has not affected the distribution of the e-mail. According to a report in the Denver Post the author has sent his analysis to more than 6000 people and they in turn have forwarded it to thousands more. His analysis, flawed though it is, became the stuff of town hall meetings and cheat sheets that were waved about at meetings in order for the participant to express his or her displeasure with the idea of health care reform. It is the magic of the Internet that enables a careless or deliberately deceptive commentator to influence the health care debate now taking place.
If readers are intent on being deceived by one kind of magician or another I'd suggest they put their faith in the lottery folks or the Africans. They harm only the gullible. The others harm the country and its 46 million citizens who lack health insurance.
22 Comments so far
Show AllFascism thrives upon irrationality. Why be surprised at any of this?
People believe what they wish to. We now live in a time in which reason has no place in public discourse or private life. Reason has been turned into an indicator of ideological deviation, a marker for unAmerican thought crime.
"Fascism thrives upon irrationality."
Not fascism alone...tell that to the 200 million or so 'believers' in Jesus and Satan in America.
just as irrational as the 9-11 theories
Re newtont94 September 19th, 2009 10:37 am
I'm sure you're referring to the theories about a guy in a cave on the other side of the world being able to get NORAD to stand down while some flight-school washouts did spectacular things with aircraft, like hitting two buildings and making three of them implode from fire.
Yep, pretty irrational. I myself never bought them for a minute.
jethro: the theory in question didn't knock down two or three buildings - it knocked down seven buildings, wtc 1 2 3 4 5 6 and 7
the smallest was 15 stories - itself a big building - the largest - the two towers
as a truther i am disturbed to see the fixation on building seven - of course it was a controlled demolition - but so were the other four buildings that were destroyed
if the government cant explain wtc 1 2 and 7 falling down is bad enough - let them explain how the other four fell as well
the entire site was razed
while you are at it - explain to me how a plane crashes - like the one in pennsylvania - and leaves no trace
the "plane" at the pentagon not only eludes the buildings own defense batteries, the entire defense of the air force - but it then "fits" into a twenty foot hole where it then conveniently disintegrates completely and totally
i truly can't understand how people can't see this psyop that launched the everlasting profit of the war on terror
all wrapped up in the whole osama fairy tale - a cia employee
with no investigation conducted
we haven't seen that kind of bullshit non-investiagation since the warren report that told us lee oswald "acted alone" as the old cia theme song - a mad crazed gunman
the head shot that killed jfk came from the front - it cannot be argued
again, with the incriminating evidence presented to us we are told by the government - don't believe everything your lying eyes tell you
by the way - the official findings of the house committee on assassinations that looked into the jfk brain explosion concluded the following:
1. there were at least 4 perhaps 6 shots fired in dealey plaza
2. there were at least 2 shooters
2 shooters = conspiracy (hint - lee harvey oswald was not one of them)
the deafening silence on the house findings tell us all we need to know about the corporate media
we know that bobby kennedy called lbj "a vicious bitter angry animal"
and we know bobby asked lbj face to face: why did you have my brother killed
i will tell you this - any nation that would allow its own cia to blow the president's brains out on national tv without bringing the killers to justice is morally challenged to a point of depravity
it follows that the same fools could watch yet another false flag event on tv and not see the hand of nwo/mic have sunk to another lower level of peasantry and ignorance
folks like that deserve whatever they get
to the truthers - keep it up - keep truth speak alive in this news speak world
what we need to do - we need to do without the help of the sheeple - that much is clear
they don't believe a thing their lying eyes are telling them
Your tin foil hat is on too tight.
"while you are at it - explain to me how a plane crashes - like the one in pennsylvania - and leaves no trace"
Can you cite a credible document that states that the crash of flight 93 "left no trace?"
on net photos. show no piece larger than a briefcase. unkown in any recorded crash. well recorded when aircraft hit by missiles midair. i recall no bodies visible at alleged site either, no white sheets covering anything. a few pieces of tin and a FAA person looking at the ground.
en toto, this photo which again is Google it; everywhere, is quite a credible document
OK, so was Bush behind the Valujet crash in Florida (only a hole of open water in the everglades left) or the US Air 737 crash near Pittsburgh (only small pieces left), the Concorde crash in France, the recent Iranian Airliner crash (Just a big crater) and many others?
High speed airliner crashes into terrain leave very little - just oyster-shell like pieces of aluminum embedded in the soil, the engine shafts, landing gear struts. There are never intact bodies, just pieces of bone, flesh, and blood. And, how can you possibly be considered an expert, or even a credible witness to anything based on just looking a some media photo?
Newton
Are you referring to the Official Government Conspiracy where 19 [alleged] crazed Arabs from the Middle East were able to somehow overpower the flight crews and the passengers on those hijacked planes, not with Uzi submachine guns or pistols or machetes or flamethrowers, but with, of all things, box cutters? Let us not forget how these devout Muslims [who, previous to the hijackings, had eaten meat, drank liquor and attended strip clubs, all of which are forbidden in Islamic culture] were somehow able to penetrate not only the most sophisticated defense systems on the planet [in which, for some inexplicable reason, no jets were scrambled] but were also able to breach the defenses of the most heavily guarded building in the world, i.e. the Pentagon.
No, what is irrational is that so many Americans are so quick to accept what the Bush and Cheney administration had said concerning the events of Sept. 11, 2001 even though they are more than willing to acknowledge that Bush and Cheney have lied about just about everything under the sun, including the reasons to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, torture, Hurricane Katrina, etc. We are supposed to believe that though Bush and Cheney have absolutely no credibility about those issues, that they are now going to tell the American people the truth about what happened on 9/11/01. I think not.
Just the Internet and talk radio? I seem to remember it was mainstream news, including "reputable" sources such as the New York Times that turned "nothing into something," and led the charge for the war in Iraq.
Unfortunately, what you've missed in your analysis of internet stupidity and health care is the fact that HR 3200 (and all of its variants) fails to actually reform health care.
The longer the discussion goes on, the more apparent it becomes that this government has no intention of providing affordable health care for its citizens.
We need a single-payer system, like Medicare for all and we need to get for-profit insurers out of health care.
I don't really give a damn whether Mr. Obama was born here or not: he's in office, it's a fait accompli but if he goes through with this disaster of a health care bill, I will be first in line to vote him out.
On the other hand the internet has provided a tool for regular people not just the elite to publish and express their ideas. Some are a little wacky but there is a lot of truth the can be found in the world of blogs and indie journalists that can't be found in the mainstream media or academic journals. It is also a world where people can publish their ideas completely free from corporate and government influence, all you need is a cheap laptop and a local cafe with wifi. It is really a revolutionary tool that offers a freer exchange of ideas and could lead to a freer society. The internet has educated a lot of people about rational critiques of power not just wacky ones and ones that only the people who really did a lot of hard work and research themselves could learn before. In the wild world of individual freedom, you have to take the good with the bad, and the good I think will generally prevail. And the internet has been used so successfully by the left as well to organize and influence thinking and stories on issues, so if that's your inclination I would think you'd appreciate the promise and positive aspects of the internet and not dismiss it so broadly.
"a tool for regular people not just the elite to publish and express their ideas. Some are a little wacky"
Yeah. I like those far-left ideas of wacky universalism. Equity and justice for all. That wacky gini coefficient, you know, it won't quit already! In our face constantly, reminding us that our delusions are just... delusions. How can it be that where the wealth divide is minimum, happiness is maximum? WACKY!!!!
And the idea that dear leader isn't going to save us! That's just...wacky!! Why of course dear leader is going to save us! tick..tock... Why of course dear leader is going to save us!
"None of us ever received letters in the mail from Africa asking for our assistance in transferring money"
This statement is entirely incorrect. I personally received two handwritten letters from "Nigerian Petroleum Company employees". Thousands of others over many years also received such letters.
It was a howl to read the flowery and fractured English in the letters detailing the vexing problem of what to do with $50 million worth of "over-invoiced deposits".
Even more hillarious was the identical handwriting that came from two supposedly different people.
As with anything, these three words should always apply, "Consider the source."
The difference with Internet bunk is that one may hit delete and move to something of interest.
These arguments that bunk arrived with the Net are frail.
When I pick up my snailmail, I stand by the trash bin and flip through the envelopes. I immediately chuck over 80% of it: all ads, all fraudulent. I chuck another 15% inside, after opening the envelopes.
Can I believe that Brauchli has not done any channel surfing lately? That email address at least suggests that he's in the States.
It might be wonderful to have nothing but genuine, truthful information arrive at my door. I can't say: I have no experience of such a world.
What worries me is the success of the traditional media in convincing some people that they are not selling lottery winnings.
People who find themselves reading bunk all day long on the Net should learn "advanced search" on a handful of search engines.
Brauchli, and your point is?
Even the most outrageous Internet sites contain less garbage than the Acts of Congress. Talk about that, please. Don't waste time in minor nitpicking and trivializations of Internet and other communication mediums.
Touché.
The public option, as all who support single payer know, is a dud waiting to be a bigger dud. But as Ralph Waldo Emerson once said "Hope springs eternal in the human breast." As a recent article in CounterPunch put it, Max Baucus has done us all a favor by putting up "health care reform" that the health insurance industry which is so heavily financing Max can believe in that it almost surely is headed for a much deserved defeat, and then we can get on with backing single payer as 60 per cent of the American people and their doctors want us to do The "Mad as Hell Doctors" coming out of Oregon with their road show in a Care A Van are taking their fight to the US capital in Washington. I've had the pleasure and honor of interviewing one of these doctors, an emergency doctor in Corvallis OR, and it's going to be great seeing him and other doctors taking the fight to get the power back for the people in this country. Check the Mad as Hell Doctors trip and grass roots campaign at www.madashelldoctors.com.
AD
One of my favorite examples of truth in journalism is the sober reporting, during the McCarthy era, by Hearst's INS saying that Mr. Fiat, the Italian auto magnate, had been 'beaten up by Communist thugs' as he left his factory to go home.
Only later did someone (Harper's?) point out that FIAT is the acronym for Fabricca
Automobile Italiano Turino.
I wonder how many of us think General Motors was a military man.
In the same period AP carried a story from the upper midwest about a teen age girl baby-sitter stuck to a newly painted toilet seat who had to be unstuck by the father of the family.
Mervin Shoemaker, then the slot man on the night copy desk of The Oregonian, got on the wire and told AP "The last time I killed this story was 1933; it has not impoved in the interim."
Uh-oh. You just don't cross General Motors!
I'd hate to be in your shoes! Now you're due for a little visit and the beating of your life from Private Parts.
· Yr Obd't Servant