Tag: fake news

Not the Same

“I don’t believe in the Holocaust,” he said with a challenging, simpering smile. 

“What’s that mean?”

“I wasn’t there, so I don’t know that it happened.”

“It’s a well-documented historic fact. Millions of people died.”

He waved that away. “Papers. Photographs. That can all be faked.”

“And bodies in graves?”

“They can be faked, too. I wasn’t there, so I can’t confirm that it happened, and I don’t believe it did. Just like slavery. I don’t think it happened, either.”

My mouth fell open. “So you need to be there to know if something happened.” As he nodded, I said, “Are you a sports fan?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“How do you know that a game took place if you weren’t there? You can’t watch every game on television. Even if you could, that can be faked.”

He laughed. “Oh, that’s different, because I’m alive now. I’m experiencing it.”

“You were born, when, the early seventies?”

“Exactly nineteen seventy.”

I set my cup to focus on him. “The Moon landings began the year before, nineteen sixty-nine. Do you believe in those?”

“No, I don’t. There’s a lot of evidence that the entire space program was faked.”

“Then World War II was probably faked, too, right?”

“No, because my grandfather fought in World War II in the Pacific. He confirmed it was real.”

“But only in the Pacific, right? He didn’t serve in Europe.”

“But he had friends and other relatives that fought in Europe.”

“But not you.”

“Of course not. I’m too young.”

“Then you must not believe in Jesus Christ. You weren’t there when he was alive, were you? Or the first SuperBowl or any of the other football championships? You must not believe in Babe Ruth, either, or Columbus coming to America, right?”

He was shaking his head. “No, no, you’re wrong. Fake news to control the people is a modern pracitice that the United States government developed. Things that happened hundreds of years ago are true because people told the truth in that time. See, it’s just not the same.”

 

 

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Driverless Car Returns

Saw a headline slug, “Driverless Cars Return”.

An imagined television news report about a driverless car getting lost and living on the streets by itself for years climbed into my head, and then came the happy reunion, when the driverless car returned to its family for a happy reunion.

“We thought our car was gone forever,” Patty McLaren said about the brown four-door Ford sedan. “We looked for it for everywhere for weeks. We never gave up, really. Every time a driverless car went by, we looked to see if it was our car. Though I never stopped hoping, I never really believed it would come back, though. It’s like a dream come true.”

The car is a little older and rustier, with bald tires and faded paint. Its radio and speakers are gone, apparently torn out by thieves, and the engine smokes.

“Who knows what it went through?” Mrs. McLaren said, stroking the car’s front fender. “I’m amazed it’s still runnin’. I’m just so happy it’s back.”

Mrs. McLaren said that they were going to get the car a new coat of paint and tires. “Then we’re just going to put it in the garage and keep it there, and pamper it.”

Her daughter expressed disappointment that she wouldn’t be allowed to take the car to college with her.

 

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Friday’s Theme Music

I awoke streaming this song, “Is It in My Head?”, in my head this morning (ha, ha).

I often wonder about the truths of perceptions, impressions, and memories. I don’t wonder about just mine, but how others came to their beliefs, and how difficult it can be to dislodge an idea after it’s burrowed into you. We’ve been exposed to evidence that the winners write history. History is often propaganda to justify and moralize decisions and sustain political or popular support. We all love heroes and myths.

So I wonder with myself about whether I remember something correctly, whether I’m too deeply embedded in silos and bubbles to perceive the truth and grasp it, and often, if I’m conning myself into hoping and believing that my writing efforts amount to anything. It’s a perpetual cycle of challenging, searching, and thinking.

Today’s song selection, made by my mind (and probably invited in by the latest rounds of dreams), “Is It in My Head” is from Quadrophenia by the Who. The album was released in 1973, when I became seventeen years old. I’d been searching and wondering well before I heard this song.

I continue searching and wondering today, almost fifty years later.

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That Old Chestnut

Fun fact! Did you know that the expression, “That old chestnut,” originated with with Henry Chestnut? Henry was a pharmacist who liked telling comical tales about the way things were in his grandparents’ era, often exaggerating facts to absurd lengths. People in his town often passed on his stories, and the response on hearing them was often, “That old Chestnut,” usually with laughter. Eventually, Henry’s stories were published in a weekly column called, “That old Chestnut.”

The things you can learn on the Intertubes, right?

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The Lead

To all those politicians, political parties, companies, and organizations who like to shade the truth, cut corners, exercise doublespeak, dismiss ethics and principles, and flat-out lie and cheat, you shouldn’t be surprise if your customers and supporters can no longer be trusted because they do the same thing.

They’re just following your lead.

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The Fake News Poll

Have you seen the poll results about fake news in America? Forty-six percent of Americans believe the news media make up news stories about the Trump administration.

Who is surprised?

I believe the news media make up stories, but not about Trump. I believe that other stories have been made up and posted as real news. That set up the meme that the news media can’t be trusted, a position that President Con Don pushes.

Let’s count some of those fake stories. Remember those birther stories about President Obama? They were demonstrably fake stories that right wing media sites continued circulating for years.

Just today, several right wing news sites made up and spread a story about an immigrant starting the California wildfires that swept through NorCal.

How often was Hillary Clinton mocked as “Killary” because of all the people she and Bill were said to have killed? Fifty people, according to some sites, although none of those deaths have been proven in court.

What about Pizzagate?

Remember Jade Helm 15, and the Federal government’s plot to invade Texas and other states?

Many media sites ran with Con Don’s insistence that he won the popular election, enough that people believe him, even though he later asserts that he didn’t win the popular election because of rampant illegal voting in California, and that his inauguration crowd was larger than President Obama’s crowd?

Without effort, I can go back and remember more. What of Judith Miller and the Iraqi WMD, and Nigeria yellow cake? How about the FEMA death camps? Shall we talk about climate change denial? Con Don even lied about his statements on Charlottesville, and though they were broadcast that day, and shown repeatedly, people believe that news was fabricated. Hell, they’re giving him credit for the jobless rates declining, and the improved economy, without being able to cite anything he’s done for either one, and without acknowledging that those are continued trends that started years ago, under President Obama.

None of this news. Spinning news to dirty a candidate isn’t new, either. Nor does it belong to America. Much of the derogatory opinions about Jews, Muslims, and just about anyone who isn’t a white male, can be traced back to unproven or twisted whispering and news campaigns.

No, I’m not surprised that people think news is being made up about Trump. He makes up a lot of it himself, then feeds it to the media, and some of them blindly run with it.

It’s part of a great heritage.

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Friday the Thirteenth

Tomorrow was supposed to be Friday the Thirteenth. I’m pleased to hear it won’t be.

I’m not superstitious at all (except for seeing a rainbow; you know good things are going to happen when you see a rainbow). Yet, I felt relief when the current POTUS announced he’d signed an executive order abolishing Friday the Thirteenth.

“Americans have enough to worry about in this great country without dealing with an unlucky day. I mean, did you see that movie? Was that scary or what? Am I right?” he tweeted early this morning.

His second tweet continued, “That movie isn’t good enough to have a day named after it. Just another example of Hollywood liberals dictating to the rest of the country. SHAME!”

His final tweet said, “Hollywood is a horror movie we don’t need! Enough horror! Wasn’t the Obama administration enough? LOSERS!”

According to the White House press corpse, “People should not refer to it as Friday the thirteenth. Not every day needs a date, you know. What good do dates do? If they need a date, they can call it October twelve and a half. That’s what we’re doing on all official correspondence.”

The President later said, “This change will be like plutonium for the economy. Sales have always been down on Friday the thirteenth because people have been afraid to go to work or shop. A lot of them don’t even eat. Don’t even drink. Don’t drink nothing. Not even water. Just stay in bed all day. So this change will mean a lot to businesses. It’ll supercharge sales. It’s gonna be huge. It’ll be a beautiful day, beautiful.”

 

3

Right, Right

I’m starting out crabby this morning. I haven’t had my coffee.

I just read an article about California’s right-to-die law. Before that, I read about fake news, sometimes called alt-news, and its spread after the Vegas murders of fifty-nine people at a concert. Before it, I read about the surge in gun sales and the rise in gun-manufacturers’ stock prices. Sales and stock prices go up because people fear that gun controls will be implemented.

The echoes of past debates about all this gains volume as new arguments. America enjoys the satisfaction of having the right to own guns. Americans have enough private weapons to provide eighty-eight of one hundred people with a weapon. But we know it’s not all of us who want to be able to shoot and kill other creatures.

That’s what’s interesting about the juxtaposition of these three stories. People, even with terminal conditions and in terrible pain, are often not afforded the right to kill themselves. It’s not their right. Our government owns that right. In a few places, it’s delegated to bureaucratic processes, but it’s mostly considered a no-no. Your life is too valuable for you to have that control. We’re going to make you hang on until your last breath.

But then, we have the weapons that can fire ten rounds a second, as the killer did in Vegas, or twenty-four rounds in ten seconds, as the Orlando killer did. And that’s your right to own. You don’t have the right to kill, unless you feel threatened, and your state has a defend-your-ground law. The interpretation of that has law has gotten broad. Police officers also have broad latitude, killing others if they feel threatened for themselves or the public. Wounding is less often an option. So here, the right to kill is widely distributed, for a variety of reasons. These reasons seem to trump the sanctity of life.

The last story was about freedom of the press, and the difficulty of coping with the spread of lies, known as false news, fake news, or alternate news, instead of being called bullshit, and lies, as it should be, because, well, rights. People fear that if we start calling bullshit on these things, then bullshit will occur. And as we dither about what to do, what to do, bullshit happens. With that bullshit, we struggle against tides of fears, change, doubt. Then the echoes of debate fade, until the next time.

Enough of this. I’m going to get my coffee and go read about the people complaining about athletes exercising their to protest during the propaganda portion of our sports events called playing the national anthem.

That’s not why wars were fought and soldiers gave their lives, you know. How dare people be so disrespect of their lives?

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Pop-up Ads

Sara Fischer had a surprising article over on Axios.com:

People really don’t like pop-up ads, pre-roll

“What?” I asked myself. People don’t like pop-up ads and pre-rolls? Bullshit. Dismissive of this headline, I read the article.

Sara Fischer claims that Morning Consult did research, and discovered that surveys show that seventy-two percent of U.S. adults don’t like pop-up ads.

It’s more fake news, I suspect.

I don’t know anyone who dislikes pop-up ads. I love them, myself. Pop-up ads are technology’s way of saying, “Hey, relax. Take a break.” They stop me from getting too involved in stories by preventing me from immediately reading the articles, clicking on links, and searching for more information to vet the story.

Pop-up ads are a blessing, and should be embraced as such. Just think of how much more shit you could be reading and doing on the web, were it not for pop-up ads saving you.

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