Tag: fake news

Sunday’s Theme Music

Attacking issues head-on has always been my preferred style. It doesn’t make me popular with many but to avoid doing things because you don’t want to upset others doesn’t often work. Likewise, fearing of the outcome isn’t a good reason for not doing the right thing. Defining ‘the right thing’ can be quarrelsome. Recent example: Trump supporters are screaming ‘stop the steal’. They think they’re doing the right thing because they’re feeding on false information. Their dear leader, aided and abetted by Fox News, OANN, Newsmax, and spineless Republican politicians at multiple levels, keeps barking about illegal votes and election fraud. Matters have been addressed in court; the evidence has never been found nor presented. That doesn’t stop the mad dog and his followers.

With all of this in my head this AM, my brain tied it up with the Incubus song, “Drive”, the 2000 song all about resisting fear and standing up.

[Verse 1]
Sometimes I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear
And I, I can’t help but ask myself
How much I let the fear take the wheel and steer

[Pre-Chorus 1]
It’s driven me before
And it seems to have a vague, haunting mass appeal
But lately I’m
Beginning to find that I should be the one behind the wheel

[Chorus]
Whatever tomorrow brings I’ll be there
With open arms and open eyes, yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings I’ll be there
I’ll be there

h/t to Genius.com

*PAUSE*. I know that there are some out there that’ll respond, well, isn’t that a reason not to wear a mask, lockdown, and practice social distancing? I reply, “No. That’s not the same at all.”

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get vaccinated. Also, keep up with the facts. Don’t allow yourself to wallow in lies and fear. Cheers

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Net Effect

I read it on the net

you know you better bet

that it’s the greatest most outrageous and incredible thing

ever

I saw it on the net

you know I won’t regret

believing everything that I’m seeing

and hearing

It was spread across the net

so you better be set

to know this is the truth and won’t go away

it’s out there for-

ever

So just put it on the net

with a link for them to select

and you know you’ll have them reading writing raging and de-

bating

 

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Sunday’s Theme Music

With all this Apollo 11 hoopla going on, naturally I thought of moon songs, and ended up streaming The Police and “Walking on the Moon” (1979).

I’ve read many account of Americans who decline to categorically embrace that humans walked on the Moon, despite NASA’s evidence. Ryan Newman, a NASCAR driver, isn’t ready to embrace it; he’s only seen photographs. Photographs, videos, rocks, etc., can all be faked.

I know how he feels. I’ve never met him. I’ve only seen photographs and videos of Ryan Newman. He might not exist outside of CGI. For all I know, he may not have said the words attributed to him. So really, if a fake person who only exists on photographs, videos, magazines, and newspapers claims that another event is faked, does the first cancel the second?

It’ll take some giant steps. If humans ever get to Mars, I wonder how many of them will believe it?

2

FloofAnon

FloofAnon (floofinition) – anonymous secret organization whose members believe that housepets are either secret government spies tracking their movement, aliens who have arrived to take over Earth, or that pets are part of a liberal plot to destroy their lives by distracting them from reality. Such members also often believe that animals should have no rights because they’re dumb and lack emotions.

In use: “Per the information she read at FloofAnon, she constantly watched the house across the street through monitors connected to cameras (bought at Costco, just five hundred dollars for eight outdoor cameras, what a buy!), noting the comings and goings of the cats and dogs, and logging them on her blog, Floofwatch.”

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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.”

 

 

7

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.

 

3

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?

4

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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