Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Teaching The Paranoids To Fish

Even Sea Monsters get high blood pressure sometimes...

Last night this picture popped up in my news feed. Let's grin and look at it for a moment, anything look... askew? That's an awfully big head you've got there Osama, hmm, could this picture possibly be... fake? When it popped up again half a dozen times from the same source, an amateur hack named Ed Dane from Idaho, I assume that it was just shared from the original poster. I did not even get through typing "Hillary shakes..." before Google knew what I meant and spit back another version and a link to Snopes.com. This photo was originally faked for a Photoshop contest back in 2007. Way to be cutting edge guys!

The other version is a little cleaned up but why in the world are they depicted wearing the Star of David? It does not really matter. My point is this particular meme has been in the cyber circulatory system for EIGHT YEARS and there are lazy, gullible people still floating it around as though it was genuine. Are "conservatives" really so caught up in their fantasies that they are incapable of shame? When supporting "evidence" can be cooked up in an hour using Photoshop to go along with made up facts, is there any more reason to fight this fight? These memes are the experiment that broke out of the lab. Cyberspace dog catchers like Snopes can try to net the worst ones and put them back in cages, but that is not what anyone living in the reality-based world should be shooting for.

When people like me, who are politically active and look around online for news, ideas, dialogue, etc., encounter anonymous trolls in the comment sections in less savory internet destinations, the natural impulse is the dismiss them outright as hopeless idiots. Then you can ignore or engage them without having to take anything they say personally. Most of the time trolls are just deliberately provoking the community. But, you guessed it, these are from my former brothers-in-arms. I have cut ties with the larger community of tankers online, but am still friends with many of the guys I actually served with. It personally upsets me to see my friends repeatedly spout nonsense like this without any shame, uncritically passing along memes made by others with an agenda that will negatively impact my friends and their loved ones. I get it, you don't like Hillary, I'm not exactly her biggest fan either but these attacks on her are ridiculous.

I know for a fact that the guys who shared this picture do not like being made fools of. We all went through the hazing rituals in the Army that sent young Privates fresh from OSUT all over the place looking for squelch oil, boxes of reticles, and so forth. I was sent to Squadron Commo once for a "Prick E-5" by the guy who posted this "Fake and Shake" picture. As young and naive as I was, I did not fall for it. Nor did I ever waste time hazing the guys who came after me. Maybe that is why I study history; I want facts, not silliness. Since there are no footnotes on blogger I will explain: a PRC-77 was a radio, commo was the communications equipment office, an E-5 is a sergeant so he was trying to get me to call the NCO on duty there a prick. The guys that are already in the unit throw a million bits of jargon and acronyms at you in short order, so they just sneak one in now and then that sounds legitimate but is actually a joke on you. That is what the vast majority of right wing memes are, a joke on the person sharing them.

In spite of this, I don't want my brothers to be laughed at for falling for these partisan political hazings. Which is why I'm not using names. When you post a meme like this one in support of the conspiracy theory around Benghazi, it only takes a few seconds to look it up on Snopes and shove your nose in the fact that this meme is nonsense. But that is the beauty of the conspiracy theory, the paranoids believe anything negative about Hillary Clinton and will be taken in by this, if you point out that this manufactured meme is easily debunked then you must be part of the conspiracy or you are a sheep. I want to take the intellectual lightweights aside and explain the order of argument to them. If you make a claim, it is on you to provide the evidence. Actual evidence that can be independently verified, not the other way around. Making a claim this intricate without evidence and expecting anyone skeptical of your assertion (that was made by some remote and anonymous third party) to provide evidence to disprove it is just laziness. Sharing memes with no supporting evidence is the political equivalent of masturbation, it may be fun for you but you look ridiculous and should feel ashamed when caught.

These stupid memes are the same as ordering a Private to fetch up some squelch oil. I fear that the "think tank" or whatever warehouse of conservatism that keeps serving these things up is called, knows that this stuff is bullshit and they laugh whenever one of their little creations goes viral off of the gullible, lazy social media users out there.

The questions for those gullible people I have is: "Do you like being taken advantage of? Do you get something out of sharing these things? Does it ever bother you that those of us outside the bubble are laughing at you for being so gullible? Have you ever considered taking a moment to look up that delicious and sexy anti-liberal meme? Why not? Afraid you might find out something you don't want to know?" In the previous paragraphs I have detailed the conflict inside, I don't suffer fools gladly but what is the point of making a fuss? Will I gain anything from confrontation? Most likely not.

Sayings and cliches are an intellectual crutch and I shouldn't have put a play on one in the title of this post, but seriously, debunking these things could be a full time job, one I don't want, and I get so disgusted trying to swat them down that it is no fun. Is there a way to teach some elementary critical thinking to the average Joe out there?

I'm definitely not giving any fish to the paranoids. They don't deserve a free ride.