Stupidity and the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

Thomas Jefferson once stated that democracy and a republican form of government will not survive without an informed and thinking citizenry to support it. The United States has thrived and approached this ideal when education and critical thinking among Americans is high, and as suffered when these qualities wane. A very good example of the correlation can be found in Esquire columnist Charles P. Pierce's book Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. On the other side are the cranks exemplified by Ignatius Donnelly, who spent a lifetime trying to prove Atlantis once existed, and the con artists like P.T. Barnum, whose career of spectacle had the goal of simply separating fools from their money. Pierce then described the phenomenon of Rush Limbaugh, who lies somewhere in between but also dangerously apart from these two examples and is described by Pierce as simply a charlatan. Donnelly had fantastically silly ideas but they existed as a harmless curiosity. Barnum sold his audience a spectacle and profited handsomely from it but was not trying to build a movement out of it. Limbaugh and his countless clones on radio, in print, and on TV however, have harmful ideas that they sell to their gullible audiences for profit and to change society in ways that destroy freedom and impoverish the masses.

What does this have to do with PB & J? This story has popped up in many people's social media news feeds, claiming with little evidence that a school principle in Oregon deemed the sandwich racist. This automatically activates frames in the minds of gullible readers. Before the internet and social media these things traveled more slowly and usually started "I heard that..." followed by some outrageous claim. It took effort to repeat, and the audience was right there to roll their eyes or challenge the claim. But in today's world of "going viral" a stupid story about what may or may not have happened far away can be presented without context and manipulated by con artists and demagogues at will; then it can be repeated nearly infinitely and almost without effort to the feeds and inboxes of idiot america. This urban legend about racist sandwiches provides an interesting insight to Twain's adage:

The invention of the telegraph in Twain's day sped up the exchange of information in a way second only to the internet. Even if access to this revolutionary medium was limited to actual journalists, one need only shout "Remember The Maine" to know how the hare of lies can do incredible damage while the tortoise of truth tries in vain to put out the fires of sensationalism and yellow journalism. Although the US is unlikely to declare war on Spain over a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich, claims such as the ones made in this story play into an established narrative drummed up by unscrupulous conservative culture warriors going back at least to William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale. This is the contest of tradition stubbornly resisting change that picked up a great deal of speed and followers during the Great Backlash against desegregation, social justice, and other values of the 1960s.

The only link provided in the conservative post article is to another, exact replica of the story on Mr. Conservative.com. This one provides no links or source material whatsoever, but it does feature a gawdy proliferation of ads. So, while a google search for "peanut butter and jelly banned" produced a plethora of hits from right wing sources including fox news and the daily caller that are slightly more informative that the two wannabes first cited, they proceed from the same mistaken assumption that political correctness and racial tolerance has gone too far and an out-of-touch bureaucrat took arbitrary and unnecessary action that will slippery slope it's way into and across the entire nation. The actual story is from 2012, but seems to have flared up again in the wake of actual outrage over the official presence of the confederate flag on statehouse property in Charleston after Dylan Roof shot 9 people in a church there. "What next?" is the usual refrain, what next will you out of control liberals that have so much power to disrupt tradition do to wreck schools and things?

Politifact first debunked the story in 2012 because right wingers were clutching their pearls over that other great sin of liberals, spending tax money on frivolous projects. It was rated "pants on fire" then, it is still a ridiculous lie, but that does not matter. Two of the first comments on the undated mr conservative story debunk the misrepresentation but are ignored by the other commenters. Snopes rates the story completely false and fabricated out of deliberate manipulation of the principal's comments.

I wish it were as easy to say "use common sense" when exposed to the propaganda of charlatans but even the idea of "common" sense is gone when a significant number of the gullible simply make up their own facts and reject anything that does not conform to their existing prejudices. The worst part is that on line, the gullible idiots who fall for it every time just do not suffer the shame that once afflicted people in public. On the internet you can be insulated from any point of view you don't like, and experience no consequences for being fooled. On that note, it is perhaps best to quote Twain again; for he was the Great American Jester, telling the foolish uncomfortable truths during our last "Gilded Age." 

*Fingers comfortably but firmly inserted in ears* Nah, nah, can't hear you.

Founding Fathers, misquoted.

Thomas Frank, writing in Harper's, takes teabaggers to task for mythologizing quotes from the Founding Fathers to suit their agenda.

I share a sentiment with the Tea Party movement, and it's not a trivial one: Historical illiteracy is a threat to the health of the republic. Our ignorance of the key events and basic concepts of the nation's development is a matter of statistical fact, and despite years of warnings we continue to show little interest in how the past determines contemporary choices.

Where we differ, the Tea Partiers and I, is on the question of what historical literacy looks like. For them, it is strictly a matter of everyone else acknowledging that the Founding Fathers would take their side in the present-day debates; that Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington were "rightwing extremists," as a popular T-shirt puts it. At Tea Party rallies, quotes from Founding Fathers are emblazoned on protest signs and declaimed from podiums; audiences recite them right along with the speaker; and, of course, there are always a few people on hand who feel such a surge of enthusiasm that they are moved to dress up in the manner of late-eighteenth century Bostonians.

Historical ignorance is bad for several reasons, first of which is that rewriting history to suit the needs of the present is a horrible fallacy. But more than that is how the manufactured quotes invented by the right-wing have taken on a quality of gospel. "Bible bullets" is how a professor of Christian history I know put it. Gospel quotes are used by uncritical thinkers to shut down and get shut down in debates over scripture. Manufacturing quotes by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington create a secular version of bible bullets, ready to be aimed at anyone who disagrees with the teabagger crowd.

Frank, a Ph.D in history, analyzed two telling phrases used by teabaggers to gain historical approval from the revered founders. It does not matter how mangled the intent of the founders has become in modern America, the point from an authoritarian view is to win, period.

The first is from Franklin, Dr. Frank pulled this one from one of his favorite teabagger authors, but it appears all over the place. "Benjamin Franklin said, 'The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."' Sounds good right? Only thing is that it is the Declaration of Independence that produced the non-legally-binding "right to pursue happiness," and that was only because TJ did not like the idea of a "right to property" as why the revolution was carried out. Frank then traces the history and finds that the "catch it yourself" comes from 1970s self-help books.

The second was from Jefferson himself. "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." This quote is so popular it makes facebook regularly. Trouble is that while Jefferson did rail against tyranny, this "quote" is actually the interpretation of TJ's work by a law professor in 1980. The teabag movement has a very different understanding of elitism than say, anyone who has ever had a job and stepped back even for a moment to critically examine why bosses are such jerks. But beyond that, these secular bible bullets have only the amount of power as we give them. This is the reason bible bullets hold such sway over fundamentalists, and why teabaggers are so eager to believe them. Quoting founders to support their authoritarian vision is a simple way to shut down debate. Outsiders hold the founders in high regard as well, transferring "truth" of tradition to narrow interpretations gives them inordinate power over popular beliefs.

"One reason these quotations have multiplied is that they seem true to Ben and Tom as we all know them through their appearances over the years in movies, musicals, and schoolbooks: the earthy Founder, cracking wise; the rebel Founder, seething against tyrants. Those who use the mysterious quotes do not mean to deceive. In nearly every case, they are merely repeating something they've read numerous times in what appear to be authoritative works. All journalists, myself included, have made similar mistakes.²
On the other hand, when you set the Founders up as infallible oracles of democracy, when you claim clairvoyance with their political spirit, when you dedicate yourself to remedying the nation's historical illiteracy, you put yourself under a special obligation. And given that it is only a little more difficult to use the Internet to check fake quotes than to reproduce them, one wonders: Why don't the guardians of Founder purity take that step? Why do fakes proliferate instead of disappear?"

My hat is off to Dr. Frank for diving into this novel subversion of our freedom to make our own destiny.