Why Fake News Is Bad
Because some of the people who believe lies act on them:
A man who said he was investigating a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of a pizza place has fired an assault rifle inside the Washington restaurant injuring no-one, police and news reports said.
So who is going to accept responsibility for this? This guy could have just as easily killed everyone in the place, but the people who created this lie would feel no remorse for getting people killed.
7 comments
Well, you have two problems as I see it. 1. You have the crappiest gun *laws* of the laughingly called (with some exceptions – not including the USA) Developed Nations. 2. The highest number of batshit crazy morons per capita in the World who believe whatever complete bullshit they hear/see, who can easily get guns.
You now have the highest number of gun related crimes being committed. Expect it to rise.
Luckily in this case, the moron didn’t actually kill anyone.
You can blame the media too of course.
Have you considered… emigrating? Just a thought.
The media republishes this crap because it is ‘popular’, while the old standard was it had to be true. The entire entire spectrum knows that the mainstream media is worthless. The Right thinks it is because they are biased for the Left, while they are simply going for the money generated by the number of clicks they receive.
A large segment of the population is paranoid, and they have access to weapons. This is not a good thing.
Gun laws, um no not really at all. Let me take you to my Thanksgiving dinner. My Father in law ( who owns many guns) blurted out that 3 million illegal Mexicans voted in California. That they encourage the illegal Mexicans to get drivers licenses and vote democrat. I calmly explained that doesn’t happen and then was given the look by my spouse that no matter what I say he won’t listen. I’ve decided that my father in law in in a right wing propaganda cult. Only they know the “big picture” or truth and everyone is lying to them or out to get them. What my father in law doesn’t know is he just voted in a bunch of right wing lunatics who are coming for his Social Security and Medicare. Oh the Irony burns.
If you get all of your news from people who share your point of view and biases, your ability to think logically atrophies.
I read foreign news sites to get US political news. They have the ability to be ‘fair and balanced’ because they have no stake in the outcome. They aren’t perfect, but they tend to be more willing to correct errors than the US media, and they almost never print stories based solely on anonymous sources.
Your father-in-law doesn’t know many undocumented immigrants. They don’t interact with government officials unless they can’t avoid it. Voting would be too dangerous to even consider.
I spent a decade in San Diego. If you didn’t know where and when to look you would never see the undocumented.
My FIL lives in KCMO. Never met an immigrant Mexican let alone an illegal. We’ve had 3 interventions with him about watching Fox and reading Briebart. At this point if a 74 yr old man wants to run around life pissed off 24/7 at things that will never affect his life.. I can’t stop the lunacy.
Jennifer, epistemic closure is the problem. If one has come to believe that only approved sources are accurate and any sources outside that are all lies, if one is no longer willing to test reality to make sure that it matches one’s conceptions, if someone rejects all statistics that contradict “known fact” (known as in, agrees with his prejudices) as “egghead lies”, then there is no argument to be made. Any argument that brings in information from outside approved sources is automatically dismissed as “liberal lies”.
It is not a setup that works long term, which is why all the states where this has taken place have turned into desperate cesspools of poverty and deprivation, all of which they blame on “liberal liars”, refusing to acknowledge that it is their own choices, their own decisions, their own rejection of education and learning, that has left them in these dire straits. In the end, lies have consequences, and they aren’t good ones for those who prefer lies to truth, but there is literally nothing — NOTHING — that you or I can say or do that will ever bring them to truth, because that would require them admitting that their own choices led them to where they are today, not some evil alien overlords stealing all their goodies, their own choices. And that is something they can never admit, short of utter disaster along the lines of Germany in June 1945, which was utter ruins with the majority of the people, those who survived, starving in the rubble of their former homes as hard-eyed men from foreign armies wandered amongst them looking for signs of any resistance to foreign rule and bringing to them condemnation for the genocides that the German people had committed. Then, and only then, could the people of Germany admit that they’d made horrible mistakes in following their Fuhrer to his end. And even then there were those who never admitted that truth, who to this day lurk underground in Germany despite the ban on Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols and teachings, waiting for revenge that they’re sure some day, somehow, will come to them…
Apocalyptic? Yes. It could happen, however. I pray it doesn’t, but we have an utter thug coming to power in Washington D.C. who could, if not careful, ignite the sparks that end up consuming us all.
I have a friend who went to college in Kansas City and she seems to believe that it makes the Florida Panhandle look like Haight-Ashbury in the late ’60s. Where you lived in the city determined what you thought about everything. The smell of the breweries and sports teams were the only things that people had in common. If you are born into a ‘tribal’ environment like that, the possibility of change is almost non-existent. Many of these people are arguing about the meaning of numbers, i.e. that higher temperatures don’t really mean warmer.
When you can’t agree on the meaning of numbers or words, you can’t communicate. The most you can do is to point out that Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdoch, ! AN IMMIGRANT !