Good Afternoon.
Here's the deal: there's a whole slug of people out there who exhibit an appalling inability to reason. Not everyone is blessed with a genius IQ, but a person should be able to process information that sounds plausible and discard that which clearly does not. Being lied to and manipulated by public officials and plenty of others doesn't help, of course, but some of the lies are so outrageous that it should be obvious to reject them out of hand.
I begin with the birther movement and the versions of it that were beyond preposterous. Shortly after Obama was elected in 2008, I started hearing from all kinds of people that he'd been planted in this country by a foreign government to overthrow the United States. I heard it at the hair salon and at dinner parties where the guests, sipping on their cocktails and nibbling on cheese straws, all had college degrees, some advanced degrees. The people who passed along this nonsense did so with utter certainty. What foreign government? No response. What would happen during this coup? No response. Would the troops from the unnamed country parachute into the corn fields of Iowa? No response. Would they arrive on ships and storm the beaches of Florida? No response. Had anyone heard of the United States Air Force that keeps an eye on the skies or the Navy and the Coast Guard that patrol the high seas? No response.
I was also told by a first hand source about some folks who were stocking military-style weapons in their coat closets. They also believed that Obama would start a civil war to turn the country into an Islamic state, and they wanted to be armed and ready when the time came to defend their lives and property. These people went to Mass every weekend and probably played Bingo in the church basement on Wednesday night. Where was the priest in all of this? Surely he was aware of what was going on in a small town where everyone talks about everything at the local
cafe and beer joint.
When John McCain ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2000, a rumor got started, deliberately, of course, that he had an illegitimate child by a black woman. The rumor was so prevalent in South Carolina and believed by so many people that it caused him to lose the primary in that state and pretty much ended his campaign. The truth, once a noble intangible, was that McCain's wife, Cindy, had brought a child back from Bangladesh after a humanitarian trip, and the couple had adopted her, but it was, sadly, easier to fall for an outrageous lie.
Now we have all this foo foo down on the southeastern border. We're supposed to believe that the drugs being hauled in from Mexico and elsewhere are in the backpacks of indigent people trying to escape from tyrannical governments and to otherwise find a better life for their children.That's how huge shipments of heroin and Fentanyl are coming into this country - in backpacks and tote bags, even though the officials in the intelligence community say the substances are transported through legal ports of entry, probably stashed among the avocados in vegetable trucks. The point is they're not in some bag with a change of clothes, a bottle of sun screen, and maybe a prayer book in Spanish.
Whether someone liked McCain or Obama is not my concern here. I'm more worried that the ability to separate factual information from blatant falsehoods seems to be lacking to an alarming degree. One person I know recently suggested that citizens wishing to vote should have to take some sort of test to certify that they're able to think in a clear and responsible manner. That won't happen, of course, but the idea is interesting and it'd be fun to see who made the cut.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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