The Power of the Post

10 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by Sherry in An Island in the Storm, Editorials, fundamentalism, Psychology

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Yeah, you’ve heard it all before. So have I, since I actually preach this message rather consistently. But alas, I forget. So, I figure you might as well.

REFRESHER COURSE ALERT!!!

Recently I got a friend request from a dude I recognized immediately as a nut. His Facebook icon was “Ted Cruz in 2016.” As I said, a nut.

Now, I should know better, but I could hardly turn down the chance to tell him he was an idiot before he unceremoniously “defriended” me could I? So I hit, the friend button and began a rather torturous journey into lala land or the land of the not-quite-right-in-the-head folks.

I picked up a good half dozen to eight “defenders of the stupid” and proceeded to get into a number of fights immediately. As one would expect, all the trite Fox/crazy right memes came to the fore. Since most of the arguments were on gun rights, I got the usual, “guns don’t kill people”, and criminals aren’t gonna obey the laws, and variations on those themes.

After lengthy logical argument and citing of actual facts, I was confronted with the usual right wing nothingness. One guy just posted funny pictures and called me Sherry McMoron and quote, “liberish”, as if that sealed the deal on my inconsequentialism.

And the point is, that when people are “out there in the ether” there is no point in argument. They aren’t capable of arguing, except for a “you stupid troll” between burps from the beer guzzling.

When you see somebody who is absolutely clueless, beware. You think you can patiently start at A and proceed slowly and deliberately to Z and when you are finished they will smile, and say, “I get it now. Thank you, I’m going to read more carefully from now on.”

But they don’t. They say, “you stupid troll,” and scratch their nether regions, smile and the mini thrill and reach for another Budweiser.

This will always happen no matter your level of debate and logic skills. And the reason is simple, if not understood by most. It’s not you. It’s not your argument. It’s their brain.

Study after study shows that the conservative brain is a brain that lives in fear of the bad world it is surrounded by. It cannot make sense of it all, and it feels threatened. Simple answers that package their fear and put it away is what they yearn for and gravitate toward. The are frightened and they are insecure in this big world. Small and simple answers that assure them that all will be right, captures them faster than any fact or logical deduction ever could.

They will cling to what is familiar, reassuring, and safe every time over logical argumentation that leaves them feeling insecure and unsure. It is not how they want to think, it’s how their brains function. It’s called compartmentalization. It allows the victim to ignore all contrary information and when necessary isolate contradictory beliefs behind walls that keep the conflict at a minimum. (I believe in creationism, while at the same time encourage my niece to get gene therapy for her cancer diagnosis, never bringing to the fore that gene therapy is a result of evolutionary biological research.)

Eventually we all come to realize that “there is no point” in arguing with such types, but we continue, at each new juncture, and with a different right wing nut case in the cross hairs, we fall victim to trying again. And we get the same result.

Lest we be declared insane for trying to get a different result from the same activity, we have to finally admit that such is a waste of time.

EXCEPT THAT. . . .

Facebook is a unique forum. We all have friends on Facebook, and they exist in a variety of forms–relatives, old old friends we have moved far from, new friends, eternal friends, coworkers, associates, church friends, organization friends, and the list goes on to infinity. These myriads of “friends” bring forth a variety of individual talents.

I am graced with some great Facebook friends and I owe them a debt of gratitude. They have taught me so very much. Their passion, while not necessarily mine, has served to inform me on many a subject I would be unaware of without them.

I would never know how cruel and awful housing small whales and dolphins in small tanks is, alone and without their families. I would never know about the issues regarding Monsanto, and Tyson and other vile corporate entities that endanger our health in the chase for the almighty dollar. I’ve had my theological foundation firmed, and loosened by a couple of theologians I know.

I could go on for a couple of pages. You see, I know all sorts of people in the Facebook way, and by and large, I’m enriched from the experience. The people I disagree with, remain small, but more importantly they are vehicles for dissemination.

What?

Here’s where I tie this all together. . . .

While it is unprofitable in general to get into discussions with right wing crazies en mass, isolated encounters in otherwise friendly terrain, does serve a purpose. And that purpose is, they give one the excuse to lay out all the arguments that you can muster on an issue.

Why?

Rather than be the usual waste of time that we have encountered in large groups, in small ones, you don’t get overwhelmed. Much like big corporations make it hard to be sued by “papering” the opposing counsel with so many requests, demands, depositions, discovery, endless motions and so forth, when six or eight people are all ganging up on you, well, most people don’t have TIME to respond properly.

Responding improperly does more harm than good.

Why does this matter?

Because in every group, there are outsiders, people who live on the fringe, reading but almost never uttering a word. They are not crazies, but they aren’t politically aware either. They are busy living their lives, and barely bump into most of the political and social issues of our day. They do however, at leisure, read posts and comments, blogs and so forth.

They are not ideologically motivated. They are bright people, normal in every sense of the world except they aren’t much interested in the body politic or how it functions. Until it waylays them personally (and many it never will), they don’t get involved.

But, they do read. They do comprehend. They do get logic, and they do check out links. They will listen to a cogent argument and if not offset by superior information going in the other direction, they will agree with you.

They won’t deliver fliers in their neighborhoods or make phone calls for a candidate, but they will vote (if not too inconvenient) and they will vote consistent with the facts as they have come to understand them.

They are your audience always.

You have to trust that they are there. They are, I assure you. Every once in a while I get a message or email from one of them, telling me they have “lurked” for some time, and agree or have been led to agree to this idea or that.

Those are the people you are writing and talking to. They don’t have time to do the research you do, but they appreciate it. They can tell the difference between your citation to reputable sources and the other sides reliance on “common sense”.

They recognize that common sense to the right wing is akin to “what I want to believe is true because it makes me feel better.”

Your efforts are thus not offered in vain. Remember that you talk not only to who is directly before you, but all those who are within eye or earshot.

What it means for me personally, is to try to remember, (no matter how angry I often become at intransigent thinking), that calm, factual offerings are much more successful that bombast and snappy retorts that serve to explain only how loathsome the right wing fanatic can be.

So I thank all those who have taught me so much on Facebook. And I am thankful for Facebook which provides that unique platform allowing me a cornucopia of “friends” that insure a range of opinions, talents, passions, and hard facts.

The post is powerful, more powerful than you think. So do be mindful of the audience out there, ephemeral as it may appear. This is your job. They depend on you for accurate information on an unimaginably wide source of things. Surely you can offer your services on a few of them?

Make a difference!

Who’s Thinking for You?

09 Monday May 2011

Posted by Sherry in Barack Obama, Bush, Editorials, GOP, Literature, Media, Psychology, Sociology, teabaggers, terrorism, The Wackos

≈ 14 Comments

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critical thinking, Fox Noise, Media, Osama Bin Ladin, political discourse, psychology, right wing wackos, sociology, thinking

I’m forced to believe that we live in a mostly schizophrenic world. We are assaulted day and night by “news” however one wishes to interpret that. Mostly it’s not news at all, but one form or another of someone’s truth, deception, or best guess.

Add to that the never-ending drumming of product, product, product, and it’s no wonder we drown ourselves in food, drugs, alcohol, and any of a number of addictions, all intended to shut out the cacophony.

It’s simply too much. We try to make sense of it all, and we fairly cannot.

I’ve been reading Thomas Merton lately. A book called Seeds, containing paragraphs from his many writings grouped around common themes. Merton’s take on society is scathing, and frankly works today as it did in the 50’s and 60’s when he did much of his writing amid the “Cold War.” Supplant “terrorism” for Cold War, and nothing much has changed.

He suggests that one of our greatest illusions is that we think. We don’t he argues, we simply think that we could think if we needed to. But we don’t have to. We simply wait until someone says something that “makes sense” given our history, and then attach ourselves to it. Their thoughts become ours, their ideology ours. All the better if it is a group.

Our lives are now composed of slogans, formulas, ideologies, and declarations. We know the jingles to every advertising product. We want “things” because we have been carefully taught to want them. News passes by like a ticker tape, we have only a few hours, at most days, to digest, before another “event” captures our attention and must be fit into the drama of our lives.

Merton argues that we give up our responsibility to think because we want to. We believe the propaganda because it’s easy, it gives us the illusion that we are thinking while we devote our time and energy to living up to the “lives” we’ve been taught make us successful.

An example is the Iraq war. Now I didn’t buy the propaganda at all, I was pretty darn sure this was the wrong war for the wrong reasons. Yet, I was hopeful that all the claims about why it was necessary would be true. Why? Because like all Americans (or most I should say), I was deeply pained by 9/11. I wanted an “answer”, an enemy that could be grasped and throttled.

We may have an unease about a lot of the propaganda we hear and read, but we tell ourselves that “our” side is by and large better than the other side.

I’m about Bin Laden’d out. First I had to work through the issue of America’s jubilant response. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. Since then we have had to confront the “deathers”, those insidious and nearly legally insane folks who truly believe this is all a fake to deter us from the real issue–that Barack Obama is an illegitimate usurper in the White House.

These deathers are easily dismissed of course, since even Al Q!aeda has declared their leader is in fact dead.

Fox Noise, caught in a no-win situation, praised the action for about thirty-six hours. Then came their twisting of the facts to cast doubts about the whole affair. The White House handled the information “poorly”, even though “facts” were clamoured for well before any debriefing had occurred. As natural discrepancies on details emerged, Fox got more and more suspicious of the competence of “this President” The Blaze headlined: “Obama can’t make up his mind; Panetta gives order for mission.” The suggestion is obvious although it cannot be more of a lie.

Soon we were back into the issue of “enhanced interrogation” techniques, the propaganda euphemism, the polite way of saying torture. The right was bringing out its guns to “show” that Obama’s moment in the sun would not have been possible without the waterboarding that the Bushites were condemned for.

Suddenly, we are back to debating the relative “value” of torture. If torture lead to finding Osama, them of course, moral issues no longer matter. Really?

Just as quickly come the complaints that the American people should not give so much credit to Obama. Rather the great George W deserved the “real” credit. It was he of course who announced our “goal” of finding Bin Laden. No mention of course that he fairly laid that aside in his quest to take down Iraq for the neo-cons. No mention that we lost our opportunity to stay on the track while fresh.

The debate still goes on over the “pictures”. The right finds this a great argument–its cathartically necessary they claim. We must “prove” beyond any shadow of doubt. All the while of course, they know he is dead, but that is no reason not to *wink wink nod nod* to their deather base for whom the lack of pictures is just more evidence that it is all a lie.

And far in the background, barely mentioned, are those, like Michael Moore, and certain religious personages who remind us that we have not even begun to discuss the morality of this “assassination.” Everyone admits there was no real effort or desire to “take him alive”. That opened up a whole can of worms that few wished to take on.

How do we live with ideals when we so conveniently flout them for expediency’s sake? Is it any wonder than the world shakes its head in dismay at our wagging the moral finger at anyone else while we take the path of least resistance.

Yet, we make, at best passing offers of argument on all these issues. We don’t have time, we can already see a new event looming on the horizon. Clear the decks, make ready for our next round of “thinking” and don’t forget to pick up milk on your way home.