The Enemy Next Door (not the movie)

Yes, I will be taking a break, but this is too good to pass up, a local example of fake news extruded onto the internet by people too lazy or ill-equipped to recognize it. Or purposefully. In any case, this one involves me.

Perhaps the reader is aware of the information-exchange website, “Nextdoor.” It’s nationwide, with regional subsets of local groups (“Everett Conservatives,” in this case) and neighborhoods, like “Nextdoor Boulevard.” A better name would be “Nextdoor Nosy,” as there’s a surfeit of complaints about loud cars, unkempt yards, teenagers, dogs, and warnings of people walking funny.

A few days ago, I was sent screenshots from a thread on the site, asking for my thoughts. It was approximately hilarious, but definitely sad. Not for myself, but for what passes for information on right-wing sites nowadays. 

Informant Jan writes, “You can google Sid Schwab and you’ll arrive at a writeup written by him. [She surmises.] He entitles himself as Doctor Schwab. He claims he received his surgery training in San Francisco but doesn’t name the institution… Then practiced for five years in Salem. Where in Salem? … 20 more years at the Everett Clinic. As what? He also said he was a flight surgeon in Vietnam during the war. How does he confirm that? … I think the Herald should vet his credentials.”

Co-conspirator Amanda chimes in: “I think I just watched his story a few days ago. A really bad doctor who maimed and killed his patients. I really did just watch a documentary that sounds a lot like this guy.”

To which Jan replied, “Amanda, I’m going to write the Herald re this creep. Think you should, also.” Then, “The Herald did not publish my letter re Sid Schwab… I will not renew The Herald.”

“Creep” was a nice detail.

There followed input from a lady who’d actually looked into it – something the outrageously outraged had chosen not to; placing, it must be assumed, righteous indignation above truth. The nicer lady posted easily-found documentation and verifications, which seems to have brought the “discussion” to a close.

Lacking admission to “Everett Conservatives,” I'd guess there were posts that preceded what was sent to me. Whatever documentary rattled around between Amanda’s ears can’t have “sounded like” what Jan said, if that’s where the deliberations began. It didn’t seem especially creepy, nor had she cited maiming and killing, the avoidance of which I’ve always considered kind of a personal credo.

The point is not to argue I am who I am, or to suggest I’m not a creep, because, well, the definition is admittedly squishy. It’s to point out how easy it is for online ill-wishers and/or the uninformed to spread falsehoods, deceive those lacking critical minds, trash reputations, and, tragically, propel narcissistic incompetents into high office.

Brewing in a “conservative” coven, it’s probable the exchange arose from enough intellectual residua to have secerned my subtle misgivings about Trump. Likely, it went no further, but it’s instructive nevertheless. Someone saw something she assumed was written by me (the publicist for my book, more likely) which didn’t include the address of UCSF or The Salem Clinic, or proof I served in Vietnam. Therefore, suspect. Also, I was born in Kenya.

A co-conspirator saw a “documentary,” which she concluded was about me. Really? Was the subject unnamed? Had he been in SF, Salem, and Everett? Otherwise, we must conclude not all bulbs in Amanda’s chandelier are LED.

Charitably, I’ll assume it wasn’t deliberate dishonesty, but just the lazy credulity Russian and other foreign entities count on when they plant their pro-Trump propaganda. 

Which is perfect fodder for homegrown grift, too, like Trump’s calls for “stop the steal” donations and scammers selling suckers overpriced “Freedom Phones.” 

And it mirrors what people who value truth are up against: a malignant mélange of mendacity, gullibility, sloth, and skillfully-cultivated inability to recognize falsehood. Or preference for it. Especially if it supports inaccurate beliefs that are more comfortable than accepting hard reality.

Whether I lied about Vietnam (wanna see my DD214 or Purple Heart Medal, Jan? Email your address and I’ll drop by) or being a doctor (I’ll bring my degrees, too), is minuscule solanum tuberosums compared to whether the election was stolen, climate change and Covid-19 are real, or Trump is a sociopathic liar. But, on a smaller scale, it validates the confidence of those who, capitalizing on strategically-produced right-wing ignorance, spread misinformation to the willing, to maintain power and wealth while hurting the very people they’ve deceived into voting for them. 

It’s hard to see a way out of it.

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Stay Real, Democrats

Tomorrow's newspaper column:

Collusion or not, it’s obvious Vladimir Putin intended to influence the election that put Trump into the White House. Collusion or not, Mitch McConnell sure didn’t want the public to know about it. And, given what we’re learning of Russia’s massive distribution of fake news, we can infer their ultimate goal was, and remains, to divide us against ourselves; to exploit the strengths of democracy and turn them into vulnerabilities. To let us do their work for them.

With Trump they got a twofer: an incurious narcissist, and a man who, because of his thin-skinned vindictiveness, could be expected to add his own poisonous divisiveness, which, along with embarrassing America worldwide, he has. (“Never knew we had so many countries!”) Trumpists consider America’s free press the enemy. They’re certain millions voted illegally. They’re convinced news which challenges Trump is fake and people who write columns about it are liars. Surely, Putin succeeded beyond his expectations.  

Russia’s reach was broad and deep and, planned or not, enhanced by decades of credulity-enhancing, truth-erasing efforts by rightwing media. Not to mention, particularly in Trump-loving red states, devolution of public education. On average and not by accident, we’re getting dumber.  

I’ve fallen for deception in the past, too, but have learned to be skeptical, to seek confirmation when a claim seems either too good or too bad to be true. I try to correct falsehoods whether on “liberal” or “conservative” sites. Trumpists email regularly, credulously forwarding ridiculous claims they received about Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or liberals in general. Ignoring the factual debunkery I send, they’re back, predictably, with more flimsy falsehoods. 

And if there’s guilt on both sides, there’s no parity. Liberal bogosity is rarely received. When corrected, senders write back with apologies. There’s neither a quantitative nor qualitative liberal equivalent to Foxolimjonesian nescience.  

Of late, though, there’s a disturbing trend, as several websites have appeared featuring click-bait headlines touting news liberals would love to be true. The promised stories either contain nothing of the sort, or a bunch of unsupported hearsay. Since there’s plenty of real news, it’s troublesome. We have no need to make stuff up, for, as Stephen Colbert famously said, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” Maybe they’re just looking for ad revenue; if so, it’s no excuse. Among the worst are Occupy Democrats, Bipartisan Report, Blue Dot Daily, Politicus USA, Addicting Info. Use with caution. Call your doctor for misdirection lasting more than four hours. 

Related or not, some liberals appear ready to blow the next national elections, too. Out of perceived moral superiority and/or political purity, extremists in the party are, yet again, falling upon the impure, even if it means letting democracy die. Despite so much being at stake – climate, environment, healthcare, clean energy, free and fair elections, free press, theocracy, fair taxation, women’s rights, LGBT rights, public education, food and drug safety, help for the needy, science, my grandchildren’s quality of life – it looks like a pride of proclaimed progressives prefer to re-litigate 2016. There’s data suggesting enough embittered Bernie supporters voted for Trump to have swung the election. “Burn it down, that’ll show ‘em.” Look what it got us.  

Trump’s support is down to the rock-bottom incorrigibles, as only a third of Americans remain unawakened to the dangers he represents. It ought to mean Democrats will retake Congress next year, and the White House in 2020, no matter who occupies it by then. But, no. 

Rife with already-debunked claims of rigging the primary, talk on the left is all about Donna Brazile’s book. You’d almost think the Russians (and their adjuvants in rightwing media) are stoking it, just as they promoted fake rallies around the country and got people from both sides to show up and start fighting.  

The DNC’s fecklessness notwithstanding, after mere months of Trumpic corruption, incompetence, and threats to democracy itself, I’d vote for a pastrami sandwich over anyone offered up by the party of Trump, Bannon, Pruitt, DeVos, Zinke, Price, Moore… Progressives need to look ahead, not back. Tuesday was a good day. Stop the infighting; increase the outfighting. They’re toasting you with fine vodka in the Kremlin and expensive champagne in Trump’s cabinet room. 

Focus on the doughnut next year, Democrats, not the hole, and get to work. Lives are at stake, Republicans, so stick with the usual thoughts and prayers.

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When One Party Loses Its Mind

My forthcoming newspaper column:

Think we’re overtaxed? Overregulated? We can talk. If it’s your opinion public education has problems and you have ideas, it’s conversable. If you believe our country is heading in the wrong direction, let’s debate. Which direction, especially. We could have a conversation about military vs. social spending, and where the balance is; to what extent each protects us. I’ve even had almost room-temperature excursus about why, in successful societies, people care for one another. 

However. 

If you believe the planet isn’t warming, or humans have nothing to do with it, or it’s not serious, there’s no point in wasting either of our time. If you deny evolution or feel sure the earth is six thousand years old, or flat, I’ll defend your right to such beliefs, but they announce the impossibility of fruitful back-and-forth. Likewise if you think homosexuality is a choice. I suppose we could discuss whether tax cuts pay for themselves, but we wouldn’t get far.  

The need to reject indisputable facts is something that puzzles me about humans. In our evolutionary history, gut feelings no doubt played an important role in survival. React first, analyze later: it got us a long way. So, several hundred thousand years ago, did prehensile tails, the vestiges of which we all retain, occasionally causing coccygodinia. 

According to polls, forty percent of Republicans are certain Russian election interference is fake news created by liberals to distract Trump from his job. This they believe despite knowing every relevant intelligence agency has concluded otherwise and, shown the evidence, so has every member of involved congressional committees, Democrat and Republican. Of Republican voters who acknowledge it occurred, most seem undisturbed. (In a recent challenge, American hackers broke into voting machines in minutes.)  

In political fora, many Republicans insist our economy didn’t tank until Obama took over, and continued to decline throughout his presidency. Presenting them with indisputable facts makes no difference. The best hope is that such people are trolling. Otherwise it’s a serious mental defect of information processing, the same kind that rejects unwelcome news as fake. In theory, voting presumes the ability to evaluate data; this broad-based dismissal of evidence by a major political party is ominous. 

I don’t think forty percent of Republicans are innately stupid or unable to learn new things. In fairness, they’ve been victimized by intentional disinformation for decades, so it’s not entirely their fault. Whatever the explanation, because it requires both sides accept basic facts, rational discourse has become all but impossible. If political beliefs are a mutable hodge-podge, especially in a messy democracy like ours, facts are not. For propaganda to take root, there must be fertile soil. In that, Democrats are a raised-bed backyard garden. Today’s Republicans are a corporate farm. Our democracy was designed by men who didn’t imagine such a divide was possible. 

Aided by clever gerrymandering, Republicans dominate state and federal legislatures. In many red states, not unlike the US Senate (and the current president, thanks to the quirky Electoral College), Republicans received fewer votes than Democrats. And those elected tend to be the most rigid denialists. If it were true, as third-party nihilists argue, that there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans, it wouldn’t matter. 

But when one’s adherents are consistently disdainful of facts, and when its leaders count on that instead of winning on ideas, a pathologically lying president who considers the White House “a dump” and lies about Boy Scout phone calls is what happens. The White House revolving door happens. An EPA following the law only by court order, its scientists resigning, happens. Incoherent foreign and domestic policy by tweet, Pizzagate, Seth Rich fake Fox “news” allegedly pushed by the president all happen; a president who’s made it impossible to believe anything he says. Happens. The Republican Prevaricare farce happens (Lindsey Graham called it a disaster and a fraud. And voted for it.)  

Ironically, the same information-processing deficiency that allowed Trump’s voters to disregard his lifelong moral and ethical failings, his businesses based on inherited (and laundered?) money and swindling, caused them not to reckon how incapable of governing he’d be. His ineptitude is the only thing saving us, so far, from dictatorship. Or worse. The arch-conservative NRO gets it. Republican Senator Jeff Flake, too. Who’s got next? 

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Fox Files

My latest newspaper column:

A pizza joint owner in D.C. is suffering horrendous consequences after a fake story appeared online accusing his shop of harboring a child-abuse ring run by Hillary Clinton. Trumpics found it believable, evidently. 

I can’t count the emails I’ve received, ridiculous claims about Barack Obama, easily debunked and dismissed. I can’t count the number of times I’ve replied with links to facts, to which the response has been silence until the next preposterous assertion arrives. 

My suggestion to these repeat offenders: If the message comes to you with the phrase “Snopes confirms,” check before believing. Same with “If you do nothing else today, forward this...” If it supports your darkest beliefs about the other side, take a moment before buying in. Forwarding it makes you look silly, I tell them. In their minds, clearly, it doesn’t. 

Credulity. It’s becoming our democracy’s biggest vulnerability, and the one most easily exploited. After decades of propagandizing and prevarications, it’s clear vast numbers of people have consumed the canards, and they’re way beyond ducking out. Although the phenomenon seems mostly limited to rightists, I get stuff forwarded to me from the like-minded, too, if much less often: usually it’s that quote that has Trump saying if he ran for president, he’d do it as a Republican because they believe anything. Obviously false: he’s never shown that degree of insight. 

Seriously, though: it’s no longer a potential problem, it’s real. There are people (and bots), official and otherwise, spreading intentional falsehoods throughout “social” media, and thence to the mainstream. It works. Producers of fake news are claiming success influencing electoral outcomes. Fox “news” and rightwing radio have been peddling it for years. 

Immediately after the election, when Hillary Clinton’s growing popular vote win (now surpassing two million) was undeniable, Trumpophiles began spreading the word he’d also won that vote. It’s still out there. Then came the “news” that protestors were being paid. Trump just denied ever saying he’d support a registry of Muslims. (He did, a year ago. It’s on tape. Look it up.) Now he’s falsely claiming he kept open a Ford plant that wasn’t closing. How long before he takes credit for the recent economic uptick? 

Desire for confirmation of what we prefer to believe has replaced curiosity and skepticism. Heard enough times, falsehoods infiltrate the brain like amyloid, making truth irrelevant. This is dangerous, even for those who, for now, don’t care. Sooner or later, truth is important for everyone. Example: climate change. (“Where’s the evidence,” a recent letter asked! Everywhere.) 

“Post-truth” is Oxford’s Dictionary’s word of the year. “I’m hearing…” Donald Trump says. “I never said that,” he declares. By direct measure, he’s lied more than any candidate, ever. How can you be “post” truth if you were never “intra”? 

Good decisions require accurate information. If for every fact there are innumerable deliberate fabrications, what are citizens to do? There may be multiple possible solutions to problems, but facts are unitary. Our founders disagreed over inventing a government, but they didn’t argue about what was real. We’ve descended so far from that, there may be no way back. Donald Trump just hauled in media leaders to berate their coverage of him. Will they be brave enough to keep at it? 

Crucial to separating fact from fiction is the desire to do it. (Trump’s brilliance was recognizing how thoroughly Foxolimjonesification has extinguished it, and he’s still employing the insight.) Next is accepting the possibility you could be misinformed. Finally, having decided to try, is the wherewithal to make the distinction. There’s little evidence of it among those celebrating Trump’s electoral vote victory. Once upon a time presidents were held to a higher standard, and news agencies were more interested in providing education than attracting eyeballs, when citizens wished to be informed, and were willing to do the work to achieve it. Now that they’ve won, how about Trumpists begin demanding honesty? They’ll discover the lies soon enough (secret ISIS plan, the wall, climate, Social Security, prosecuting Hillary…), but why wait? 

 “Post-truth” wins elections. Clearly people need investigatory skills they no longer have. Now that they’re in charge, will Republicans, who call public education “brainwashing,” encourage schools to teach them?
 

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