So, as some people have heard, there's this conspiracy theory called Pizzagate which involves John Podesta and other DNC officials running a child sex ring through a Washington DC pizza restaurant. The basis for this claim comes from wikileaks, in which the "top minds" (read: conspiracy theorists) of the recesses of Reddit and voat looked at the Podesta emails and came up with some crazy theory involving references to pizza being code for pedophilia or something like that? Anyway, the theory progressed so far that some guy decided to shoot up the pizza joint at the center of this theory and yeah, it kind of spilled over into real life in which people were put in harm's way.
The Clintons and their affiliates get a lot of flak from both the left and the right, but nothing on the left really compares to that which is on the right in terms of attacks against Clinton. And I've seen a lot of crazy crap on the right before. Claims that Hillary is abusive to secret service agents, that she has temper tantrums and meltdowns and even had a violent one on election night that she lost, that Bill went to some dude's private island to have sex with kids, that they murder tons of people who get in their way, etc. I try to ignore most of this crap because it has a very weak and flimsy basis, and comes from right wing propaganda mills with no basis in reality. I do occasionally float some mild "conspiracy" like theories, like the idea that the dems have been preparing for a Clinton presidency in 2016 since 2008, but I normally like to at least put some facts forward and explicitly state that these things should be taken with a grain of salt before putting them out there. But a lot of people legitimately believe these ideas wholeheartedly, and often without good evidence to do so, and this is what makes these things so questionable. They're not well supported and their supporters grasp at straws.
Now, some people might be wondering why people believe this stuff? And I think I have a theory for why that is. I believe that the rise of all of this fake news and echo chambers that spew it come from the fact that the media cannot be trusted to report on facts objectively. We are in problematic times. News networks are rarely objective, and as we've seen this election cycle, once trusted outlets like, say, CNN, have been shown to be quite biased in putting forward media coverage to support various candidates, particularly Clinton on the left. This has caused many people to lose trust in these institutions. The left is starting to show signs of this with all of the Bernie people having reason to be skeptical, but the right has been seeing through this charade the mainstream media has been doing for years and have responded by developing their own ideologically driven media networks to spin their narrative their way. And it's just gotten crazier and crazier. With sites like Infowars and Breitbart picking up steam, many people are now so far out of touch with reality that they buy up these conspiracy theories and act on them thinking they're real.
I think that the thing driving this so called "post truth" movement is the fact that the mainstream cannot be trusted to report on stories objectively. The people have rightly saw through the propaganda of the mainstream and the centrists who like to peddle their agenda as objective facts, and with one's sense of reality questioned, people develop an alternate reality in that place. The best of us go back to looking at science and thinking critically and develop a basis for truth based on reason and evidence, but many others fall into these enclaves getting more and more out of touch with reality until they think shooting up pizza places over child sex scandals in basements that don't exist is a good idea.
I'm not sure if there can be a solution media-side that can fix this lack of trust. Perhaps reinstating the fairness doctrine could restore faith in our institutions at the cost of some degree of freedom of speech, or perhaps the solutions rely on us. It's good to be open minded to things, but claims must be backed with reason and evidence. The more outlandish the claim, the firmer the evidence is needed in my opinion to justify it. And sometimes we do have to make decisions about beliefs with incomplete evidence, but when we do so we should be aware of the shortcomings of said evidence that exist. Stuff as crazy and elaborate as pizzagate requires an insane amount of evidence in my opinion, and it seems quite clear that there's no good reason to accept something so outlandish, given the credibility of the sources and the like. It's also good that people get their news from a variety of sources. If you get your news and engage with people strictly from a certain ideological persuasion, you will lose perspective as to what's going on in the country and world as a whole. Since it's clear no source seems infallible, it's up to us to sort through them and decide what is worth believing and what isn't within our mental frameworks. And we must always go back and question our assumptions of truth and ensure that we are not getting sucked into an echo chamber as well. This isn't just an alt right thing, this isn't just a "bernie bro" thing, this idea of being sucked into an echo chamber. Look at what I've written about the Hillary supporters since the election. They're in an echo chamber too. It's possible for everyone, including the best and brightest among us to get caught in an echo chamber, and I'd argue that the most trusted people in news reporting being caught in one is what led to this predicament to begin with. Once again, when people lose faith in mainstream institutions, alternate frameworks for seeing the world exist for better or for worse. To some degree, these frameworks can be great and can lead to a whole new way of thinking that had not been considered before. Whole revolutions have been sparked out of people losing faith in their institutions. When people lost faith in the catholic church, for example, it led to the protestant reformation and the enlightenment. And perhaps rejecting the mainstream media narratives is necessary for us to progress too. But always remember, this progress can be a double edged sword and it can backfire if people don't use the proper discretion in examining the evidence, or if they lack the tools or resources to do so. We can either reject the narratives put in place by the establishment to see things we otherwise wouldn't see and apply that knowledge to making the world better, or we can use it to come up with crazy conspiracies about pedophiles and lizard people and 9/11 being an inside job. It's really up to us. Let's use this power wisely and not give into utter foolishness with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment