Applauding Buffoonery

I know we're all supposed to be outraged at the Russians for planting hundreds of posts/ads on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media forums in order to influence the elections.  Actually, the posts were equal opportunity propaganda targeting all sides of the political spectrum.  They were designed to create chaos in our country and they were highly successful.

But Russia isn't the culprit here.  The American people are.  Russian computer whizzes counted on the collective ignorance of the American body politic and the partisan willingness to believe anything that seems to validate strongly held beliefs.  And we Americans did not disappoint.

I saw some of the ads yesterday after Facebook released them.  One memorable one had an earnest young man dressed in battle gear squaring off against Hillary Clinton who was wearing a red cape, carrying a pitchfork, and sporting horns.  Vote Against Satan, the ad said.  Others were equally ridiculous.  Evidently, people bought the propaganda.  Evidently, voters were convinced by that ad and others that Clinton was the devil, that she purposely had people killed in Benghazi, that she had Vince Foster murdered, that she colluded with Russia to give them uranium in order to bolster their nuclear program, that she was somehow responsible for everything wrong in America.

And there were other ads, just as obscenely deceitful, directed against Trump.  And there were obviously lots of us who believed those.  The result:  Our political divide got even more divisive.  We trusted one another even less than we used to.

I don't know if any of those spots came across my Facebook feed, but I can guarantee you that there were plenty of delusional posts proclaiming all sorts of nefarious things that compelled me and I presume every other individual with a brain wave to roll our eyes, shake our heads, and move on to something sane.

That's my take away from all this Russia shit and it is worth saying again.  Russia, like any good and amoral marketer, took advantage of the gullibility of the American people.  It is the American people who are at fault here.

It is possible to get at the truth.  There are ways to find out if the site spewing the propaganda is legitimate or not.  It is possible to cross reference things to determine if something is true or just another piece of bullshit.  If you are not on Politifact or some other fact checking site as often as you are on The Drudge Report, The Daily Beast, or (shudder) Breitbart, you are not getting your information responsibly.

I admit that if I saw a post suggesting that Donald Trump liked to kill babies during his free hours away from his Twitter feed, I would tend to believe it.  But then I would check the site, wait to see if the same news item appeared on a legitimate news site, read some pundit's explanation, read some opposing pundit's explanation, and finally form my own position on the issue.  I would not immediately rush off to the Y to breathlessly explain about Trump's penchant for killing infants.  I would not share the offending item on my Facebook wall.  In other words, I would act like an adult.

I hope I'm wrong, but I think I am an exception.  I just think we would all be better off if we would come to grips with the idea that our certainties might be wrong, might need some opposing input.  If I just buzz through social media looking for those screeds that reinforce what I already believe, I am being lazy and irresponsible and, dare I say it, not acting like a citizen is supposed to act.

Like most of my friends, I have been devastated about the state of my country since last November, but the devastation isn't because I think Trump is an incompetent, mean-spirited buffoon (although I certainly do believe that), but because fully one-third of the people in this country are willing to believe and applaud his buffoonery.