You know how there are some things you don't want to see, but you just have to look anyway? Like a terrible accident on the road, for instance. You inwardly cringe as you approach. You are repelled at the sight. But you look anyway.
It can be the same with ideas. You begin to read something, and you know right away that what is being expressed is repugnant and twisted, but you read on anyway, unable to avert your mind - because what you are looking at is the intellectual version of a disastrous car wreck, the road kill of integrity in thought, the mangled body parts of reason. What started out as a report of some clearcut event or political commentary quickly collides in the readers' comment section with the lunacy of minds that have careened out of control.
Take any news article about Obama, for instance. Once the article hits the eight lane highway of Facebook, the simplicity of its substance explodes into weird shattered fragments, flying in all directions, which are then regathered in the repugnant form of someone's personal Frankenstein monster.
I happened to begin reading one such comment today and, pausing to scroll down the page, noted that it went on almost interminably. Obama is not an American, his birth certificate is fake, his wife is a man, neither of his daughters has a birth certificate either, having been abducted as small children; there are no photographs of his wedding, he has shown no marriage certificate, there is no record of his actually having attended any university, his name is registered under five different Social Security numbers in five different versions from five different states. He is a Muslim sitting in the highest seat in the nation and is committed to the destruction of freedom and democracy.
These things leave me with a distinctly queasy feeling - again, like the sight of blood and body parts.
Scarier yet are the number of 'likes' and replies of agreement that these sorts of comments receieve. Wow, you've really done your research, Bob!
And indeed, Bob has done his research, having, apparently, spent every waking hour pouring over the tomes of paranoia and fantasy that can be found on the internet as easily as measles on skin. Bob has made a masterly study of what is not, and is now passing it on to a confused and unwary culture ripe for infection. A sickness is passing like the grim reaper among us, which is known, by too many, as "the real truth".
Oh brave new world, that has such people in it.
It can be the same with ideas. You begin to read something, and you know right away that what is being expressed is repugnant and twisted, but you read on anyway, unable to avert your mind - because what you are looking at is the intellectual version of a disastrous car wreck, the road kill of integrity in thought, the mangled body parts of reason. What started out as a report of some clearcut event or political commentary quickly collides in the readers' comment section with the lunacy of minds that have careened out of control.
Take any news article about Obama, for instance. Once the article hits the eight lane highway of Facebook, the simplicity of its substance explodes into weird shattered fragments, flying in all directions, which are then regathered in the repugnant form of someone's personal Frankenstein monster.
I happened to begin reading one such comment today and, pausing to scroll down the page, noted that it went on almost interminably. Obama is not an American, his birth certificate is fake, his wife is a man, neither of his daughters has a birth certificate either, having been abducted as small children; there are no photographs of his wedding, he has shown no marriage certificate, there is no record of his actually having attended any university, his name is registered under five different Social Security numbers in five different versions from five different states. He is a Muslim sitting in the highest seat in the nation and is committed to the destruction of freedom and democracy.
These things leave me with a distinctly queasy feeling - again, like the sight of blood and body parts.
Scarier yet are the number of 'likes' and replies of agreement that these sorts of comments receieve. Wow, you've really done your research, Bob!
And indeed, Bob has done his research, having, apparently, spent every waking hour pouring over the tomes of paranoia and fantasy that can be found on the internet as easily as measles on skin. Bob has made a masterly study of what is not, and is now passing it on to a confused and unwary culture ripe for infection. A sickness is passing like the grim reaper among us, which is known, by too many, as "the real truth".
Oh brave new world, that has such people in it.
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