Weaponized Credulity

Democratic-leaning blogs and tweets this week have been jubilant about the findings of the latest investigation into the Benghazi affair. The facts themselves are simple.  As the Associated Press reported: 

"A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees."

The "left" (meaning pro-Democratic) response to this has been many versions of "we told you so" coupled with demands for apologies from both Republican politicians and Fox News.  There has been an accompanying gleeful observation that these apologies are not forthcoming and that the report was issued on a Friday afternoon, a traditional ploy for hiding news.  I think the truth is that the invented Benghazi "scandal" has already successfully lodged itself into the thinking of the people who want to believe the worst of either Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton (or both.)  These people are ready to believe the worst of Obama and Clinton, no matter how bizarre or farfetched.  There is simply no way to disprove their beliefs with fact.  They are credulous -- meaning willing to believe anything -- about the Democrats they demonize.

This campaign cycle we have heard Republican politicians publicly dismiss fact checking and admitting that the truth doesn't matter.  Way back in 2005, Stephen Colbert coined the term "truthiness" during the inaugural episode of "The Colbert Report."  He explained in a later interview,

"It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything."

But I am not so interested in pointing to how credulous others can be.  That's easy.  I am much more interested in recognizing my own credulity.  This week a satire post circulated claiming that Sarah Palin insisted on Sean Hannity's show that undocumented Mexicans be put on commandeered cruise ships and deported back across the Mexican Ocean.  When I first heard this I correctly assumed that it was a joke.  But a close and trusted confidant assured me that it was true, citing an exchange between Hannity and Palin in which Hannity gently corrected her but Palin insisted.  I wrongly believed that my friend had SEEN this exchange instead of merely reading it.

Another very close friend posted a link to the satire on Facebook (as truth) with the comment: "Can't make this up.  Holy crap."  And what did I do? I commented, in agreement, that I had been skeptical until I saw Hannity gently correct, etc. which I had not!  Despite my initial skepticism, I piled on with the false claim that I myself had seen the exchange because I believed somebody I trusted had!

This is weaponized credulity.  Poe's Law states that without a winking smiley or something, it is impossible to create a satire on the internet that cannot be mistaken for the real thing.  I will grant that there may be some difference between (on the one hand) satire that people accept as real and (on the other hand) intentional misstatements that become part of the general discourse.  But what they both point up for me is the incredibly fracturing of the fund of common knowledge.  In fact there appears no longer to be any "common knowledge."

Again, regarding the common knowledge of the Right,  I have been astonished to see repeated internet references to "welfare," meaning huge numbers of people who sit home watching TV and collecting checks from the rest of us.  This form of welfare has not existed since the Clinton Administration.  Instead, working people receive food and housing subsidies, which is a subject for a whole other post.  But how is it possible that EIGHTEEN YEARS after the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, "ended welfare as we know it" people still believe in the Reagan Era myth of the "welfare queen"?  And I say "myth" because even then it was based on political legerdemain characterizing a serial felon and identity thief as a typical ADC recipient.

But what about the common knowledge of the "Left?"  If we are getting our political facts from carefully crafted Facebook posts that are designed to become viral memes, and if we share those posts without checking, how are we different from our political antagonists whom we readily decry as gullible and unconcerned with truth?

I am much more interested to see people call themselves out for "truthiness" than to call out their opponents.  And not because I believe it will open the minds of our opponents, but because I believe we need to open our own first.