There's suddenly all sorts of hoo-hah about fake news, since some armed screwball went into a for-real pizza parlor looking for a nonsensical pedophile ring.
Clay Bennett addresses the overall topic, while Clay Jones goes directly for the specific event.
And I don't think it matters.
There is a horrible, tasteless temptation to wish the guy had actually shot the place up and killed some people so that the world would sit up and take notice, but it's buffered by the fact that we've seen slaughter before and we all tut-tut and then, having spoken of things that matter, with words that must be said, go back, you to your Emily Dickinson and me to my Robert Frost.
Tim Eagan draws what should be, but, much as I like it, I'm not sure he's hit the target, because, while many people are indeed terrified at the amateur hour unfolding before our eyes, an awful lot of people are not.
No, the problem -- the central problem -- is summed up by David Fitzsimmons.
We hate elitism, which we define as "people who know conventional stuff."
It's more fun, more interesting, more insightful to know the hidden secrets, like pizza parlors with underground tunnels where children are raped, and it's also why it's brilliant foreign policy to skip intelligence briefings by the elite and, instead, chat on the phone with the guy whose country sheltered Bin Laden and sold nuclear technology to North Korea and Iran and tell him how eager we are to help him.
Or to pointlessly infuriate a nuclear-armed superpower that is one of our top three major trading partners, because "elite" politicians would never do such a thing. (What? He's looking to build a hotel there? Well, that's not relevant: That's his personal business.)
However, leave us not get too smug:
It's also fun to know about Nicola Tesla, who possessed the secrets of the universe but has gone unrecognized except by those with special knowledge and insight. Or to post pictures of Susan B. Anthony being beaten by cops who, for some odd reason, are wearing the distinctive uniforms of the London police.
Gullibility is not a function of class, nor is intelligence a matter of sheepskin. Unless people believe they are.
Yesterday, we examined the post-factual world in which bullshit reigns, but that sounds as if you could, by pointing out the flaws, by explaining the facts, turn things around.
Plato's allegory of the cave separates those who want to stare at the wall from those who are -- by force -- required to leave the comfort of the cave and learn about the real world.
But it is a hated elite who result from being put through that process:
And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
One thing elitists hate is elitism, so we reject the idea of the Philosopher King, not because we don't think a ruler should be wise but because we find it distasteful to look down on those who are not wise like us.
Theoretically.
That is, the elite laugh over TV shows like "Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo" and "Searching for Bigfoot" while obsessing over "The Walking Dead" and "Breaking Bad," not realizing that ain't none of it even Harold Pinter much less Shakespeare.
Or they wonder, at least until November 9, why TV producers would bother to create shows like "Honey Boo-Boo." (Hint: It's not because there are only a very small number of people who will watch them.)
But the elite have taste and the aforementioned sheepskin, so that, instead of answering "Can You Name A Movie Without An E In The Title?", they take the quiz to find out which character on Downton Abbey they are.
Yet somehow they still end up with their addresses and information harvesting by scam artists, at which point they complain that they were "hacked."
There is no point in telling them to stop falling for those scams because nobody says, "I'm stupid. I think I'll just sit and look at shadows on the cave wall."
And it's not a case of being "stupid." It's a case of being "normal."
That's why Plato's Philosopher King is an elitist notion, and it's why we've only slowly worked our way to theoretically universal suffrage.
It's true that some people are qualified to vote and some people aren't.
The problem is that there is no reliable way to identify them by groups, not by race or gender or educational attainment or income level. It's purely individual.
So, anyway, I've seen several posts where people suggest reading "1984" again in light of the new realities, but "1984" is a screed and you can do better.
Read "Catch-22" again, because Orwell's notion that all the evil people are in this building cleverly conspiring against you is neither as true nor as frightening as Heller's theory that they are all around you, and that they aren't particularly clever but simply fatuous, greedy and short-sighted, far less obsessed with exploiting you than with covering their own asses.
Meanwhile, Back in the Cave
Here's a depressing reminder that there is nothing so new, innovative and full of delightful surprises that we can't drag it back out for a sequel that will simply run the same now-familiar shadows across the cave wall again. And make money.
Comments