Praise the Cyber Ninjas and pass the cicadas
A comforting narrative is not evidence
The last time the 17-year cicadas of Brood X emerged in the Mid-Atlantic states, I walked out of my building and one of them landed on my shoulder. I knew it was harmless, so I gently lifted it and studied its beautiful, lacy wings before sending it on its way.
Some people want to make salads out of the critters. Personally, the crunchiest things I care to eat are Pepperidge Farm Thin and Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies. Others think of cicadas like locusts from a horror movie in which they land on someone by the hundreds, and when they are done all that’s left of the person is a skeleton. This is as accurate as our immediate past president discussing the medicinal uses of bleach and ultraviolet light.
Speaking of which, the Cyber Ninjas playing at recounting votes from Arizona’s Maricopa County, according to the right-wing OAN Network, used ultraviolet light to look for secret watermarks on the ballots. This stems from a bogus QAnon-related conspiracy theory that PolitiFact rated “Pants on Fire.” There are no watermarks, but as Captain Picard told the Cardassian, “There are four lights!”
The introduction of UV light reminds me of a commercial showing a skin cream softening a dry leaf. The only people who resemble dry leaves are the ones who magically dissolved at the end of Avengers: Infinity War. I resented that movie not just because it was idiotic, but because it was the second time they killed off T’Challa. Then the Oscars producers this year rearranged the awards to end with expected wins by Viola Davis and the late, beloved Chadwick Boseman, and all we got was Frances McDormand doing a wolf howl.
Now I’m watching video clips of gymnast Simone Biles in anticipation of the Tokyo Olympics. When you’re an opinion writer, many people think they can do it as well as you. Few claim they can do what Simone Biles does. If I attempted her floor routine, assuming I made it into the air, I would come down like the space shuttle that disintegrated over Texas.
Republicans in charge of state legislatures seem determined to make our democracy disintegrate over Texas. They believe that all they need in order to prove massive election fraud is to construct a narrative that matches their prior conclusions. When not suppressing black votes, they persecute transgender kids and substitute their own hunches for the informed judgments of gender-affirming doctors, whom they seek to criminalize on par with human traffickers. They would trade the lives of our most vulnerable youth for power, and we’re worried about insects?
We know we’re in a post-factual age when Rudy Giuliani and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson double down on disinformation fed to them by Russia. What troubles me is that millions buy it while also asserting the incapacity of brown people to vote responsibly. Watching these neo-Confederates, I feel like the black lady laughing at a guy in Klan robes who carries a sign touting his “superior jeans.”
As I awaited America’s crackup, I read a fact-check article in The Washington Post titled, “The false and misleading claims President Biden made during his first 100 days in office.” It was posted on Facebook by New England Cable News host and Bay Windows Editor-in-Chief Sue O’Connell.
Someone named Aaron commented, “I find it vaguely amusing that after four years of Trump, fact-checking people/systems think what they do matters in the slightest. Or I would, if the rampant ‘bothsiderism’ inherent to these fact-checkers wasn’t so enraging.”
I replied, “No need to be enraged. As the article states, Biden has been much better than Trump. We should resist reacting to headlines without looking at the content. The article is not an attack on Biden.”
Aaron replied, “True, but if we haven’t learned by now that headline-scolding is highly counterproductive…?” He added, “TL; DR,” shorthand for “too long; didn’t read.” Nowadays, anything more than 144 characters is treated like walking ten miles to work.
Presumably, “headline-scolding” is a new term of scorn like “virtue signaling.” Being a smartass, I replied, “Yes, the headlines don’t know they’re being scolded, the poor schmucks.”
Our smartphones are excellent tools for looking things up. I’m not big on evangelizing, and I know everyone hates a smartypants, but perhaps if we treat fact-checking like a trendy cicada dessert, people will be intrigued and it will catch on.
Otherwise, we might need to practice saying “President Ron DeSantis.” He may be crunchy, but he ain’t the cookie for me.
Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist at rrosendall@me.com. Follow him on twitter: @RickRosendall
Copyright © 2021 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.
