- How “doing your own research” results in absurd conspiracies about Biden body doubles;
- Hemant Mehta tries to parse Candace Owens’ vast conspiracy theories;
- And how objections to the Olympics opening ceremony are all about intellectual laziness.
The problem is, on the internet, you can’t tell what’s true or not, unless you pay attention and are savvy about which sources you’re looking at. The majority of people have never read newspapers or even watched the nightly network news on TV, but most of them now have internet and social media access. So people don’t understand the difference between credible sources and sources telling them what they want to believe. It’s been a problem for two decades, and it’s getting worse.
AlterNet, Roxanne Cooper, 27 Jul 2024: Opinion | The problem with ‘doing your own research’: Arizona conspiracy theory edition
In a surprising turn of events, two Arizona Republican state lawmakers have found themselves at the center of a political storm after sharing a debunked conspiracy theory about President Joe Biden. The theory, which has been thoroughly discredited, suggests that the President is using body doubles to make public appearances, according to the Arizona Mirror.
State Senator Wendy Rogers, representing Flagstaff, sparked controversy when she shared a now-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter) that falsely claimed First Lady Jill Biden was simultaneously in Paris and Washington, D.C. This claim was quickly debunked by PolitiFact, which reported that the First Lady had left for France shortly after the President’s address to the nation, and the photos in question were taken hours apart.
And
Arizona Mirror, via JMG, 28 Jul 2024: GOP/QAnon Rep Claims Bidens Use “Body Doubles”
What’s great about JMG is that he recalls previous appearances on his site of the principal of each new story.
Rogers, a “proud” member of the Oath Keepers and supporter of the Proud Boys, has appeared here many times for her QAnon batshittery. Last week she shared the last tweet below which claimed that Biden had died.
In 2022, Rogers, who claims that all mass shootings are done by the federal government, was censured by fellow Republicans for spreading white nationalists posts.
My continued fascination is, not so much about why people believe certain things, as why they are so *certain* about what they believe, since they have absolutely no evidence, and make claims that are absurd, given any rational understanding of the world.
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Here, Hemant Mehta gives it a try.
Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 31 Jul 2024: Everything wrong with Candace Owens’ conspiracy-laden anti-evolution rant, subtitled “The right-wing conspiracy theorist said people accept evolution because of ‘modern Satanists'”
Flat Earth enthusiast, Holocaust denier, and Hitler fan Candace Owens has a theory about evolution that’s so dumb, you would normally have to travel to northern Kentucky to get a whiff of it.
During her show on Monday, MAGA cultist Owens argued that people only accept evolution because they were brainwashed by “modern Satanists.” It only got worse from there. The clip was first picked up by Media Matters.
Followed by a transcript from her rant at Media Matters. And then very patient point by point replies to her charges. Concluding:
Maybe the most disturbing thing about that rant is her utter conviction that she’s right. There’s nothing ignorant people won’t buy when it’s being sold to them by someone with confidence—just ask the Republican Party or Goop customers—no matter what the facts show.
It’s the same reason Ken Ham has any sort of following; when Creationists insist that the world and humans were all poofed into existence one day—regardless of the fossil record, DNA, or whatever other pieces of evidence scientists can point to—there are countless people who will cling to the myth.
The truth can feel irrelevant when the lies are so damn comforting.
I’ve long thought that people cling to religion, and reject science, is because the former offers such simple, comforting explanations. And that’s, ironically, how the species has survived.
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One more, about the Christian response to the Olympics.
Esquire, Bryle B. Suralta, 2 days ago, via: It’s Not Blasphemy. It’s You., subtitled “All this outrage against such a harmless tableau reeks of such annoying intellectual laziness.”
And this applies to all who align to a particular ideology, such as a religion, and know nothing else about the rest of the world.
It’s gotten a little too predictable, it seems. Watching this so-called “blasphemous” tableau at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, I can already sense the misplaced outrage that was about to come. Of course, they were going to think about Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” as such iconography is too embedded in the dominant Christian worldview. Of course, they were going to get pissy about drag queens and transgender models and strange blue men, because, for some odd reason, these groups are still imperceptible to the prudish mind. Of course, of all things, they’ll cry blasphemy, the most boring of all accusations in art.
But the thing is, it wasn’t a satire about the “Last Supper.” The supposed parody that raised such hell among the righties and the religious was a reinterpretation of Dionysus, the Greek God of pleasure and wine. The public was given a picture of a Bacchanalia, borrowed somewhat from Jan Harmens van Bijlert’s 1635 oeuvre “The Feast of the Gods” (although blue Dionysus is said to have been more of a reference to “Bacchanal” by the Baroque painter Michaelina Woutier), depicting the Gods celebrating Thetis and Peleus’ wedding. There’s a reverence shown in this for the Parisian historical context, as well as Greek mythology, that often gets forgotten because of all these needless mental acrobatics. It was a rewarding spectacle, really.
