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When Friends Go Down the Rabbit Hole [1]
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Date: 2023-03-08
Several years ago a friend I hadn’t seen in a few years dropped by. We were sitting on the back patio shooting the shit and drinking beer when I looked up and saw a low, convoluted contrail. I pointed to it and sarcastically said, “chemtrails!” I was horrified when he said, “Yes!” and went on to denounce the conspiracy inflicting them on us.
I asked him, “Where’s the evidence?”
“There are videos.”
“Who’s doing it?”
“They are!”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“The government!”
“You really think they could keep something like that secret?”
“Yes!”
“That’d be a massive cover-up.”
“It is!”
“What are they spraying?”
“Chemicals!”
“What kind?”
“That’s kind of the whole point — it’s secret.”
“Why are they spraying them?”
“To control us or reduce our fertility!”
“How do you know that?”
And on, and on, and on.
This whole exchange shocked me, as he’s a bright guy, a former military intelligence officer, and has always been quite liberal.
I didn’t think much more about it until I was talking recently to another old friend who’s been a dedicated peace activist for decades and who’s been jailed for civil disobedience—and he started spinning conspiracy theories. This time it was about Sy Hersh’s poorly sourced article accusing the U.S. of bombing the Nordstream Pipeline. I pointed out just how poorly sourced the piece was (a single anonymous source), and he still insisted that it was true, mentioning as evidence several of the evil deeds the U.S. government has done over the years. I couldn’t disagree with him about the dirty deeds (the Iraq War, Vietnam War, Cointelpro, Iran/Contra, etc.), but again pointed out that the evidence was very scanty in this case.
Then he started spouting Russian disinformation about the Ukraine War, saying that it was the U.S./NATO’s fault, that the Ukrainians were making and using chemical weapons, and that the U.S. should stop supporting Ukraine. I told him that that didn’t jibe with what I was reading, and asked him where he was getting his information. Two YouTube channels. (One might have been RT.) At that point I told him I got my info from regularly reading over a dozen well known news sources ranging from center-left (The Guardian, El País, NPR) to center-right (Reuters, AP, Der Spiegel). Could they all be wrong?
Yes, of course they could.
He went on to mention the disgraceful role of the U.S. mass media (NY Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc.) in selling the Iraq War prior to the invasion, and why wouldn’t the same thing be happening now? I replied that those were all corporate news outlets in a single country, and all were thoroughly cowed in the wake of 9/11; I also repeated that I was getting my info from over a dozen independent news outlets on three continents and they couldn’t all be part of a conspiracy. He still wouldn’t budge.
I finally said, “Let’s agree to disagree.”
I’m still sickened and saddened by the whole exchange, and I was left pondering what can be done to keep others from going down the rabbit hole. Fortunately,there are a few things that help.
In the short run, it helps to follow the standard advice to those who have friends or family members in cults: Don’t get angry, don’t disconnect, don’t distance yourself, and don’t insult them. This is important, because if you maintain a connection with them, they’ll at least occasionally be exposed to a rational point of view and won’t be totally isolated; and the more isolated they are, the more likely they’ll be to associate only with those who share their unhinged beliefs. In other words, they’ll be immersed in an echo chamber and will spiral further and further down into crazytown.
In the long run, the jaw-dropping gullibility of a wide swath of the public points to the terrible state of American education—and what’s needed to (at least partially) fix it. What’s desperately needed there, especially in the high schools, are critical thinking courses and science education that actually teaches science. Decade after decade, all too many science courses have only taught lists of facts, not what really matters—how you arrive at those facts, the scientific method, which in itself is a good introduction to critical thinking.
As long as people don’t know how to think logically and how to evaluate information, they’ll continue to fall prey to demagogues and disinformation, and we’ll continue to drown in conspiracy theories.
[END]
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