April Fools Day may last all year if we dont wise up
Weve just survived another April Fools Day, when people question what they see online and on TV.
Once a year isnt enough. Skepticism ought to be Point A for everyone, always. Having a president who lies constantly is a serious problem; worse is the fact that his supporters dont care. But even after Trumps hopefully brief time in office, his and his partys threatening legacy will remain: our crisis of gullibility.
Its plausible the Republic will survive Trump and his weak-kneed, bought-off Congress; especially if this years election reflects an awakening to the danger we face. In question, however, is long-term sustainability with a significant portion of the electorate increasingly unable, unwilling or uninterested in separating truth from fiction. Not by accident, the answer begins to sound like no.
Born in the brain of Steve Bannon, bankrolled by the right-wing billionaire Mercer family, Cambridge Analytica is the final horseman of the information apocalypse, joining Fox news, right-wing radio screamers, and Russian troll farms. Trumpets are sounding, to ears that are deaf.
Cambridge Analytica, as everyone but Fox viewers knows by now, is an offshoot of the shady SCL group, a British outfit engaged by various autocrats and militaries around the world to produce psychological warfare against enemies and to bend elections. Having started technologically early in the game, their methods were variably effective. By the time Bannon saw the potential of mining social media, though, things had changed dramatically.
C.A. set up a shell corporation in Delaware, continuing to work overseas, digging up information on tens of millions of people via Facebook loopholes, computing their hot-buttons and vulnerabilities, and targeting them with massive amounts of specifically-curated disinformation. Their management is on record gloating that it didnt matter whether their offal was true; just that it was believed. Sexual blackmail was a tool, too. Its worth knowing they were hired in the U.S. only by right-wing players, including Trumps campaign and his newly-announced, Fox-featured national security adviser. Crooked Hillary was their invention. Made people forget who the real crook was, didnt it?
The effectiveness of such efforts is undeniable: bogus stories spread like oil-slicks, about Obama, the Clintons, their foundations; belief by the befuddled that Trump has never lied, has fulfilled each of his campaign promises; that he turned around a wrecked economy; that millions voted illegally for Hillary Clinton. The legality of Cambridge Analyticas methods is in dispute, as is its impact on the election. (A just-published study suggested fake news influenced enough voting behavior to have changed the outcome [Ohio State University: tinyurl.com/2fakenews].) To be determined is the connection, if any, between Bannons baby and Russia; its noteworthy, meanwhile, that Russia seems to have had the same targeting information and tools as C.A., and that C.A. has offices in Russia.
Theres a psychological phenomenon known as the backfire effect: the tendency of some people, when shown data disproving a preferred belief, to believe it even more strongly. Though not confined to a single demographic, studies show prominence among self-identified conservatives, a convenient fact for exploitation by truth doesnt matter political purveyors. (Liberals information-processing deficits seem mostly to revolve around alternative medicine, anti-vaccination, and anti-GMO nonsense. Bad enough; but at least it doesnt elect autocrats, kakistocrats and theocrats.)
http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/schwab-april-fools-day-may-last-all-year-if-we-dont-wise-up/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=0f85a5dd8c-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-0f85a5dd8c-228635337