Disinformation

Originally published: 9/14/2024

Original post: https://coalm.blogspot.com/2024/09/disinformation.html

I now know the moment when I realized that Disinformation was a huge problem, specifically for conservatives from the older generation (Baby Boomers). The year was 2017 and my father was incensed that Pete Carroll would allow a flag burning in the Seattle Seahawks locker room. He believed this happened with every fiber of his being. He read a throw away article with a not all that impressive photoshopped picture of Michael Bennett holding a burning United States flag. Not until I told my father to look up whether this event was real did he finally understand that he had been duped. That makes it sound more eventful that it actually was. He didn't thank me. No remorse for being wrong. Really there was no recognition that what he previously believed was incorrect. He only temporarily turned off his flamethrower of anger and hatred. Then it was on to the next thing he was told to be angry about. I'll let you guess where he received all of his information, and you would be right. It was at that moment that I understood that my dad was a mark. This man had volunteered to consume a steady supply of "news" that he liked, which apparently did not matter if it was accurate or not. This stream of information was designed to anger this mark and feed his insatiable hunger to fuel his vitriol. And it worked. Every. Time. Dad passed away about a year later. He never righted his own ship. When he was too sick/weak to replenish his supply of disinformation, he had nothing to be angry about because there was no one telling him what to be angry about. He calmed down because his supply of anger fuel was turned off, not because of some self-improvement epiphany. He was always stubborn, so him not changing his own behavior was not a surprise to me. What surprised me was his willingness to shelf his curiosity and critical thinking skills. Characteristics he used to have in abundance and taught me how to use simply disappeared. I lost my dad to manipulative, inaccurate, hate-inciting, propaganda many years before he passed away. He had succumbed to this misinformation many years before he succumbed to cancer.