It is a continued irony. The fuel driving the angry wearers of red hats, those who fervently seek a bygone world with concrete truths, a simpler time awash in black-and-white thinking, have wrapped themselves in a fox-cloak that shields them from fact or data – the very thing that might deliver them to their holy land. Science, the lodestone of reason, the giver of hard truth, is the first thing they deny. Their wizard, magnified through a foxy megaphone, has magically transformed facts into threats, assaults on ham-headed belief.
And, so, we continue the dance of two competing narratives.
Science tells us the climate is changing and human activity is driving the change. Carbon emissions sits atop the list of greenhouse gases. It is a fact. Think of it this way: narrative number one: the west coast burns with record-breaking forest fires, the gulf coast is pounded by record-breaking storms because, as science tells us, the globe is warming. Narrative number two: the west coast is on fire because, as the denier expounds, the good people of California haven’t adequately raked their forests.
Repeat a lie long enough and often enough and it will become a mantra.
Hoax. Hoax. Hoax. Fake. Fake. Fake.
It is the national equivalent of an anorexic looking into a mirror and seeing someone who needs to stop eating. No amount of evidence will penetrate the disorder. It is deadly to be so deluded.
And so, we arrive at the election. A continued tale of two narratives. In the complete absence of evidence, forest-rakers, climate-change-deniers, scream across a canyon of missing evidence, “FRAUD!”
Narrative number one: all legitimate votes were counted with every possible safeguard in place making sure it was a fair election and Biden accrued the most votes (sidebar: seriously, in these times with a raging pathological liar in the president’s seat, can you imagine any state not doubling and tripling their vote checking? That is, in fact, what happened. There has never been an election with so many safeguards).
Narrative number two: “HOAX! FRAUD. FAKE. CHEAT.” The red hat team screamed their mantra even before the votes had been cast and carry on their chant even though less votes were cast for their candidate (sidebar #2: their guy also screamed “hoax, fraud, cheat” throughout the 2016 campaign until he won the electoral college and then, magically, everything was legitimate. Keep in mind that he also empaneled a commission to prove that there was FRAUD when he lost the popular vote. His panel found no evidence of voter fraud. None. Zero.)
The evidence of voter fraud in these-never-sometimes-united-un-united-states is statistically zero. That has always been true. It is true – especially true – today.
It’s a pattern and it’s more than exhausting. No amount of forest-raking will change the reality of climate change. No amount of bullying or cries that the sky is falling will change the vote count.
Ignorance is not always about a lack of education. Sometimes it is an absolute dedication to a story that has no merit. It is to build a house-of-belief on shifting sand and claim-in-the-face-of-hard-proof that it is built on solid stone.
Kerri’s been humming this song all week. Time for a cool change. Yes. It is way past time. Her humming is like a rain dance, an invocation of life-giving relief from a truth-drought.
The rain has come; the election is over. Perhaps, the earth will cool, the narratives will unify. A boy can dream.
read Kerri’s blog post about COOL CHANGE
Filed under: Merely A Thought Monday, Pattern, Story | Tagged: belief, Biden, Biden/Harris, climate change, competing narratives, cool change, data, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fact, global warming, ignorance, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lies, little river band, mantra, pattern, proof, science, story, truth, vote |
The Direction of Intention 
I puzzled aloud to someone or other in the week after election day what could possess a mind like that of our current president to so consistently cry FRAUD! HOAX! FAKE! at any bit of reality that failed to align with his.
Pre-schoolers’ arguments are typically far more thoughtfully nuanced.
We heard it before he came to office. We suffered it ad nauseam while he occupied the office. We can no doubt expect more of the same to come. (Though hopefully at lower decibel levels now that the movers and shakers in the mass media have finally discovered they controlled that little mute button all along.)
My crack-pot arm-chair analyst’s theory is pretty simple. The man’s entire life–every last one of his “successes”–has been achieved through cheating, lying, weaseling, out right theft, deceit and generally playing fast and loose with the rules most of us follow largely out of long habit and without second thought because that’s what we learned from our parents and first grade teachers.
He knows this.
He is therefore compelled to believe that is the way everyone achieves success. How else is he to be expected to view other’s wins–especially those that come at some cost to him?
If you’ve only always won by cheating ALL wins by others = cheating.
As for his Acolytes, his Squad of Enablers and his True Believers I got nothin’. I will go to the grave mystified that so many otherwise “regular folks” could be so deluded for so long and by so little substance. I will always fervently hope a significant number will reflect and finally see him for who he really is not now and has never been. And I will just as fervently hope we don’t see a recurrence of this sort of mass hysteria anytime soon.
It is scary.
People are dying. Lots of them.
Our one and only home may be dying.
Those are just two clear examples of what NOT FRAUD! NOT HOAX! NOT FAKE! looks like.
Of course–if it’s any comfort to anyone who feels similarly–there will come a day for this sad little man (as it will for each of us) when he can cry FRAUD! HOAX! FAKE! just once more.
Then we’ll all get some peace and quiet.
As they shout from the pews, “Amen” to that.