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Syria and dogs and cats

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“How about instead of attacking Syria, we just send every 2014 graduating high school senior to college free of charge.”

Someone for whom I have tremendous respect said, in very excited all caps, that this is an amazing question. Exclamation point.

But it isn’t an amazing question, it’s totally inane. It has no bearing on reality whatsoever. There is no cost comparison between intervening in the civil war against the Assad regime versus putting several million high school seniors into college. It–belying it’s white suburban origin–automatically assumes that the best course for all high school seniors is to attend college. It doesn’t say to which colleges all these seniors should be assigned to. Does it include student housing? Will all college expenses be paid? Will scholarship programs be discontinued? How will we hire all the additional faculty and administrative staff to handle this vast increase in the number of college freshmen in the Fall of 2014. And what about afterward, when we are not sending all the 2015 high school seniors to college. Do we lay all the new hires off then? And what about that 2015 high school graduating class? Do they get screwed and pay for their own college? Or do they wait for the next war that we can avoid and instead send them to college? Iin the meantime they can go to a community college with the poor kids. And then what the hell do we do when all those class of 2014 high scool graduates hit the job market in 2018? Will jobs magically appear? Or will there be a tidal wave of interns making it unnecessary for corporations to pay any new hires at all?

There’s also no mention of nerve gas victims, but that, on Facebook, is beside the point so let’s not go there.

Instead let’s go to the fact that it was an inane comment that someone somewhere thought up in a flash and tweeted, smiling smugly because he had thought up the single rhetorical question that would end all debate whatsoever. Done. Simple as that. We don’t fire our missiles, all the kids go to college, and Assad says sorry, my bad, I won’t gas anyone again.

That’s Facebook reality. It’s all so easy. Hit the like button, then share, problem solved and we can get back to pictures of your cat. Just like that.

Sometimes I think that 90% of the commentary I’ve seen on Facebook regarding the Syrian crisis is utterly inane. Facebook is some fantasyland unbeholden to anything in the real world and where everything anybody says has complete validity. And the scary thing is that I would bet that most Facebook users get most–if not all–of their news from other Facebook posts. It’s madness. Intelligent dialog is impossible. You can see how the Sarah Palins and Michelle Bachmann’s thrive in the Facebook environment, because there is absolutely no fact checking done by anyone. None. In fact, to fact check someone’s post is considered bad manners. A no-no. Uncouth. It’s not right to point out, even politely, that someone is wrong or that the data they’re passing on is incorrect. Or is a flat out lie. Facebook is full of lies and disinformation because Facebook users automatically believe almost anything they see on Facebook, unless it is blatantly from the other side, in which case you automatically disbelieve it. Provided you can identify it as being from the other side. I’ve stopped pointing out to progressives when they pass on Tea Party propaganda because they either didn’t bother to read it carefully or didn’t bother to think about it. I just shake my head and delete the post.

It is so sad. Dialog in the ancient email days was so much deeper and thought out, and y’all recognized lies and bullshit when you saw it. Now you like and share it. No matter how blatantly bogus or badly thought out something is. Nothing is too good for all your Facebook friends. You all pass on bullshit information and inane opinion like a guy coughing and sneezing on everybody at work passes on the flu. It’s a pandemic of factual inaccuracies. It’s gotten to the point where you have no idea if what your friend just posted has any basis in reality at all. But if you’re ever gonna get in her pants you better hit the like button and quick, and then share it with everyone you know. Then post that puppy picture. Works every time.

And this is how maybe 90% of the public debate on Syria transpires. Post, like, share, puppy picture. Politicians and policy makers are stuck, wondering how the hell to deal with the new technology of public discourse. They are stuck dealing with a complex issue most of you insist on judging with a child-like simplicity. I wonder if there’s ever been a disconnect between reality and the ether like there is now.

And it can get brutally, unknowingly crass:

Before we launch a strike attack against Syria for using chemical weapons on their own people…..can we lob a few tomahawks at Monsanto for using them on ours?

A joke. Irony. Oh it’s serious, alright, but a serious joke. I don’t know how you can watch the footage of the Syrians civilians dying of nerve gas poisoning and make a joke like that. Or take your fears of GMO’s and compare them to the death agonies of those children poisoned by sarin. I’m sorry but I don’t understand how you can be so flippant. Maybe you didn’t watch the footage. Or maybe you did, but that was real world stuff and this is Facebook and the two don’t blend well. The anger and queasiness you felt watching those people die kind of melts away in a world of political one liners and kitty pictures. So why think about them at all?

OK, now for a picture of dogs and cats.

syrian pets
Hundreds of dead cats and dogs are removed from the streets of Damascus suburb hit by nerve gas attack–Daily Mail

You can find the story (with more pictures) here. It’s not easy reading.


Filed under: Think pieces Tagged: Assad, cats, class of 2014, college, college education, dogs, Facebook, GMO, interns, kittens, kitty picture, massacre, Michelle Bachmann, missiles, Monsanto, nerve gas, Obama, Progressives, propaganda, puppies, Sarah Palin, sarin, scholarships, Syria, Tea Party, Tomahawk missiles, university

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