Remember this?
It was one of several outrageous lies that I picked up in a very short time one day on the FaceTubes. As is my wont, I futzed with it and posted it back on this one person’s feed:
…with the comment that what interested me most was what said individual was going to do with the post, i.e., was he going to leave a demonstrable, documented lie up on his feed? Was his hatred of Michelle Obama so strong that he was willing to be exposed as a liar?
You will remember that this individual posted this on the same day:
He finally responded yesterday.
One has to decide which one is true. I believe the first one to be true . That is my opinion and Mine is the only one I have the right to voice. And I don’t have to justify to you or anyone else why I feel this way.
What are we to do? He believes that Michelle Obama said that “white folks are what’s wrong with America.”1 If I pushed him, he would be utterly unable to document her doing so; it has been documented that she didn’t say it.2 But he believes she did, and he doesn’t have to “justify” why he feels this way.
I imagine I can guess, though.
What are we to do? A third of our nation is unshakeable in their “belief” about how reality is structured, and they are wrong.
I’m not responding to this individual. It would be pointless. There is literally nothing I could do that would allow him to step back and reassess his stance. Nothing: not reason, not shame, not suasion of any kind. He has the freedom of making up whatever suits his very narrow understanding of what our nation is about, and he’s not giving that up just because it’s not true.
He is, of course, voting for Donald J. Trump.
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1 And in his case, I am inclined to agree.
2 Sidebar: I remember thinking shortly after Snopes.com began its debunking career that it would not take long before the crowd being debunked would start screeching that it was a liberal front, funded by George Soros, and generally fake. That is exactly what has happened; I encountered it on another person’s feed last week. When I asked how he would determine what was true, he blathered about using his experience, finding sources, etc.—exactly what Snopes.com does. Oy.