Several months ago, noticing a fair number of "political" posts on the local community Facebook Page, I decided to set up a page for just such political discussions, and so Kootenay Debates was born.
We never had many "members" and it is difficult to know how many other random views we were getting, but, over the past months, arguments covered a wide range of topics, from vaccines (to be or not to be), government, climate change, science, GMOs, chemtrails, "Big Pharma", society (whether it existed or not), individualism, more government, American politics, Canadian politics and the voting system.
Counted among the page's members was a Libertarian/Anarchist, a couple of died-in-the-wool anti-vaxxers, several climate science deniers, several conspiracy theorists and a number of others who were just "normal". In short, the page's regular posters came mostly from the ranks of ordinary folk, with a small number of others that I came to see as the lunatic fringe.
I've posted earlier on some of the "discussions" that focused on vaccines, society, conspiracies, Ayn Rand, social goods and so on.
What became obvious fairly quickly was that some people really believed that "government" and "Big Pharma" was out to poison them (vaccines and other pharmaceuticals), and that there were no problems that could not be solved by less (or no) government and less (or no) regulation of any kind. It mattered not what vaccines had done in the past 70-odd years or that deregulation was one of the causes of the economic meltdown of 2007-8. It was simply a matter of sticking to same old talking points and re-writing history where necessary (a strategy used by the current Harper Government.... but I digress).
What also became obvious was that these views were supported by information that could easily be shown to be incorrect but that contrary facts made no difference to them at all. In some examples, the most outrageous posts made completely outlandish assertions. It was astonishing and rather disturbing to see such entrenched, uninformed beliefs.
Never being one to pass up an argument, I found time spent on Facebook increasing over time. The research I did to counter some of the most outlandish posts certainly made me better informed, and I suppose no educational experiences should be disparaged, but other than educating me, I wasn't sure what good it all was doing. I also started to wonder if it was even a good idea giving the lunatic fringe this platform for their viewpoints.
Eventually, I became bored with the same old Libertarian "answers" to everything, the same old misrepresentations of science, vaccines and climate change and decided to close the page down. As it happened, it was closed on April Fool's Day. Possibly appropriate.
If anything, this experience has made me much more hard-line in my own beliefs. Before, when someone happened to mention that they didn't "believe in" vaccines, I pretty much shrugged it off. As long as herd immunity was high enough, no problem. After seeing some of the nonsense these people based their "beliefs" on, I'm almost ready to start lobbying government to make vaccinations mandatory for school attendance or start charging parents with neglect if they don't vaccinate their children.
The Libertarians can be mostly written off as a very small subset of neo-liberal, regressive, pseudo-conservative nutters who believe "the market" can solve everything (free market fundamentalists) and that there are no societal issues, only individual issues. Some of it forms the basis for the wrongheaded direction of the current federal government, and I completely disagree with it. I have vowed to fight even harder to defeat such small-minded, wrong-headed philosophies when it comes to local, provincial and federal governance, because, IMHO, it's hurting the country.
There is more, but basically, I just grew bored and was spending too much time arguing with people who could not be persuaded that obvious facts were not just tentative opinions. Hearing the same refrain that "everyone's opinion had to be respected". I'm not the only one to question that "logic" and I've written about it elsewhere.
So, there it is. Social media, where every nutter is free to post anything they want and claim the moral and factual high ground. It's been said that the Internet and it's various sectors has made it easier for people to be informed. It's also had the opposite effect and I find it concerning.
No comments:
Post a Comment