The Big Lie and How It Travels

After White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer audaciously lied, in his first news media briefing, about the attendance estimates at Friday's presidential inauguration, a friend on Facebook posted an analysis that has since gone viral on social media, particularly on Twitter.  For instance, Oscar-winning composer John Legend, Helen Hayes award-winning actor Will Gartshore, and Republican political consultant Ana Navarro all tweeted a screenshot of the mini-essay to their thousands of Twitter followers.

The provocative analysis has caused a stir -- a real conversation about facts, lies, and propaganda -- so, since the original author gave his permission to "copy and paste" his status as long as his name was removed and the originator remained anonymous, I'm offering it here to expand its reach. It deserves to be read, reposted, restated, and challenged.

The White House

If you are puzzled by the bizarre "press conference" put on by the White House press secretary this evening (angrily claiming that Trump's inauguration had the largest audience in history, accusing them of faking photos and lying about attendance), let me help explain it. This spectacle served three purposes:

1. Establishing a norm with the press: they will be told things that are obviously wrong and they will have no opportunity to ask questions. That way, they will be grateful if they get anything more at any press conference. This is the PR equivalent of "negging," the odious pick-up practice of a particular kind of horrible man (e.g., Donald Trump).

2. Increasing the separation between Trump's base (1/3 of the population) from everybody else (the remaining 2/3). By being told something that is obviously wrong—that there is no evidence for and all evidence against, that anybody with eyes can see is wrong—they are forced to pick whether they are going to believe Trump or their lying eyes. The gamble here—likely to pay off—is that they will believe Trump. This means that they will regard media outlets that report the truth as "fake news" (because otherwise they'd be forced to confront their cognitive dissonance.)

U.S. Capitol

3. Creating a sense of uncertainty about whether facts are knowable, among a certain chunk of the population (which is a taking a page from the Kremlin, for whom this is their preferred disinformation tactic). A third of the population will say "clearly the White House is lying," a third will say "if Trump says it, it must be true," and the remaining third will say "gosh, I guess this is unknowable." The idea isn't to convince these people of untrue things, it's to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political process entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine.

This is laying important groundwork for the months ahead. If Trump's White House is willing to lie about something as obviously, unquestionably fake as this, just imagine what else they'll lie about. In particular, things that the public cannot possibly verify the truth of. It's gonna get real bad.

The point is, if the Trump administration and the President himself are willing to lie about such petty things as the number of people who were or were not on the National Mall on January 20, what will they do when they want to send American soldiers into battle in some far-off place? What will they do when the Bureau of Labor Statistics issues a monthly unemployment figures that is unflattering to the Administration? What will they do when the number of anti-Administration protesters far outnumbers the guests at the inauguration?

A final note: Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau proves himself amazingly adept at interpreting Donald Trump. His comic strip today, which had to have been drawn days before the inauguration, as the President in the White House challenging the news media's reports on the inauguration's attendance numbers. You can't make this stuff up.

Update: Russian chess champion and political dissident Garry Kasparov made a similar, and pithy, point on Twitter:

The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) December 13, 2016

Social Media Mischief at The Washington Times?

The Washington Times has an article on its web site about Thursday's Capitol Hill hearing on Don't Ask Don't Tell, the now-repealed policy that prohibits the service of open and honest gay and lesbian Americans in the military.

The headline and subhead read:

Services OK with ending ‘don’t ask’
No ‘push-back,’ brass reports to Capitol Hill

The first paragraph says:

Preparations for repealing the military’s ban on openly homosexual service members have proceeded very well — even among Marines, who have not demonstrated any resistance, the Marine Corps commandant testified Thursday.

If you click to share the story on Facebook, however, the headline reads:

Lawmaker skeptical of repeal of 'don't ask' - Washington Times

And the excerpted first paragraph, designed to appear on Facebook's feed, says:

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said on Thursday that he is troubled by the rushed way the Obama administration is moving to repeal the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the U.S. military.

Similarly, if you click to share on Twitter, you get this retweet:

RT @washtimes Congress skeptical of repeal of military's gay ban - Washington Times http://bit.ly/i1eqHq

However, if you click on a different Twitter icon, you get this:

Services OK with ending 'don't ask' - Washington Times http://t.co/la0otOW via @AddThis

(Note that the shortened URLs are different in the two different Tweets.)

And if you click on a different Facebook button, you get this:

Services OK with ending 'don't ask' - Washington Times
Preparations for repealing the military's ban on openly homosexual service members have proceeded very well — even among Marines, who have not demonstrated any resistance, the Marine Corps commandant testified Thursday.

Confused? I was.

It looks like somebody at the Washington Times -- I don't know who, but it's certainly not the reporter who wrote the story, Shaun Waterman -- is attempting to put a spin on the story through social media that is not borne out by the actual report itself.

I just noticed this by chance.  An important question to ask is, does the Washington Times do this with other articles, or is this a one-off phenomenon?  What are the ethics of changing the headline and the emphasis of a story when spreading it through social media sites?  Is this worthy of criticism?

Your thoughts are welcome in the comments space, below.

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Black Friday Approaches

The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally one of the most active shopping days of the year. The tradition is not new -- even Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the importance of the day to the economy when he moved the date of Thanksgiving in order to expand the Christmas shopping season during the Great Depression. An article on the web site of the FDR Library and Museum explains (under the title, "The Year We Had Two Thanksgivings"):

At the beginning of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency, Thanksgiving was not a fixed holiday; it was up to the President to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation to announce what date the holiday would fall on. However, Thanksgiving was always the last Thursday in November because that was the day President Abraham Lincoln observed the holiday when he declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863. Franklin Roosevelt continued that tradition, but he soon found that tradition was difficult to keep in extreme circumstances such as the Great Depression. His first Thanksgiving in office, 1933, fell on November 30th, the last day of the month, because November had five Thursdays that year. Since statistics showed that most people did not do their Christmas shopping until after Thanksgiving, business leaders feared they would lose money, especially during the Depression, because there were only 24 shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They asked Franklin Roosevelt to make Thanksgiving one week earlier. President Roosevelt ignored those concerns in 1933, but when Thanksgiving once again threatened to fall on the last day of November in 1939, FDR reconsidered the request and moved the date of Thanksgiving up one week. Thanksgiving 1939 would be held, President Roosevelt proclaimed, on November 23rd and not November 30th.

Changing the date of Thanksgiving seemed harmless enough, but in actuality proved quite controversial. It was so upsetting that thousands of letters poured into the White House once President Roosevelt announced the date change. Some retailers were pleased because they hoped the extra week of Christmas shopping would increase profits, but smaller businesses complained they would lose business to larger stores. Other companies that depended on Thanksgiving as the last Thursday of November lost money; calendar makers were the worst hit because they printed calendars years in advance and FDR made their calendars out of date for the next two years. Schools were also disrupted by Roosevelt's decision; most schools had already scheduled vacations and annual Thanksgiving Day football games by the time they learned of Thanksgiving's new date and had to decide whether or not to reschedule everything. Moreover, many Americans were angry that Roosevelt tried to alter such a long-standing tradition and American values just to help businesses make more money.*

As opposition grew, some states took matters into their own hands and defied the Presidential Proclamation. Some governors declared November 30th as Thanksgiving. And so, depending upon where one lived, Thanksgiving was celebrated on the 23rd and the 30th.

While "Black Friday" -- a term that seems to date to the 1970s -- has the reputation of being the busiest shopping day of the year, various sources (snopes.com and Wikipedia, among others) note that in recent years, the Saturday before Christmas has taken the title, while the Friday after Thanksgiving is much farther down the list, ranking between the fourth and eighth busiest, depending on the year.

What is more important is that Black Friday tends to be the day on which most retail businesses switch from red ink to black ink on their account books. That is, up until the day after Thanksgiving, most of these businesses have not yet turned a profit, which they can then use to reward their investors or help grow the business for future years.

When the term "Black Friday" first entered the general lexicon, many retailers seemed embarrassed by it, since the term "black" is associated with things sinister, sad, and discomfiting. More recently, however, many businesses have embraced it.

For example, Amazon.com has set up a special web page for Black Friday purposes. Amazon has also created a widget that will update specials throughout the course of the day.

In response to what are perceived as the excesses of Black Friday, anti-consumer activists have created a movement called "Buy Nothing Day," which often involves street theatre, agitprop, and chanting as well as a decision not to purchase anything that day. The origins can be traced to about 15 years ago, according to the official "International Buy Nothing Day" organization:

what is now coming to be firmly known around the planet as the World Buy Nothing Day campaign traces to several initiatives, places and names. The first "No Shop Day" (as it was initially called) that we know of was started in 1992 as a personal initiative by Ted Dave, a Canadian who made his living by working in the advertising world. His idea was to organize a collective protest against the unrelenting calls to overconsume, with the advertising and marketing professions at the core. His original motto was: "Enough is enough!"

And now there is a response to the response. Two different Facebook "events" have appeared, created independently of each other, with tongue-in-cheek but also with a serious purpose in mind.

The first one I found is called "Buy Everything Day" and it explains itself thusly:

On November 23, scores of misguided people will send a message about consumerism by participating in Buy Nothing Day.

Buy Nothing Day likely attracts people of a certain philosophical and political persuasion (read: lefty, pro-worker, anti-corporate, etc, etc, etc); however, paradoxically, those disproportionately affected (theoretically, or course, if persuading the masses to stay out of the shops was possible) would be low-income hourly employees and not corporations.

The idea that consumption is a bad thing is, well, a bad thing. Consumption is inherently good, and buying stuff makes gives us jobs and makes our economy work.

And seriously, since you'll just make up for it the next day, what's the point? Therefore, I respectfully suggest you save up your pennies and on November 23, shop until you drop.

I thought the phrase "Buy Everything Day" was a bit hyperbolic, so I was pleased to find the more (to my mind, at least) modestly named "Buy Something Day," which originated in Sweden (yes, Virginia, there are free-market economic thinkers even in Sweden) and has clear and sustainable goals:

If people keep their money in their mattress, the economy will stagnate and stand still. When money's shifting owners, it creates synergical effects. Of course rich people will also benefit from money moving around - but ultimately, those who have less will gain more.

And fighting poverty must always come before opposing wealth.

Therefore - save what you must save for your family and yourself. But not for no reason. Spend the money you want to spend. When you keep your money in your wallet, you don't protest against Coca-Cola, McDonald's or Nestlé. They don't give a shit. You only protest against your local entrepreneurs and merchants. People who invest their lives in providing you with the stuff you want.

Every day should be the Buy Something Day.

(The date is, however, set to be in correspondence to the stupidest idea ever - at least since the death penalty and the European CAP - "Buy Nothing Day".)

Since the goals of each group are aligned with my own philosophy (see my article, "A Moral Case for Christmas Commercialism," which, I am told, has been "making the rounds of the Internet"), I signed up for both events. I hardly expect to be buying "everything" this Friday, but I do have my eye on at least one "something." As a matter of fact, I decided to put off a purchase until Friday just so I can do my bit. What I have in mind is a VCR/DVD recorder that I will use to archive the home movies my family made in the 1960s and 1970s (at least those that have already been converted to VHS).

Those of you who also want to play their part in "Buy Something Day" might just wander over to my Amazon.com wish list and pick out a Christmas gift for their favorite blogger.

Update: For news about Black Friday 2008 and new (but quirky) gift ideas, check out this Thanksgiving Day post.