OK, so the time I had to devote to posting on this blog might have been limited over the last couple of weeks, but the recent feedback I have been getting keeps proving the point I have been making and the point in my new novel. And yes, I have been keeping an eye on the constant, downward-spiraling insanity that is the current phase of conspiracy theorizing in America.
And please, go ahead and scroll through the feedback my last couple of posts have been receiving to understand what I am talking about. Please look at the astonishingly repulsive, asinine, and cruel comments about the Catherine Oxenberg book in the previous post.
I don’t delete any comments from this blog, even if I don’t have the time to always reply and even if I don’t agree with what they have to say. But I will criticize as loudly as I can.
Conspiracy theories are among the biggest threats this culture is facing today. It is time for intellectuals, for academics, for the sciences to start pushing back. The conspiracy community today are NOT alternative thinkers who dare to be critical. They are not offering legitimate challenges to the status quo. They are malignant, dangerous threat to rationality, the downward slide of society into the new dark ages where superstition and unprovable claims demand (and often get) as much credence as empirical facts.
As an educator in communication and media studies, I am able to do my part in combating this by teaching skills in the true critical analysis of media messages. Are the claims being made in the mass media, in the alternative media like the various social media and Internet forums, provable beyond a shadow of a doubt or not? If they are not, they are true fake news.
Plus, when I teach my course on conspiracy theories and entertainment, I do my damnedest to make sure that no one leaves that class ever again thinking that Alex Jones is a reliable source of information, that the Illuminati might be working on setting up a new world order, that lizard aliens are running the world and keeping everyone asleep with chemtrails spread by Devil-worshipping airline pilots flying out of Denver International Airport.
In a world where people still argue that the world is flat and put children’s lives at risk by refusing to vaccinate, it might be the most important thing I am doing.
And hey, here’s a bit of not so hidden knowledge…the Illuminati, this oh-so dangerous secret society our conspiracy-obsessed subculture of paranoia is so frightened of believed in such threatening ideas as the separation of church and state, representative government, equal rights for women, and the primacy of reason and rationality in life.
That sounds pretty good to me!
Seriously! I think I’d like to join the Illuminati if they really exist. Where I can get a get a hold of the application paperwork? Can I download it from a website?
Seriously! If the Illuminati admissions department is reading this, let’s talk…
I can totally keep any secrets about where Hitler’s cloned brain is hidden in the Bohemian Grove! For reals!!!
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