Fake News over the years

You Want Fake News? Donald Trump didn’t invent the concept. Americans have been deceived for over two hundred years and humans have been deceived for millennia. Here is a small sampling of some big items, not in chronological order:

           Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Promoted by inside neocons under Dubbya to swindle half of the American People and a majority of Congress to support the invasion.

            The benefit of “The Surge” in Iraq: Marketed heavily by Dubbya to get Congressional approval. In hindsight, the benefit was not so much. All deaths and injuries were in vain; Iraq remains a mess. The United States lost that war.

            The necessity of the Viet Nam War to prevent domino-effect Communism. Anti-communism in the west has always been more of a religion than a justified fear. False news of American victories flooded television throughout the war. Reporting of U.S. losses was suppressed. Lies from Nixon and LBJ were rampant. 58K Americans dead. Well over a million Vietnamese killed. The United States lost that war, big time.

            The War of 1812. Guess what? It wasn’t Britain that provoked that war as history textbooks would like us to believe. It was the U.S. attempting a land grab of Eastern Canada. But Canada, with the help of the English (and First Nations), fought them off and no boundaries were changed. A total waste of effort and life. In essence, another war lost by the U.S.

           

            Slavery. The self-righteous North weren’t as opposed to slavery as we have been led to think. Unprecedented U.S. wealth from cotton export profits could never have occurred without the strong support of Wall Street bankers and investors. The Civil War came late to that party after much of the wealth had been made.

            Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone shooter. The Warren Commission was fake from the start: created by LBJ to avoid a bona fide investigation that would have uncovered dirt he needed to leave six feet underground. Much of the Warren Report has been refuted, but much remains classified to continue to suppress the truth.

            Suppression of real news is, in a sense, fake news. Bernie Sander’s momentum in the 2016 primaries was largely suppressed by the ostensibly liberal Network News media. The networks were all in the thrall of Hilary.

            Suppression by Trump of scientific evidence concerning the cause of climate change. Is this the evil of greed (Koch bros come to mind) or merely Trump and his follower’s astonishingly low intellect?

            The virgin birth of Jesus. This could be the mother of all fake news (along with Creationism) and points to the fact that humans had a need to believe stuff that is made-up. Does anyone still believe this nonsense? The idea of a virgin birth wasn’t even thought of until one hundred years after Jesus’s crucifixion.

            The resurrection of Jesus. Like immaculate conception, the resurrection was totally fake news to coerce commoners to follow Jesus’s requirements for admission into a trumped-up afterlife. Woohoo! Afterlife with Jesus! Send in your money!

            Miracles. All miracles are products of abstract human thinking. No miracle has ever been proven. But miracles still seem to enthrall the American people. Western Europe not so much these days: They seem to have grown up somewhat.

            Heaven and Hell. Both entirely fake. Fanciful inventions designed to instill fear and to control human behavior.

            The promise of sex with virgins in heaven as a reward for murdering infidels. That promise probably takes the cake when it comes to fake. By the way, what do women who blow themselves up get other than freedom from their oppressive husbands?

            The Bible, the Koran, the Torah. All fiction, all fake, though certainly invented and edited by human beings who were considered clever and were respected in their time.

            The concept of hating Jews because ‘Jews killed Jesus’. Ladies and gentlemen of Christian faith: if Jesus hadn’t been crucified, you wouldn’t have your religion! You should rejoice his being ‘killed by Jews’. Come up with another reason to hate Jews. You can do it. I know you can. The rest of the world has hated Jews for more than two thousand years and continues to do so. Since the Holocaust, however, they have learned a thing or two about survival.

            In summary, fake news wasn’t born yesterday. It’s what humanity has been all about from the beginning.

To learn more, go to these references:

1. Oliver Stone’s series: The Untold History of the United States. It will open your eyes. (Netflix)

2. The Half Has Never Been Told. Edward E. Baptist. The real history of slavery in the United States.

3. The Swerve: How The World Became Modern.  Stephen Greenblatt. How Christianity nearly squelched human pursuit of happiness.

4. Sapiens. Yuval Noah Harari. A brief history of Humankind.

5. The End of Faith. Sam Harris. The first book from the most articulate of modern atheist thinkers.