The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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When you read in your newsfeeds that the Russian people are under the impression that the so-called war in Ukraine is really an intervention to save the Ukrainians from the Nazi government that subjugates them, you might wonder how it is, in this Information Age, how misinformed they can be. Granted, the Russians pretty much control the news outlets and if you were to say the intervention was really an invasion, well, good luck to you, Comrade, in your new home at the gulag. The internet still works, the truth is actually out there, available at the click of a computer, a little curiosity might uncover the facts.

But no, the Russians are like us, intellectually lazy, gullible as folks who send money to help Nigerian princes and altogether more interested in stories that feed their gripes and grievances. Those damn Ukrainians, discriminating against Russian speaking citizens, preventing them from rejoining the Soviet Union. One of the tenets of democracy we used to be taught in grade school was that we all have the right to express our opinion. So be it. But let’s agree that not all opinions are equal and some are undeserving of respect.

Bill Gates gave a speech the other day saying he was surprised, surprised!, that people would accuse him of creating vaccines that are dangerous and deadly. He argued that his vaccines had saved countless thousands of lives. What the ….? he wondered. You can still hear folks out there in the hinterlands of talk radio screaming for Fauci to be locked him. Or worse. If the mobs can call for the heads of people who have dedicated a goodly part of their lives and money toward helping mankind, what do you think they would do to you when they come looking for new culprits, fresh scapegoats and more targets for their rage.

Ignorance might be bliss, but not to those around the ones whose beliefs are based on mumbo jumbo and hot meat politics. Keep an eye on them, they’re arming themselves with pitchforks and AK-47’s. And one of our political parties seems to be encouraging them….

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My Pop, bless his 95 year old heart, keeps sending me political e-mails. I guess he just wants his firstborn to be kept informed of the events of the world. So today I got one that was titled ‘Mystery of the Century’. It chronicles more than just one mystery, it had plenty more than just the usual Obama birth certificate. These folks go on as if no Hawaiian birth certificate had ever been produced so obviously evidence to the contrary of their conspiracy theory doesn’t really pass muster. Additionally, they wanted to see the Obama kids’ birth certificates, something real fishy there, someone hiding something, but I never could figure what the something was. And oh, how about the ‘fact’ that no one seems to remember Barack in the colleges he pretends to have gone to? Or the law degrees for himself and Michele that were voided, how about that?????

There were more, of course, maybe too many to fact check for my old man or the folks who send these e-mails from the rocks they live under, but when I talked to him he chuckled and said, well, they’re interesting, don’tcha think? So one by one I had to send him the fact check FALSE results of my painstaking research. And of course, I got no response. And won’t.

Maybe the Russians are behind this, maybe the alt-right, maybe the Trump machine (if I thought they were that capable), maybe it’s just the times we live in where the most outrageous lies are propagated for god only knows what reason other than to piss off people like me. All’s fair, I guess, in love and politics for some folks. Deep down I think folks are making money somehow. Monetizing their ranting and raving, boosting their ‘hits’ and capitalizing on the gullible.

… Course, on the upside, I been noticing this blogsite that usually gets less hits than a bottom dwelling baseball team has suddenly been raising its batting average, oh, by ten times the last couple of days and no doubt whatsoever in my pencil-shaved mind, the Russian trolls have found me and are using my innocuous words to their evil intent. I know I should complain to the FBI or the President or someone in charge of keeping the flames of liberty from flickering out completely, but … well, I thought I’d wait a day or three, maybe a month or more, years if necessary, to see what advertisers might flock to my clickbait. I mean, I’m all for freedom and democracy and all that fluffy stuff. But we’re talking capitalism here, in its rawest truest form. And if that doesn’t trump liberty and justice, well, I might as well move to Russia. Actually, I suspect the Russians are already here so why bother moving there? And Vlad, if you’re listening in, my agents are standing by for any lucrative offers….

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Something weird is going on down here on the techno-challenged South End. Something troubling and as yet unexplained. The weather, for one, but I don’t think this is causative. Although, since none of us believe in science anymore, the possibility is there that it could be. Make up something, anything, or better yet, imagine some conspiracy, then forward it to all your ‘friends’. Post it on your social medias. Hope the Russians amplify it on who knows how many websites. When it shows up on Fox and Friends, you know it’s probably true. Fair and balanced, at least. As good a test as any so far as the President is concerned.

We used to play a game in grade school called Telephone. At least I think it was called Telephone. Or maybe it was Gossip. Who cares, make up a name of your own. You start out with a sentence, something like: Tomorrow if it snows we’ll get out of school. The first person who gets this turns to the desk next door and whispers it in the ear of another student who then passes it on to the next and so on. By the time it gets back around after about 30 iterations, it was amazing what sausage emerged from the grinder. Nothing like the beginning and of course the whole point to us little munchkins in 4th grade was how distorted information got the more folks passed it on.

Course in our modern computerized times, the message is pretty much just copied and pasted or else forwarded whole. Not much room for message evolution. But what we got instead is all this phony baloney information being disseminated by … someone. For some unknown reason … For what nefarious purpose? The Russians pick it up, amplify it with all their phony websites that look semi-legit and voila, half the stuff you get on Facebook or Yahoo news or Twitter is really Fake News, just what the President keeps saying about anything which seems negative about him. You don’t know WHAT to believe anymore and so, in this miraculous Age of Information we live in, we have filled our brains with digital poop. Most of which makes us angry and polarized and ultimately Cynical. Which I suspect is the whole point. We don’t believe the media, we don’t believe the President, we don’t believe politicians, we don’t buy Science, we don’t believe in much of anything other than Facebook. We might as well drag our cellphones and laptops into a cave and go back to cooking with fire. If we still believe in fire.

But … and lest I’ve digressed too far from the original point, something weird is going on with this little blogsite. In less than two days its number of visitors (let’s call them Curious Minds) has spiked beyond anything reasonable. Ten times the usual and curving skyward. Hell if I know why. I suppose I should be pleased, but I’m mostly baffled. Oh sure, probably these posts are suddenly scintillating and incisive, no doubt the result of my … my … well, who knows? Maybe the Russians know.

Maybe you do.

Anyway, hopefully any day now the advertisers will be knocking on my door and I can quit my day job, just pound out this moonshine wisdom and wet powder wit until my retirement fund is full. For those of you who have made this possible: спасибо Comrade Putin!

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