A Sociological Experiment
We have three stories rattling around the brain today. First, we have Dan Patrick spouting some interesting statistics about African American voters. According to tale, half of the African American population in Texas doesn’t own a car. Therefore, we shouldn’t have drive in voting. That story was already blown up capably by JJ, so I’ll make an overall point here.
The second story involves our very own governor Greg Abbott and other conservatives. It seems Joe Biden wants us all to become vegetarians. A story circulated that he wanted beef consumption to be cut by 90 percent and wanted every American to be limited to four pounds of beef a year. Again, that story was successfully tackled earlier this week.
Finally, you get Larry Kudlow and his complaints about Biden forcing us to drink “plant based beer.” What’s next? Fruit based orange juice? Naturally, I’m sure most of you knew that beer was made from plants even before El Jefe and social media blew that all to bits. Yet, it is amazing how many folks on social media and the interwebs were ready with their pitchforks.
What do these three stories all have in common? They are three easily disprovable mistruths that are being propagated by prominent politicians. Why? Because they can. It’s part of the paradox for a public that has millions if not billions of pieces of information at their fingertips and yet bumbles on with ignorance of a serf during feudal times.
The sociological portion of it is fascinating. We see these periods in history at different points. The invention of the printing press made books affordable for the masses. It can be no coincidence that the period immediately following brought about much strife and lasting change.
We’ve had similar periods throughout history where access to knowledge expanded for one reason or another. The internet was designed originally as a way for academics to exchange ideas more freely. It really wasn’t designed with you and me in mind. Slowly but surely that evolved. We used to pay 20 dollars a month for America Online. Now, we can all access the internet from our smartphones.
It always takes society longer to adjust to technology than it takes for that technology to develop. We increasingly have access to the internet and most people now have high speed internet. That doesn’t mean we are any smarter or wiser about what we read. In fact, you could make the argument that we are collectively less informed even though we have increased access.
It’s a paradox I’m sure we share with those other important points in history when everything changed. It will take time for us to adjust as a society. Maybe someday the common man will have the wherewithal to double check these things. For now, we just have to hope there are enough people with common sense.