Amplifying the Power of Media

By media I mean radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, video games, music, etc. And the amplifier is the internet. Stories from around the world get picked up and posted online and may go viral. Songs and rants get posted on YouTube and suddenly people are overnight stars and interviewed on morning talk shows and get publicists and agents to help try to make their fifteen minutes of fame last a lot longer. People like me blog about how we see the world and people may or may not read it and you might or might not become famous. Even national news networks now have special reporters who are bloggers.

The internet can also make rumors spread like wildfire, particularly when they combine with the very powerful twins of hate-mongering and fear-mongering. Some would say they’re one and the same: that hate is the product of fear. But I have learned that there are some people who just hate because they can. Because they get a kick out of it. Maybe if you dig deep enough you might find that there’s some fear at the very deepest root of their hatred, but it’s deep enough that, like aspen trees (who are usually identical genetic copies of each other), they look different enough to be considered two different things.

There have been several rumors floating around about Barack Obama. The first was that he was not really American by birth and that he wasn’t born in Hawaii as he has stated and therefore he was not eligible to become president. This rumor is STILL running around almost two years later. There was someone on one of those social networking sights who said her only problem with Barack Obama was that he never allowed anyone to see his birth certificate! Give me a break! The man would not have been allowed to run for president if he had not proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was born on American soil and is a natural citizen, not a naturalized citizen! People filed lawsuits to try to prevent Obama from running for president, claiming he was a naturalized citizen. Every single one of those suits was dismissed. (I know, see how deep the conspiracy goes!)

Today, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released the results of their latest survey that showed that a full 18% of Americans believe that President Obama is a Muslim. (Among Conservative Republicans, that percentage is 34%!!!! Insane!) That number (18%) has more than doubled (+11%) since March 2009!  A full 43% of Americans are unsure of Mr. Obama’s faith. And the number of Americans who correctly knew he is Christian dropped 14% from 48% to 34%! And these numbers were acquired before Mr. Obama voiced his support for the First Amendment and the right of the Muslim community to build a community center in downtown Manhattan. God’dess only knows how many people will now think he’s Muslim because of his support for the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

First,  what faith he follows is immaterial. This is a free country with freedom of religion and if he wants to practice voodoo, he can. He can convert to any faith he wants to at any point in his life. And if people vote him OUT of office because of his faith, they’re a bunch of hypocrites for wanting their freedom to be whatever faith speaks to their hearts but denying him that same right.

Second, in this day an age of internet access, it absolutely blows my mind how ignorant some people are. How gullible they are to whatever they read. They don’t check to see if the story is true or not: they simply repeat it and pass it one. I was (maybe still am at times, although I try to verify a story as best I can) when I first got online too. I have pages of “true stories” on my website that I am finding out aren’t as true as I thought they were. I still have them up there because one can still find inspiration and spiritual truth from a work of fiction. But there are so many conspiracy sites online and gloom and doom sites and Apocalypse sites that false stories get passed around faster than they can be nipped in the bud. (Although if anyone can do that, it’s Keith Olbermann. He addresses the misconceptions of the “Ground Zero Mosque” as only Keith can. It’s well worth the quarter hour of your time.)

But the most frightening aspect of this survey was that even when presented with reliable sources that contradicted the false belief, respondents were unwilling to give up that belief! They continued to cling to it despite knowing it was wrong. That is very scary and raises the question of how far will people be willing to go to hold onto their beliefs? Because that, dear reader, is where fundamentalism gets started. When one will go to any means to not only hold onto a belief but to propagate that belief and help it grow.

There is no doubt that fundamentalism is on the rise in the US, and not just among the radical religious right. It occurs in women’s rights groups, gay rights groups, abortion rights/protest groups, environmentalists, animal rights groups, atheists, etc. This nation, I don’t believe, has ever been as polarized as it is now.

Access to the internet should show us that people everywhere face similar type struggles to survive and enjoy their life. That people everywhere want pretty much the same thing: to be able to live their life from from outside interference according to the beliefs they hold dear in a manner that allows them to actually live instead of merely survive.

And yet because of hate-mongering, fear-mongering, hypocrisy and plain old greed by the radical religious right and their mouthpieces and political allies, this nation is being destroyed. It’s not going to be the once in a lifetime planetary alignment that tears this world apart: it’s going to be hate and fear and greed and hypocrisy.