The Bowling Green Massacre Was Created For A Reason And It's Working

Kellyanne Conway didn't "misspeak." She created the
Bowling Green Massacre for a reason, and it's working. 

I'm sure a lot of people rolled their eyes when they saw poll results earlier this month that indicated half of Trump's supporters think the Bowling Green Massacre is one good reason why Trump should pursue his immigration ban.

As many of us know, the Bowling Green Massacre is a fictional tragedy, one brought to us by Trump counselor and serial liar Kellyanne Conway.

The evil person here in Conway, not the Trump voters. They might not be all that gullible.

The question the poll asked was this:

"Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: 'The Bowling Green Massacre shows why we need Donald Trump's executive order on immigration?'"

As Huffington Post analyzes the polling question:

"What the question did ask about was whether respondents agreed that a fake event - presented as a factual event - justifies a policy that many Trump supporters already support. Of course, many supporters were going to agree with that stateent, even if they weren't aware that the Bowling Green Massacre was fiction."

As the article notes, people like me pay attention to the news ravenously. I knew the Bowling Green Massacre was fictitious the second Conway mentioned it.

However, not all so-called "low information voters" who think the Bowling Green Massacre happened are so stupid.

They're raising families, trying to hold down numerous jobs to make ends meet. They're caring for sick relatives and wondering where the next rent payment will come from.

They're not sitting there analyzing each bit of news that comes out. They never have time to pay attention to any news. So if somebody tells them the Bowling Green Massacre happened, who are they to argue? They haven't watched tne news.

As the Huffington Post notes, researchers know that if you ask somebody a question about a subject they know little about, they'll be agreeable to your questions and give you answers. They don't want to look dumb, understandably.

Says Huffington:

"Many will think they should have an answer, and say the first thing that comes to mind. This is why polling on specific policies is difficult - people often haven't given the issue a lot of thought, but whem prompted, they will make up an opinion."

The poll question was also worded in a leading way, so more people might have given the Bowling Green answer than they otherwise would have.

I won't say don't believe the polls. They're useful.

However, don't totally rely on them.

The Nation magazine was prescient back in August, when they questioned polls that suggested Hillary Clinton was almost a sure shot at getting into the White House.

We all know how that ended up.

As The Nation reported, some people lie to pollsters. In the case of the presidential election, some people really liked Donald Trump and were planning to vote for him, but didn't want to admit to a real live person they were going to do so, because Trump was perceived as so offensive and aggravating.

There's no prying eyes in the voting booth, though, so people feel more free to choose who they want while casting ballots.

Conway knows what she's doing. She's quite the skilled flack, except with no morals I can find.

She lies to stir up people. She knows most average people don't have time to parse her words and figure out the truth or fiction within.

So she plants the Bowling Green Massacre. When called on the lie, she said she accidentally misspoke. But again, few people have time to pay attention to those nuances.

Conway created the Bowling Green Massacre to advance Trump's con.

They say truth is stranger than fiction. What's even stranger is people like Conway who create fiction to create a so called alternate version of truth.

Can We Do Anything About Our New Post-Fact World

Edgar Maddison Welch of North Carolina being
arrested after he shot up a Washington DC pizza joint
because he believed preposterous stories that
Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring
out of the business

It's clearer than ever that nobody actually relies on facts anymore.

That's being driven home by a series of news items that are getting more and more and MORE absurd, and I don't know where or when or if it might stop.

Through the looking glass, anyone?

My angst started the other day with was  in a stunning CNN interview about our fact-free world that went viral the other day.

It got even worse with a bizarre gun attack on a pizzeria that originated from a false news story about Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party running a pedophilia sex ring out of the pizzeria that an amazing number of people believe.

I'll get to that weirdness in a minute, but let's start from the beginning.

CNN Hos Alisyn Camerota asked a panel of just regular folks, all Trump supporters.

All of the Trump supporters agreed with one of the people in the panel, who repeated Donald Trump's very, very debunked assertion that three million people voted illegally.  (The stunning interview is at the bottom of this post.)

"Where did you get that information,?" Camerota asked.

"From the media," the woman answered.

For the record, CNN did report that Trump said that there were 3 million illegal voters, but CNN also made it clear that assertion was false.

"Did you hear President Obama say illegal people could vote,?" Camerota asked the panel.

They all said yes, and of course Obama never said any such thing.

Camerota asked where they heard Obama said illegals could vote. One of the panelist said. "On Facebook. You can Google it."

Yes, you can. And you will find plenty of articles asserting that Obama gave the go-ahead for illegals to vote. These stories are false, but that's apparently besides the point.

But to many people, whether or not the purported source of "news" story makes it well known it's false matters to nobody.

Of course, people have believed fake news and false rumors ever since we existed. We've reached critical mass now, of people who discard facts in favor of things that want to believe.

We're all in our little silos now, having other people reinforce our misconceptions. And some of us allow these misconceptions to get more and more extreme.

We've been in a downhill slide toward this bad place for quite awhile now. Remember Stephen Colbert, when in 2005 he satirically popularized the term "truthiness," defined as using dubious facts to appeal to emotion, rather than let voters decide issues on pure facts.

Now, things no longer need to have even a tenuous connection to the truth.

Donald Trump was the first politician to fully exploit this phenomenon. He knows facts don't matter, so he says what he wants to fire up the crowd of loyal idiots, and it's working.

Too few people seem to have the mental energy or ability to think about what they hear and see. Attempts by legitimate news organizations to get facts through no longer work.

On the Diane Rehm show a week or so back, Donald Trump support and panelist Scottie Nell Hughes said, "There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts."

Hughes added, "And so, Mr. Trump's tweets amongst a certain crowd, a large - large part of the population are truth."

People are willing to believe anything, and I mean anything. Which gets us to the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington DC.

I'll let the Washington Post start explaining it. Unlike much of what is circulating out there, the following Washington Post excerpt is totally true. Which scares me:

"The restaurant's owner and employees were threatened on social media in the days before the election after fake news stories circulated claiming that then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief were running a child sex ring from the restaurant's backrooms.

Even Michael Flynn, a retired general whom President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to advise him on national security, shared stories about another anti-Clinton conspiracy theory involving pedophilia.

None of them were true. but the fake stories and threats persisted, some even aimed at children of Comet Ping Pong employees and patrons. The restaurant's owners was forced to contact the FBI, the police, Facebook and other social media platforms in an effort to remove the articles."

Got that? Somebody wrote news "articles" saying Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile sex ring and legions of people actually believed it.

And still do. Some idiot named Edgar Maddison Welch from North Carolina came up to DC, went to Comet Ping Pong pizzeria and shot up the place, as part of a "self investigation" into the child sex ring he "knew" was going on there.

Somehow, nobody got hurt, and the guy was arrested.

Not only are the pizzeria, its employees and their families being harassed, but so too are owners and employees of neighboring businesses who apparently are "in on the sex ring." .

Washington Post reporters who covered the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria attack this weekend were also threatened and received death threats by these wackos.

I can't make this stuff up, and if so many people created these weird alternative "realities," God help us all.

Here's that stunning CNN interview.

For Anyone Who Has Ever Been A Waiter, This Rant Is For You

Many moons ago, I waited tables to make ends meet.

Thadra Sheridan has LOTS to say
about waiting tables, and she does
it hilariously.  

That's true for a lot of us.

Waiting tables is a lot like watching Issues on Parade.

Most people were nice enough, but some people were just demanding and weird.

You learned if you scratched the surface their whines and complaints had little to do with the food and the service and a lot to do with their own inability to handle life.

These people made you really want to rant and explode they were so infuriating. However we luckily have this video from Thadra Sheridan that says it like it's meant to be said.

Sheridan is a well established and popular poet, essayist, performer, columnist and teacher. It's worth checking out her Web site. 

Meanwhile, her rant about waiting tables is so highly entertaining and laugh out loud funny you HAVE to watch: