Blog – A View From the Sycamore

Enlightened America, Part 1

“Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.”
Langston Hughes, American Poet

In my last blog, supported by the writings of our nation’s Founders, I asserted America was not founded as and is not today a “Christian nation.” I did not identify the founding principles of America or why in the world we should care about them nearly 250 years later. Addressing that means I must digress to provide some crucial historical context, and since our Founders were European, this must be some European history.

(Ugh! History. I know, we all hate it, but stick with me for a few minutes. It’s important.)

In the 15h and 16^th Centuries, leading into our nation’s founding, Europe was emerging from 1,000 years of a social order built on three pillars – hereditary rulers (aristocracy and nobility), Church authority, and brute force.* In various ways each pillar supported the other to maintain power. The state supported the authority of the church, the church sanctified the authority of the state and, should you rebel against either, they could resort to brute force to keep you in line. Your heredity determined your social class and no matter how good or vile a person you were with few exceptions, you and your progeny maintained that class and the privilege or burdens that came with it. The religious authority insisted the aristocracy and nobility had a divine right to rule over commoners and commoners had a divine mandate to submit. The Church also taught that, in a world filled with demons, angels, saints, and witches, we are all in danger of hellfire. Conveniently the Church, via moral instruction and ritual, offered a way to escape damnation, extending or withholding eternal salvation. Your body was owned by the aristocracy and your soul belonged to God who was available only via the Church. Each were intent on expanding their wealth and influence and when negotiation failed, brute force was called to action. Religion became political, and with the force of the state the political became brutal. Religious wars became devastating political wars [see the 30 Years War]. A change of monarch altered the fates of millions based on a monarch’s religious loyalties. Millions died in war’s combat, disease, and starvation. Commoners were the foot-soldiers and cannon fodder of the powerful political and ecclesiastic elite.

In the 14^th Century, the technology of the printing press with moveable type and published translations of the Bible in the common languages eventually germinated the Protestant Reformation in the 16^th Century. This fractured the authority of the Church as Protestants asserted every man had a right to a direct connection to God and the right to study the Bible on their own terms.

Out of this ferment of new technologies and ideas, the Age of Reason emerged in the 15^th and 16^th Centuries and “natural philosophy” of ancient Greek scholars was rediscovered and refined. This was essentially the birth of the mindset of modern science, although the term “scientist” would not be used until the 19^th Century. Inductive and deductive reasoning was used to examine everything, including religious claims. New scientific discoveries demonstrated that much of what had been explained by God or demons could be explained by natural processes. Deism was a theology claiming the nature of God could be determined by the study of his creation rather than divine revelation. And in that creation, it was the nature of every man – we didn’t get to women yet – to have certain inborn, natural, and inalienable rights. This gave rise to the Enlightenment.

Enlightenment thinking deemed all men are created equal (goodbye to aristocracy) and that every man owned his own self (goodbye, hereditary authority) and that his life was his alone. Anything which a man produced by his own labor also became his property (so long, serfs) and he could not be deprived of it without a due, fair process. The church provided opportunities to pause and commune with God – who still had His rules – but it was no longer the sole authority of that access. As these ideas took hold, more commoners began demanding a say in their own destinies.

Our nation’s Founders were educated men who embraced the Enlightenment. Thomas Jefferson once said that “Bacon, Locke and Newton are the greatest three people who ever lived, without exception.” Enlightenment philosopher John Locke especially influenced our Founders. Locke insisted life, liberty, and property were natural rights that pre-exist any government or religion. While Locke held his own Christian views and his writings were influenced by them, he insisted religious tolerance was necessary to a civil society since a man’s conscience was his own. Likewise, no government should establish a particular religion since it could not verify absolute truth nor command a person to believe what they do not believe. Violating a man’s conscience violates his property and therefore his natural rights.

These are Enlightenment principles on which America was founded. When Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” he did not echo words from the Bible, he stated Enlightenment philosophy. This seed sprouted into both the American and French Revolutions. It also upended hereditary monarchy as a ruling force across Europe. Monarchies acceded to democracy in various forms, giving people a say in their own lives to an extent not seen in 1,000 years.

Across American history our major conflicts have been around Enlightenment principles – the nature and rights of individuals. Sadly, our Founders cultural blinders let them create a nation with gaping contradictions to Enlightenment theory including the rights of enslaved people, the rights of non-European native peoples, and the rights of women. This blunder is our great national sin which abolitionist, suffragette, and union member progressives have continually tried to correct to make “a more perfect union.” We are now in a period where the forces pushing us back are the same old ones. Religious “authority” in the guise of Evangelicals using political power to control the lives of the majority. As our new “aristocracy” the uber-wealthy now own our legislative processes and wish to own us as “human resources.” The Republican Party wants to restrict the power of the common person to vote. These movements are coordinated. They are also as unAmerican and as unenlightened as any tin-pot dictator.

Next time I’ll say more about how our Enlightened Nation is threatened. Until then, as I opened with the words of Langston Hughes, let me also close with them:

“O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.”
Langston Hughes, American poet

Tikkun Olam

(*I am deeply indebted to Seth David Radwell for his concise summary of medieval social order and other definitions in his excellent book American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret for Healing Our Nation. I highly recommend it to those concerned for our country.)

Is America a Christian Nation?

“Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?”
James Madison, Father of the U.S. Constitution

May 23, 2022 Kandiss Taylor, Georgia Republican Gubernatorial Candidate: “We’re going to do a political rally and we’re going to honor Jesus… They’re not going to tell us ‘separation of church and state.’ We are the church. We run this state!… The church runs the state of Georgia.”

July 26, 2022 Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican member of Congress “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk. It was not in the Constitution; it was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.”

Boebert and Kandiss are the most recent politicians to claim the United States of America was founded as a “Christian nation” and suggest separation of church and state is a subversive concept. Current advocates of this view appear less interested in Christian doctrine and more determined to use the Bible as a political weapon. They hope to impose into our nation’s policies their interpretation of Biblical morality while also using religious fervor to raise money and motivate voting. Their intent is to grasp power to advance unChristian and anti-democracy agendas. As an American citizen holding advanced degrees in theology and policy, I find this revolting.

So let’s be clear. America is not now, nor has it even been, a Christian nation. Moreover, our Founders never intended it to be.

Saying this is neither anti-American nor anti-Christian; only a matter of history and from much more than “a stinking letter.” In 1797, the U.S. Senate, a body more than 50% composed of original signers of the U.S. Constitution, unanimously affirmed a Treaty with Tripoli clearly stating:

[Article 11] As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, [Muslims] -and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

Obviously, time has altered this relationship but it clearly demonstrates at our nation’s founding neither Christian dogma nor identity played any role in how our government was constructed or operated. Separating political power while carving out a cultural space for each person to follow the dictates of their own conscience was a clear goal of our nation’s Founders and one of their crowning achievements. In their time, this was considered radical, so why did they do it?

Our nation’s founders knew first-hand from European history how the mingling of political power and religious dogma was a toxic brew leading to bigotry, social divisions, bloodshed, and repeated religious wars. In 1785 James Madison, the Father of the US Constitution, published a letter to the Virginia legislature as it worked out the State’s constitution where some wanted a tax to support a state church. In opposition Madison wrote, “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?” ( in Memorial & Remonstrance)

in other words, Southern Baptists would rebel against a government mandate to live by Catholic doctrine and vice versa. In 1803 Madison again pressed this point stating:“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”

Nearly 20 years later on July 10, 1822 Madison wrote to Edward Livingston still insisting, “Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Gov will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”

Distancing church from state protects both, a belief held by many of our Founders. Despite biographies published after his death portraying George Washington as a fervent Christian, his own letters and diaries portray a different person. In one such letter he assures a Hebrew [Jewish] Congregation of their status as equal citizens in this new nation. As an adult, Washington only occasionally attended worship services, was never a church communicant, and on his deathbed no minister or priest was called into attendance. Academic study by known historians has debunked fabricated stories and misattributed quotes intending to portray him otherwise.

When someone asked Alexander Hamilton why the U.S. Constitution makes no reference to God, he famously quipped, “We forgot.” The Founders did not, of course, merely forget; it was a conscious decision based on both their principles and their experience. The writings of our nation’s Founders never refer to the Bible as an authoritative source for governing or policy. Neither Christianity nor the Bible are quoted as a basis for their political views. Our Founding documents do not cite Jesus Christ and rarely reference God in more than general terms such as “Providence” or “Creator” or “Nature’s God.” To read even those statements with 21^st Century Evangelical lenses is to misunderstand profoundly, even dangerously, what they intended. While some of the Founders were church members most viewed religion, broadly defined, as a source for moral guidance, not absolute or spiritual truth.

For example, while Thomas Jefferson, who authored the Declaration of independence, viewed Jesus as an excellent moral example to which one could aspire – a view he called “Christianism”—he rejected Jesus’ divinity, resurrection, and miracles. I could continue with similar documentation about Benjamin Franklin, or Thomas Paine (who called the Bible “the pretended word of God”) but you can explore these links for yourself. There is ample, written documentation the nation’s Founders deplored the idea of the United States ever establishing one religion over another, including Christianity. Moreover, for those Founders who were observant Christians, their beliefs would fail the current litmus test of being “true” Christians by today’s Christian Nationalists, Evangelicals, and Fundamentalists.

The Founders’ chief interest in religion was not its dogma but its usefulness in providing a common moral code within which a democratic society could function. Yet in the 21^st Century large portions of American Christianity have abandoned that moral code, supporting highly immoral individuals and political tactics. Moreover, parts of that religious segment have become arrogant, autocratic, punitive, and more lately, violent. All of these are traits inherent in religion that our Founders feared and sought to uncouple from the power of the state.

Intermingling state and church is becoming coercive and dangerous to our democracy and to the free exercise of religion. Their wisdom is once more revealed by a violent Christian presence in the January 6^th insurrection, an eye-opening moment for many of us. Boebert’s shockingly ignorant comment that the church is supposed to direct the government, coming from a sitting member of Congress, reveals how far we have strayed. The most recent ruling overturning Roe vs. Wade protecting access to abortion was made by a predominantly conservative, Catholic Supreme Court and supported by Evangelical Fundamentalists. It is not the will of the larger American public. These are the latest examples of intermingling church and state. Christian dogma must never be the source of national policy. Our Founders would applaud our resistance to it.

Tikkun Olam

[A following article explains the principles upon which our nation was founded and why our forgetting them is costing us so dearly.]

Who is Really Politically Correct?

Back in the 1990’s I lived in Lexington, KY. The city was the first in the state to pass a “Fairness Ordinance” barring discrimination against LGBT people in housing, employment, or public accommodations. (Louisville had a similar ordinance but it did not include bisexual or transgender people.) After two city council meetings filled with opposition and controversy the ordinance passed. A few weeks later I was on a business trip to a distant part of the state. A local woman there, when she heard I was from Lexington, brought up the Fairness ordinance and said, “I think that city council up there just wanted to look politically correct. I think all this gay stuff is just about political correctness.”

She did not know that I was a gay man, nor that I served on the Lexington Fairness Campaign which had created the wording and the organized drive for that ground-breaking ordinance. We weren’t trying to “look good” to some group of people; we wanted equal treatment under the law in a time and place where LGBT people had few protections. I never mixed politics with my professional work with the public – I had to train and work with people across the political spectrum – so I let the comment slide. But I have never forgotten it. It was dismissive of an effort to get equal treatment under the law.

The memory resurfaced again today when I read about President Biden’s nomination of Dr. Rachel Levine as Assistant Secretary of Health with the U.S. Department of Health and Human services. Dr. Levine is well qualified, but also transgender and, if confirmed, will be the first transgender person to ever be confirmed to a Federal post by the U.S. Senate. Predictably, there are already charges from conservatives that this appointment was all about “political correctness.” Pardon me?

Dr. Levine is a highly qualified healthcare professional, a former Physician General of Pennsylvania and currently serving as their State Secretary of Health. She is a credentialed pediatrician, a graduate of Harvard and Tulane Medical School, and a Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine. Her current state position required her confirmation by a Republican-controlled state senate. She won accolades for spearheading the state’s response to the corona virus pandemic and has decades of professional practice and administrative managing of medical care. We are fortunate to have someone with her credentials in this position.

When you hear her appointment – and others like it – labeled as mere “political correctness” it means the accuser believes the person is unqualified apart from belonging to a politically favored group; that her appointment is just meant to look good to certain people. It is a slur on the reputation of qualified professionals. The “PC” charge is not like nepotism where, for example, a public official appoints his children and in-laws to positions for which they have zero expertise. Rather, nominations such as Dr. Levine’s mean that qualified individuals are no longer barred from consideration because of ignorance and bigotry. They can be freely and fairly considered for positions for which they are highly qualified without the fear that irrelevant issues such as sexual orientation or gender identity are viewed as pertinent. It is the exact opposite of being politically correct. It means that person has been appointed despite the likelihood the ignorant and the bigots will scream their heads off. It’s not being “politically correct;” it’s being fair.

In fact, denying equal treatment to groups of people in order to curry favor among voters can more legitimately be viewed as trying to be politically correct, because the discrimination is not based any actual facts about the individual but on the political persuasions of the person doing the appointing without reference to the person’s credentials. It’s just as “politically correct” to deny an appointment because of belonging to some group as it is to appoint them for belonging to some group. In both cases. it ignores the individual’s actual qualifications.

“Politically correct” has become conservative short-hand for not having to consider an individual’s actual fitness for a position. In the coming days we are likely to hear a lot of accusations of political correctness as a liberal and progressive administration recognizes people of color, LGBT Americans, Native People’s and other groups “suspect” to conservatives. It is a mentally lazy way to snub individuals and reduce respect for their work once they are in place. It is also a big, red flag revealing far more about the person making the PC accusation than anyone else.

When you hear “politically correct” aimed at anyone, take a look at who they are speaking about, and then take a longer and harder look at the person saying it.

Tikkun Olam,

On Spirituality, Part 2 – A Measure of Religion

“You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.” — Anne Lamott

When they came to the “New World” the Puritans had a mission. They were educated, adventurous, pious, intellectually curious, ambitious, and sought freedom to practice their religion. Nonetheless, they visited upon early America the Salem Witch Trials in which over 160 men, women, clergy, and even young children were accused of being witches – a crime punishable by death. This was in two settlements with a population of about 600 people. Many lost their standing in the community, their property, their freedom, and some, ultimately, their lives. Nineteen people were hanged, and another died by torture. In their religiously shaped world view they were under constant threat of assault from the devil who took the form of the French, Catholics, Quakers, native peoples, disgruntled or unpleasant neighbors, dark-skinned people, and the poor. Their religion said these “others” made deals with the devil to thwart their Puritan mission. The Salem Witch Trials ended the Puritan experiment, which was America’s first and – so far – last theocracy. In my view it failed because it abandoned spirituality in its quest for religious purity.

In my last post, I noted “spirituality” exists only in relationships. How I relate to and interact with others is how my spirituality lives or dies. I didn’t address either God or religion because they can be apart from spirituality. Although many people practice their spirituality via their religion, today, a commonly heard phrase is “I’m spiritual but not religious.” I embrace this, but find it overly vague, needing defining by illustration. Let’s look to the role of religion in another historical case – American slavery.

The permanent, generational subjugation of an entire race was supported by large parts of early American religions and their sub-sects, bringing their theology to support it. People of African descent were deemed only quasi-human and so, theologically it was morally permissible for European [white] people to own and treat them as livestock. It was practiced in the nation’s North and South; Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in upstate New York. This was not only considered normal, but “American.” Arriving white immigrants conformed to belong in their new country. Puritans, Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Quakers; they all supported the institution and many kept slaves.

But religion also fueled the pre-Civil War Abolition Movement. Among many others, Christian preachers such as Sojourner Truth, John G. Fee, Lucretia Mott, and Jermain Wesley Loguen, and Jewish teachers such as Rabbi David Einhorn and Ernestine Rose pricked the conscience of the nation. They challenged slavery as a systemic evil to be erased. For speaking out, many were threatened and ostracized from their own religious communities. While abolition was initially viewed as irreligious and unAmerican, their spiritually courageous, moral voices prevailed.

Thus, history illustrates religion can be a blessing or curse in spiritual development. Some religions are frankly toxic; building walls, defining “others” as dangerous, or useful only as tools to serve me and mine, promoting fear, and excusing or absolving from blame the ongoing use or abuse of these others. Such religion obstructs spiritual development. What joins the Puritans to the later religious slaveholders was their classifying of whole groups of people – apart from any personal behavior – as beneath and possibly dangerous to them. Today, whole sections of Christianity preach–as a Christian friend stated it a few years ago–“the politics of hatred and division disguised as the gospel.”

Conversely, a spiritual religion offers an inclusive, embracing view of humanity, promoting the worthiness of the other, including racial, ethnic, political, sexual, or social status groups outside of its own. It embraces the value of other species of life and the whole planet’s ecosystems.

The religious concept that most resonates with my personal spirituality is “tikkun olam,” a Hebrew term that roughly translates as “heal the world.” In Talmudic Judaism, the world is seen as broken and needing our labors to mend it. This concept motivates me to improve my personal relationships and social actions to heal the broken world. It requires my practice in my workplace, my home, my friendships, and my family. It focuses me on my deepest personal values, including such intangibles as honesty, kindness, fairness, discipline, and compassion to name only a few.

Do I practice any of this perfectly? Oh, hell no! I’m a volatile, passionate person and I sometimes offend others in my zeal to be “right.” But to quote Robert Browning “Ah, a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for.” My spirituality draws, and sometimes goads, me toward my better self. Should I fall short – and I will – I’m still beyond where I am now. At times my spirituality feels rewarding, like when I volunteer at the local food bank, and other times it sticks me like a needle driving me to “eat crow” after I’ve shot off my mouth without thought and wounded others.

Evil does exist and I’m perfectly willing to call out evil behavior and individuals who have given themselves to it. Sexual predators, greedy corporatism, corrupt politicians – these are true evils to me because they damage others, and build systems for damaging others, for their own personal benefit. They are the opposite of tikkun olam, wounding and killing rather than healing. Will those doing such things end up in hell? I can see they’re acting like hell, but what happens afterward is not my business. As I told people in my clergy days, “I’m in sales, not management.” I attempt to promote a healing presence in the world; what happens to people afterward is not my decision or business.

For many people religion is a source of comfort, but it may not be a source of spirituality. Only when it promotes compassion and world-healing behavior would I consider it spiritual. At its best, a spiritual religion should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Should it promote subjugation, control, denigration, greed, fear of, or hatred toward others, it has lost its way. Spirituality can transform religion into a living, fruitful form. The loss of spirituality can make whole religions a withered branch, keeping the form of spirituality but having lost the substance. I don’t worry about being religious. I do aspire to be spiritually better.

Thanks for your time. Tikkun olam. AB

Truth Will Set You Free, But…

I learned a lot working with people in recovery from various substance addictions. One friend was leading a Court-ordered group session with people convicted of drunken driving. No one was happy to be there. After several weeks of meetings, my friend asked them to each write a personal timeline from when they began drinking and what happened in their life along the way up to the present day. As they worked, a man in the group who had been angry about being there looked up in shocked surprise and blurted out, “Oh my god, it’s the alcohol.” He told how he had given up drinking about 5 years earlier and all his legal problems resolved and his family relationships improved. Three years after that he began drinking again and now family and legal problems were back. He said, “I thought I had a criminal personality, but it’s the alcohol. I’ve got to quit drinking!” He had resented being sentenced to the group, but now he realized he wasn’t a bad person; he was someone drinking too much. He could change that. Others had told him before, of course, about this drinking ut he had dismissed it and them. Now, he learned what you will hear said only somewhat tongue-in-cheek in the rooms of recovery:

“The truth will set you free… but first, it will really piss you off.”

For a great many people heavy drinking brings good things into their lives or they wouldn’t do it. For many people, heavy drinking or drug using is their hobby; what they do for fun and relaxation, either alone or with friends. It doesn’t just go with their fun; it is the fun. For others, it is a release from anxiety, stress, and painful memories or feelings. For some, it’s both. Then it starts to cause trouble – emotional, relational, legal and financial problems start to happen. To stop the trouble, the person must realize this valued substance they think of as a friend—or even a lover—is no longer helping them, Indeed, it is now running and ruining their lives.

Admitting this is painful. Imagine being told our best friend—someone we’ve known and trusted for years—is actively destroying our lives, costing us friends, hurting our family members, destroying our reputations, and leading us into betraying even our own values. No one wants to believe that about a friend. If cautioned about it, we become defensive of our friend and angry at his “accuser”. To those around us the issue is very clear, but from the inside of that damaging relationship, we can’t see it or we can’t see a way out. It doesn’t matter if it’s true, we don’t want to believe it and we won’t.

If we’re lucky, one day something happens as it did for the gentleman above. While we’ve resisted the uncomfortable truth, when we let it in it reveals this “friendship” is actively destroying us, our health, our well-being, and damaging the lives of others, too. Disentangling from this “friend” can be complicated and emotionally painful. But the truth that first pisses us off will set us free when we accept it. Then we can rebuild and restore ourselves.

And here, my Trump-supporting friend is where I must raise your relationship with Donald Trump. Does that piss you off? Pay attention to that; it’s a sign. I don’t speak from anger or judgment. People believe and do the things they do for reasons that seem good to them at the time, often from pain or fear. I don’t think you’re a bad, stupid or racist person. I’ve worked with you and valued your friendship. You know he’s not a good person. You know, in fact, he is a human moral wasteland. Unless you are a billionaire, and apart from your 401K, I can’t think what he does for you, but apparently, it’s something so valuable you overlook his appalling behaviors and their disastrous outcomes. Maybe he makes you feel better or takes away your anxiety. Maybe he makes you feel part of a “tribe.” It is painful to watch your mental gymnastic twists in thinking to continue your support. It is distressing to see you going back to Fox News, or Breitbart, or InfoWars which are Trump’s pushers and your enablers. I and others want you to know we’re concerned for you, but also for where you’re taking us as a nation. Please, look around at our country after three and half years. Millions are out of work, people are being evicted from their homes, hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens are dead, and all due to Trump’s incompetence and surreal inability to deal with actual facts. It is due to his monstrous ego that makes him unable to admit he is wrong, and due to his narcissism he cannot feel the pain or suffering of others. We wish you could. Our democratic institutions are in tatters because nothing and no one matters to him but him. We have armed thugs in the streets killing people and it doesn’t matter which side you believe is right, Trump pours fuel on those flames and bellows them up into a fury of firearms and bloodshed.

I worry for you, because whatever he’s doing for you, it blinds you to what he’s doing to you and to us.

What makes me saddest, is knowing from my background, none of these words will have any effect. Like the drug addict whose family members beg them to see what is happening, you will dismiss it all as “you don’t understand.” In fact, we do. Only you can persuade you. All I can say is, he’s not taking you anywhere you or we want to be. One day, if you’re lucky, you will look up and say, “Oh my god, it’s Trump. He’s the one doing this.” And it will be a relief to us all. Because that will begin to set you, and us, free.

Hey You! Yes, You!! You’re in the War!!!

I’ve unintentionally shared fake news. The odds are pretty high you have, too. it’s embarrassing, annoying, and uncomfortable. We are in a war and if you are on social media, you are almost certainly a combatant. Russia attacked our 2016 presidential election. Investigations into how the American public was manipulated by Russian cyber strategies report that evoking “outrage” was the easiest and most effective avenue for spreading disinformation designed to influence elections and to destabilize our nation. On Facebook, Twitter or whatever other media platform you use, it’s easy to share outrage with the click of a button. Right now, there is a lot to be outraged about, but when outrage is whipped up artificially it becomes a weapon. I’m easily outraged, so today I remind myself and encourage all of us to beware of manipulation. It is one thing to be outraged over actual injustices. It is another to become a tool of a hostile government in a cyber war on our democracy.

Outrage is a powerful tool because it heats up our emotions while simultaneously shutting down our thinking. We feel emotions faster than we think thoughts and our emotions will then color how we process the information as we read it. It requires mature intentions to reign in our emotional impulses and think. It doesn’t matter how intelligent we are or what our political perspective is, we can be had. Outrage arises out of a sense that our values are being violated. The more fundamental those values are to our identity, the more outrage we feel. Also, it feels good and moral to call it out. Sometimes it is, and that is why outrage is a useful part of our emotional repertoire. It also makes us vulnerable to manipulation with lies or twisted facts. This happens on both the political left and right, in sermons, in commercials, in the news, and most especially on social media. We are fed a constant diet of outrage that is turning us into a frightened, angry, and even violent nation.

What can we do? You can, of course, decide just to turn it all off, ignore everything and go about your life. At times, that’s absolutely the right thing to do, but in a democracy, we have an obligation to participate at least in voting. Responsible participation requires that we spend some time getting informed. Perhaps in times of personal crisis we can ignore the world, it is not a wise overall strategy because then our world will be shaped by those who count on our cynicism, ignorance, or non-participation.

To get informed, here are some useful questions about what we’re ingesting on social media:

Is it verifiable that what I’m reading really happened? According to Business Insider in 2019 the top 100 false stories were viewed over 150 million times on social media. That’s about the number of registered voters in the U.S. Out of that Top 100, her are a few from the 2019 Top 10 most-shared “fake news” stories:
- “AOC (Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] proposed a motorcycle ban. (It didn’t happen.) – 6100 shares
- “Joe Biden called Trump supporters ‘dregs of society.’” (He didn’t.) – 9500 shares
- [Congresswoman] “Ilhan Omar Holding Secret Fundraisers With Islamic Groups Tied to Terror” (Never happened.) 14,000 shares
- “Nancy Pelosi diverting Social Security money for impeachment inquiry.” (No, she wasn’t and didn’t.) – 29,000 shares
- “Trumps grandfather was a pimp and tax evader, and his father belonged to the KKK” (Neither is true.) #1 (156,000 shares)

Each of these stories are meant to provoke outrage in a segment of the population. Seven of the top 10 most shared false news stories intended to outrage Trump supporters, but the most shared one promoted outrage among Trump’s more liberal opponents.

2. Do I find this outrageous? Just because a story riles me up does not make it false, but it is every reason to slow down and double-check the story. Is the source relatively unbiased? If you’re not sure, you can check where the media source falls on a continuum of skewed Left to Right, and Less Reliable to More Reliable by clicking here.

3. Can I find this story with similar details on news sites rated as “reliable”? Reading the same story on a couple of different sites with different skews can help you both know more about the story and begin to determine which sites are skewed which direction.

4. Does the headline use words like “destroyed” or “explosive”. Does the language in the article use language like “BLM terrorists” or “conservative idiots”? All such language communicates a bias and simultaneously inflames outrage in the intended audience.

Outrage is easy, skews our thinking, and influences our votes based on false information. Thinking is harder, but the more discerning we become the less likely we are to be unintentionally drafted into a cyber war against our own country.

Be careful out there. AB