Battle of the Bilge

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.
-Winston Churchill

The Season Begins

Not that the political season actually ever ends.  But without a doubt members of every part of the spectrum are ramping up their efforts to discredit opposing forces heading into the mid-term elections.  As per American tradition, truth has taken an enormous amount of vacation time these past few months.  While the distribution method of the information has started to switch from traditional emails to open forums, partisan websites and social media to pull them all together, email lists still play a critical role.

In this and other articles, we will be exploring common tactics of disinformation and political spin in the information world.  Additionally, we’ll examine sources and websites to help guide you through the web, armed with knowledge of warning signs and some specific places to avoid as well as trust.  Ric Romero fans will enjoy this article.

As there are only a few viral emails out there right now that are highly active and related to the military, so we’ll take a look at those in the coming days.

Key Words and Phrases

For ease of purpose, let’s just call emails/articles/tweets/messages on forums and all other type of information an article.

Working with the evidence of the most common bilge articles, there are a few similarities among highly inaccurate messages both in style and argumentative methods.  If an article contains any of the following statements (especially more than one), consider it partisan and seek another source:

• Wake up (usually followed by ‘America’)
• Socialist
• Birth certificate
• Destroy our way of life
• New World Order
• Neocon
• Zionist
• Obamacare
• Teabagger

While some of these are obviously directed at liberals, it works both ways.  While the ‘Birther’ movement is a right wing effort (which most analysts agree it is, at least in the majority of cases), the 9/11 ‘Truthers’ tend to be more geared against the conservatives or ‘Neo-Cons’.  This generalization does not hold together in all cases of course.  A feeling of urgency and anti-government sentiment drives almost all of these efforts and in more cases than not the ‘us vs. them’ is not among the citizenry but ‘us’ vs. the federal government.  While articles can be focused on individuals such as President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh or President Bush and others, the attacks on individuals are most commonly due to the fact that they are representations of a particular group.

If an article frequently uses New World Order and Zionist, you can usually count on it being an anti-Semitic source, and the information is almost always twisted beyond any semblance of truth.  In this group’s eyes, the end of the world is always just around the corner and whatever is being done (from the Gulf spill to banking manipulation) is in preparation for a global takeover of the country and is being coordinated by a small cabal of power. Supporting evidence for an issue, however weak, is trumpeted loudly, while other evidence and reality as a whole is attacked.

Writing Methods

There are three major red flags that should tell you further investigation is necessary.  The first two depend on the writer’s belief that readers will not actually check out any supporting documentation or links closely.  The third is common boilerplate.

‘Check it out on Snopes’ – Often put in the first line with a ‘This is 100% true’ qualifier, there are two variations of this ruse.  Either they won’t actually provide the link to Snopes, or the link they provide actually points someone to a Snopes page that states clearly that the email is not accurate.  Just because something is written up on Snopes does not mean that it is true, and checking it out first will save you a bit of heartache and trouble.

‘Don’t believe me, check out the links at the bottom’ – A common feature in viral disinformation is creating or linking to websites that parrot the exact same bad information.  This tactic goes hand in hand with presenting opinions as facts and does nothing to promote truth.  Check the links, but don’t expect them to be from overly critical or unbiased sources.  A link to a message board posting or a diary at DailyKos does not necessarily mean the information is accurate, it only means that someone else has the same feelings on an issue and has used the platform to promote it.

‘You won’t hear about this in the Mainstream Media’ – Used almost as a template for emails or blog postings from the ‘alternative’ media, this is the go-to phrase to try and establish credibility.  It reaches deep into the psyche of the reader and connects them to the ‘us vs. them’ mentality.  While most of what you’ll read that contains this verbiage is directed towards the supposed left wing bias of the media, it is really more of an opposition tactic.  When President Bush was in office, many articles attacked the media for not reporting on the good things happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, just as we see them today attacking the media for being too soft on President Obama.  The media is seen as a propaganda arm of the group in power in Washington, regardless of which power that is.  And opposing the ‘traditional’ media by ‘telling it like it is’ is one of the most powerful ways to get a message across.  But it is usually just smoke.  More times than not, there’s a reason you don’t see these stories on the networks or in the major newspapers – staffs have researched them and found them to be inaccurate or overtly partisan.

Using the Tools Available

One word:  Google.  The first thing you should do before taking any article to heart and passing it on is to go to the middle of the message, copy a paragraph or two that are relatively unique, and plug it in to Google to see what comes up.  You’ll instantly see one of two things.  If the article is new and especially if it is based on opinion, you will get a result that shows dozens of the parrot sites mentioned above that have spread the message verbatim.  Click on some of these links and pay attention to what the website looks like, check out their ‘about us’ page if they have one, and most importantly look at the discussion or comments.  User comments are an excellent way to gauge what kind of people are visiting the site and always blow the actual article out of the water when it comes to incendiary rhetoric.  If you see a slew of the same commentary, you know you are in partisan land.

The second Google result possibility is that the first page is a mix between debunking sites and parrots.  Usually if an article contains inaccuracies that are obvious and non-opinion oriented, the debunking sites will carry a heavier search weight and will have multiple sources to choose from.  For example, a Google search for ‘Obama $50 Gun Tax’, a thoroughly debunked email from 2009 and 2010, gives you the following result:

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FactCheck beats MOAA to the top on that one, but that’s OK, they do great work.  The biggest tool at your disposal is, of course, your own mind.  If something doesn’t smell right, don’t forward it until you’ve taken the time to understand the issue and done the research that makes you feel confident that the information is accurate.

In part 2 of this series we’ll take a look at websites and news outlets and identify specific signs of bilge and provide a list of places to avoid and sites to trust.  Although the second part of that comes with a strong caveat.  Never trust anyone all the time.

Related Reading:
Book Review of Idiot America
Newsweek’s Attempt at Conspiracy Theory Debunking
Last Year’s Top Bilge

Discussion

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“By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder — infinitely prouder — to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys.”
- General Douglas MacArthur

Sacrifice

You won’t see any controversial subjects or email debunking in this post, just a note of appreciation to all fathers, both civilian and especially military. The sacrifice of being away from family members and newborns while deployed is something that most of us can hardly comprehend. While I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to be around for the beginning of my boys’ lives, and look forward in the coming days to the arrival of my first girl, I see and hear every day the pain felt by long deployments and family separation.

To the fathers at home and abroad, thank you for your sacrifices and your commitment to raising a new generation of leaders. A new wave of children born of the digital age and destined to see events as wondrous and monumental as we have and as our parents did before us.

Chandler the Brave

I would like to direct your attention to a touching story of family sacrifice and love through the eyes of a nine year old girl named Chandler Dix. With her father deployed to Afghanistan, she holds the type of courage that illustrates the American spirit. Available at the TheMOAAChannel on YouTube and produced by MOAA’s multimedia guru Haley Crum:

Help Everyone Out

Besides contributing to MOAA’s Educational Assistance program (members will need to sign in, guests are welcome to sign our guestbook), you can take some time and send your representatives in Congress a message asking them to support the Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Bill (H.R. 4899). See this pdf document for the letter that was sent by MOAA’s President VADM Norb Ryan (USN-Ret.), a proud father as well, to every member of Congress for details about why this is so important to get passed without delay, especially before the July 4th recess. Find your legislative representatives at MOAA’s Legislative Action Center here.

Discussion

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Here Rests
in Honored Glory
An American Soldier
Known But to God
– Gravestone Marking, Arlington National Cemetary

OFFICIAL MOAA STATEMENT ABOUT THE ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY SITUATION

From the Military Officers Association of America (MOAA)—June 11, 2010

MOAA is deeply disappointed about the findings of the Army investigation into the operation of Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington is hallowed ground, and the nation trusts that servicemembers and their families will be honored and cared for appropriately in their final resting places. Because their work is so important, we join Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh and all other Americans in demanding that the operation of Arlington National Cemetery be held to the highest standard. Anything less is unacceptable.

CONTACT: Col Marv Harris, USAF (Ret) 703-838-0546 or marvh@moaa.org

Battle of the Bilge Statement (not an official MOAA statement)

On June 10th, MOAA watched along with the rest of the nation as the term ‘unknown soldier’ at Arlington National Cemetery took on new meaning. The release of the final report regarding operations at ANC and the accompanying reprimands stir our hearts and anger our sense of reason and accountability.

In summary, the findings of the US Army’s Inspector General during its investigation of ANC are that operational management failed in a number of areas. Graves were marked improperly, maps were not accurate, grave sites were unmarked and a list of other offenses. In a location that is nothing short of hallowed ground, the treatment of the cemetery is a disgrace.

Mr. John Metzler, Jr., has served as Superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery for nearly two decades. He has been reprimanded and will retire from public service on July 2nd, 2010. Metzler has to his credit implemented many positive policies and actions at ANC, but he failed to reign in his deputy, Thurman Higginbotham, who appears to be at the center of this debacle (please take the time to go over the documents at the link at the bottom of this article to see the full details).

If there is any good that can come from these events, it is that the nation has been forced to focus their attention on the fallen. In the coming weeks a new team will start the restoration of the cemetery and the reconstruction of its management. We will watch with many others the progress that will have to be made. Tragically, the cemetery is growing at a fast rate. We owe it to everyone who now and will someday rest there to ensure that Arlington is never again neglected.

Full documents and information can be found here: http://www.army.mil/-news/2010/06/10/40580-arlington-cemetery-announcement/index.html

Discussion

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“Television to brainwash us all and Internet to eliminate any last resistance.”
- Paul Carvel

The ‘Obama is anti-military’ talking point

You see it in your emails, hear it on the radio and watch it on TV. A concentrated effort to portray President Obama as anti-military. Using terms regarding the president’s actions that range from indifference to the traitorous, opponents of the administration pull out all the stops to make the powerful voting community of military veterans and service personnel and their families and friends firmly believe this.

We’ve seen little reduction in the number of emails circulating and pundits spewing misinformation. Yet each new allegation or poorly supported op-ed piece gets people riled up and helps to confirm the narrative the opposition has been attempting to write. But what has been the reality of how the president has conducted affairs of state since he took office as compared to his campaign promises?

Luckily, the folks over at PolitiFact have had a running ‘Obameter’ to track campaign promises and what has happened since the election. They have a specific subsection of the Obameter dealing directly with military issues.

The Obameter

The system used by PolitiFact is best described from their site:

PolitiFact has compiled more than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter.

We rate their status as Not Yet Rated, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.

The Obameter collected 33 campaign promises made by then-Senator Obama in his run for the office of the president that were specifically about the military. All 33 promises have been acted on to varying degrees and so far there hasn’t been a single one broken. Many have stalled, some have been kept, there has been one compromise and most are ‘in the works’. Here’s how those promises and ratings break down:

Promises Kept

• Send two additional brigades to Afghanistan
• Strengthen and expand military exchange programs with other countries
• Make greater investment in advanced military air technology
• Make U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional on anti-terror efforts
• Appoint a White House Coordinator for Nuclear Security
• Bolster the military’s ability to speak different languages

Compromise

• Ensure the Guard and Reserves can meet their homeland security missions

In the Works

• Begin removing combat brigades from Iraq
• Increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps
• Increase special operations forces and civil affairs
• Make military deployments predictable for troops and families
• Limit Guard and Reserve deployments to one year for every six years
• End the “Stop-Loss” program of forcing troops to stay in service beyond their expected commitments
• Fully and properly equip troops
• Work with Russia to move nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert
• Review weapons programs
• Modernize ships and invest more in small vessels
• Set standards for when the government should hire defense contractors
• End the abuse of supplemental budgets for war
• Create a system of incentives and penalties for defense contracts
• Work to end NATO restrictions on forces in Afghanistan
• Train and equip the Afghan army
• Better integrate efforts of federal agencies with the military through new Mobile Development Teams
• Spend $5 billion over three years on cooperative programs with foreign intelligence agencies
• Expand federal bioforensics program for tracking biological weapons
• Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy

Stalled

• Create a specialized military advisers corps
• Create a military families advisory board
• Restore 24-month limit on cumulative Guard and Reserve deployment time
• Make National Guard leader a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• Establish transparency standards for military contractors
• Clarify legal status for defense contractor personnel
• Call for a consultative group of congressional leaders on national security

I strongly recommend that you visit the site here for more details on each individual issue above.

PolitiFact – Checking the source

While PolitiFact has proven extremely reliable over the years, there are always forces at work behind the scenes that are almost always partisan. So the source of ratings and information must be examined. From their site:

PolitiFact is a project of the St. Petersburg Times to help you find the truth in politics.

Every day, reporters and researchers from the Times examine statements by members of Congress, the president, cabinet secretaries, lobbyists, people who testify before Congress and anyone else who speaks up in Washington. We research their statements and then rate the accuracy on our Truth-O-Meter – True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True and False. The most ridiculous falsehoods get our lowest rating, Pants on Fire.

We also rate the consistency of public officials on our Flip-O-Meter using three ratings: No Flip, Half Flip and Full Flop.

So who is behind the St. Petersburg Times? We follow the rabbit hole down by taking the red pill, mixing analogies, and bring up Google, which leads us to wikipedia (sadly quickly becoming the most fact based source on the internet):

The Times traces its origins to the West Hillsborough Times, a weekly newspaper started in Dunedin, Florida in 1884. By 1912, the paper had been sold six times, had been relocated to St. Petersburg, and was published six days a week. Publisher Paul Poynter bought the paper in September 1912 and published it seven days a week. Paul’s son Nelson Poynter took majority control of the paper in 1947. Nelson Poynter died in 1974, having willed the paper to the Poynter Institute. In 2003, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described the St. Petersburg Times as a “usually liberal” newspaper

Another brief stopover in Googleland takes us to a website curiously focused on Russian politics for a Florida newspaper. We kick ourselves for not noticing the .ru extension and click on ‘back’ (ok we checked out that one story first).

With an adjusted search term we find a reliable dictionary that confirms the belief that they are left leaning. Via NationMaster.com:

Encyclopedia > St. Petersburg Times
The St. Petersburg Times is a daily newspaper based in St. Petersburg, Florida, that serves the larger Tampa Bay area. The Times sells 334,742 papers per day Monday through Saturday, making it the largest paper in Florida and the 23rd largest in the United States. On Sunday it sells 420,251 papers, and the Times estimates about 755,000 people read the daily edition, while on Sundays it is approximately one million.

It traces its origins a newspaper that started in Dunedin, Florida, in 1884. Its editorial leanings are generally considered to be liberal, in contrast to its more conservative-leaning competitor, the Tampa Tribune.

The Times is published by the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school in St. Petersburg directly adjecent to the University of South Florida campus in St. Petersburg. The Poynter Institute is a school and resource for journalism, located in St. Petersuburg. The University of South Florida (USF) is a public university located in Tampa, Florida, USA, with branch campuses in Saint Petersburg.

In comparison to the rest of the pundit and pundit watch universe, PolitiFact is center of the road, especially in this partisan atmosphere. What’s more important however is their track record. And the information they have put out over the past two years especially has been solid, fair and analytical. Watching several sites constantly gives you a good feel for who to trust and who to visit to look for material. PolitiFact is certainly in the former category.

Conclusion/Editorial

So what does this mean to us? That depends on who you are and how you feel about President Obama. There are facts and there are lies, on both sides of the spectrum. But if people believe that President Obama is actively working to harm the military family they probably have not consulted the proper evidence available to them. That information likely came from sources of opposition to the president, and there has been no shortage of misinformation from those sources. By all evidence available and cross checked with other sources, President Obama has been pro-military and pro-military families in his first year and 4 months. The trust level seems to be rising slowly and subtly, but it is on an upward track. Facts have a way of making it out, and are pretty resistant to attempts to destroy them. Even if it takes a long time and usually, unfortunately, it is too long to make a difference and we all give ourselves a collective facepalm. History is full of examples.

(My pre-emptive apologies for offending anyone as well as the usual disclaimer that this is not necessarily an opinion of MOAA in this editorial is by now a tacit understanding, right? If not or you are new to the site, there you go.)

Our political and social leanings determine our level of enjoyment of sources, and we naturally trust those sources to provide correct information. We associate debunking and counter-propaganda with the ‘other side’. It is the nature of Americans to be as competitive as possible at all times. We don’t have a realistically existential threat to the nation right now, so as usual we become more competitive with each other and protective of the borders, and as we have seen recently we sometimes combine them for an extra level of strife. Let’s just keep the fringes on the fringe and make sure rhetoric doesn’t lead to violence and going places we won’t be able to come back from as a nation. So question everything, all the time. Post your counter evidence and speak your mind, or do like most people have and leave it all behind and speak from your gut with the assumption that the other person is lying. But at the end of the night, everyone turn off their computer and get some rest. We all need it.

Discussion

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Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Green Day, American Idiot

A Book Worth Reading

In researching the phenomena of political discourse and stretching of the truth, I came across a book released in June of 2009 that contains an amazingly insightful narrative about the current state of affairs. Written by Esquire magazine’s Charles P. Pierce, the short book lays out a history of ‘American Cranks’ and argues that what was once an intrinsically useful and very American concept of the ‘Crank’ has morphed into a dangerous global marketplace where ideas are accepted as truth due to their exposure to mass media.

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free is equally harsh on the left and the right side of extremist commentary, although most cases brought up as examples can be thought of as right wing issues due to the nature of the mass media today. Pierce pieces together the story of the founding fathers and their intention to make America a land of free expression and thought, and argues that in our early years it was this welcoming of ‘out there’ ideas that helped us launch innovation in science, commerce and industry that vaulted us past other nations in the world. The problem with today’s media, in Pierce’s view, is that the ideas that the Cranks (a term used in a humorous and at times endearing manner) don’t have the societal checks and balances that were in place in a less instantaneous world. Ideas were vetted and argued on a small scale through various institutions and groups. The ones that were truly crazy did not gain significant traction while the ones that led to breakthroughs both technically and socially were then presented on a national stage.

Today we don’t have that community on a local scale and due to talk radio, cable news and the insufferable implications of instant communication via email, internet and especially social web platforms. A blog post and a group of followers can thrust any idea into the mainstream if there’s enough interest and it confirms peoples ways of thinking. Two excellent ideas are presented in the book. One of them is Pierce’s own and the other he sites from Andrew Cline of Washington University in St. Louis and both are excellent summaries of the problems with mass media.

The Three Great Premises

Pierce lays out the Three Great Premises that drive today’s political news stories (which he states observantly are more entertainment than actual news):

The First Premise – Any theory is valid if it moves units.
The Second Premise – Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough
The Third Premise – Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.

There is so much truth to this theory that I’m inclined to doubt it just because of how fervently I believe it.

Andrew Cline’s Rules for Modern American Pundits

Cited in the book is another insightful theory that can be seen as a perfect description of today’s hyper partisanship. While it certainly does not describe all political pundits, it does help reinforce the idea of the entertainment centric version of most national level media figures. Cline’s rules are as follows:

1. Never be dull
2. Embrace willfully ignorant simplicity
3. The American public is stupid; treat them that way
4. Always ignore the facts and the public record when it is convenient to do so

As we celebrate more than a year of this blog, the daily lack of fact based media certainly seems to support this model. While I personally reject the notion that the American public is stupid with as much energy as I can muster, it is clear that some members of the media rely on this assumption.

Email Response

Not all email forwards or inquiries into Battle of the Bilge are presented here on the blog. A good deal of them don’t fit the model of military based interests, so I handle them on a case by case basis, providing answers and information back to MOAA members as best I can. This morning in response to a debunking that I did on a particularly inaccurate email forward regarding an immigrant in Florida supposedly with 8 kids and a $144,000 per year government subsidy, I received the following response (MOAA member’s name withheld):

Thanks for giving me the straight poop regarding the information forwarded to you by me. Too bad people who compose these messages cannot stick to the truth. There is enough truth available that can be communicated regarding the matter discussed in the message without spreading outright lies.

That is the best summary and statement about email forwards I’ve seen in a while, and could have been the forward to this book. It also supports my opposition to the idea that the American public is stupid. At least I know MOAA members aren’t…

Discussion

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