nonresident alien

And now for the second installment of: “I’m afraid for my future”

For this I turn to the recent events at the Discovery Chanel building in Washington DC.

As most of you know, a gunman entered the building, took some hostages, made some demands and ended up dead.

I’m not going to point out the stupidity of the hostage taker. This is obviously too easy. Hello fish in a barrel.

I want to talk about the lack of critical thinking on part of the twitter universe. Twitter was the first source of information and for the hours of the event, continued to be the main source of information – and not all of it was good. I’m not bashing social media. I heart social media. I’m making a living studying it. But what makes me nervous about social media, is the lack of checks and balances. Anyone can blog and anyone can tweet. There is also no standard of professional integrity that comes with it. We can, and we do, say whatever we want. Why? Because we can without consequence. When it comes to movie reviews, this isn’t a bad thing, but when it comes to the safety and liveilhood of others – this is dangerous.

It first broke on twitter that the gunman had a manifesto of sorts. CLICK HERE to read it in full. From this, we could all see just what this crazy person wanted.

This is my crude summary of his rant: 1) Procreation means increased pollution. Babies = bad. 2) Solve military mechanized war. 3)Immigration and anchor babies = pollution and bad. 4) Global warming = bad. 5) Darwin = good. 6) US economy = bad. 7) Solve homelessness and unemployment.

What held so much promise here, is that the Twitterverse would be able to access this information and better understand what was at root in the situation. Um, in some cases yes. But it quickly went down hill.

The first tweet I read that scared me was from someone called MrNoface. Like that wasn’t a clue. According to his tweets, the gunman was confirmed as being Canadian. He then followed it up by telling all Canadian’s to get out of the US.

Um, excuse me. Would a Canadian immigrant really advocate for the end of immigration? Would they call all immigrants filth? (For a refresher see above. Remember that this was all over the place for everyone to read.) If he had just stopped to think about it for a second, he would have realized the stupidity in his tweet. I took the opportunity to ask him these things and he admitted that his information was wrong, yet he never tweeted that, it was never corrected. And for the people who picked up on it, they spent the rest of the day thinking Canadians are crazed gunman. Awesome. The speed of twitter allows the user to say whatever they want, no thought, just 140 characters.

The next scary twitter moment came when someone from inside the Discovery Building used their phone to take a picture of a man holding a gun outside. They proceeded to tweet it out as a shot of the hostage taker. Within seconds it was all over the world. And again, no one stopped to think about this for a second. For the sake of argument, let’s run the scenario:

You’re in your office and you’ve been told to stay where you are because there is an emergency situation in the lobby. You decide to get out your phone to call loved ones and tell them it’s hitting the fan and you love them. Then, as you look outside you see a man, in street clothes, packing a sniper riffle and a radio. Yes, that must be the gunman, so you take a picture, tweet it and feel like you are the best, smartest and most greatest person in the world. Now you pat yourself on the back.

So now the twitterverse is retweeting this picture. This IS the gunman. This clearly seen man must be crazy and we have it on digital file. ReTweet ReTweet ReTweet.

Well, congratulations twitterverse, you’ve ruined his life.

If we run the scenario one more time, this time with some critical thinking, we can see just why, we ruined this man’s life.

So you’re in your office. You’re told to stay put because there is a dangerous situation happening in the lobby. You grab your phone to call your loved ones and tell them, your going to be here a while and you love them. As you look outside, you see a man in street clothes with a sniper riffle and a radio. You STOP, you THINK. If you’ve been notified that the situation is in progress, then most likely the gunman is ALREADY in the lobby and someone has ALREADY called the police. So MAYBE the man outside is, NOT the gunman but a SWAT team member there to save you from the crazy man ALREADY inside the building. So instead of taking his picture you stop and think, I’m lucky to be safely in the hands of the highly trained police, I should just sit down and stay calm. And if you’re really good at critical thinking you also quickly realize that a crazed gunman wouldn’t be approaching the building already packing a gun and radio when the police have already closed off the building and surrounding streets. I’m thinking a guy skulking around with a gun might have been apprehended long before he got close enough for you take that picture.

BUT, that’s not the scenario that played out. And now, this mans life is changed forever. I would imagine his job requires an amount of anonymity that you just stripped from him. Good work everyone. Eventually people retracted what was said. But as I scanned the feed I realized that you can’t un-ring the twitter bell. Good work twitter, way to put your head in the game.

There are some fantastic benefits to social media. It does some great things. But it also does harm. Harm by the hands of those who have the technology but not the critical thinking skills that go along with it’s proper use. And this, is the slippery slop that we’re on.

I’m afraid for the future.

Critical thinking is dead, or at least it’s on feeding tube style life support.

Why do I think this? Because I’ve watched it die a slow, painful, gurgling death.

We live in one of the coolest cities in the world. We live in a place that is supposed to be full of innovation, global power and decision making. And yet recently, it was over run by a lack of thought, a lack of consideration and all out stupidity.

Case in point #1: Resorting Honor Rally.

I know I’m late for the party on this one, but I wanted to think really hard about what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. You see, this is the first step in critical thinking….THINKING.

Connor and I decided to attend the “rally” for two reasons; 1) This was a unique experience we wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else, and 2) We needed to see for ourselves if what we heard was true.

Leading up to the event, we decided it would be smart to know what exactly we were in for. First step was to look at the Restoring Honor website. And from there we learned that this was going to be a “non-political event that pays tribute to America’s service personnel and other upstanding citizens who embody our nation’s founding principles of integrity, truth and honor.”

Um, okay that doesn’t really say much, if anything at all. Integrity, Truth and Honor are great things, but what exactly would that mean to the people at the rally? To make things even more difficult here is another piece of information from the website: “Our freedom is possible only if we remain virtuous. Help us restore the values that founded this great nation.” Virtuous? And if you need to restore the values that founded the nation, you’re also saying their gone – where did they go exactly?

Still confused about what was actually the point to this all, we turned to the blogs, the people who supported this event. And here are some little pieces of advice from people who were there to “restore honour”. (and yes, I added that U on purpose)

From the Maine Re-Founders/Tea Party website, about attending the rally (my translations and comments will be in brackets):

Safety and Mores

DC’s population includes refugees from every country, as the families of embassy staffs of third world countries tend to stay in DC whenever a revolution in their homeland means that anyone in their family would be in danger if they went back. Most taxi drivers and many waiters/waitresses (especially in local coffee shops like the Bread and Chocolate chain) are immigrants, frequently from east Africa or Arab countries. As a rule, African immigrants do not like for you to assume they are African Americans and especially do not like for you to guess they are from a neighboring country (e.g. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia) with whom they may have political or military tensions. It’s rare to meet anyone who gets really offended, but you can still be aware of the issue.

(Beware, people who are not JUST like you might be there. Don’t run, don’t make any sudden movements and for the good Lord’s sake…don’t engage them in conversation. Oh and I’m curious, what about asking a Russian immigrant if their Ukrainian? Is that okay?)

Many parts of DC are safe beyond the areas I will list here, but why chance it if you don’t know where you are?

If you are on the subway stay on the Red line between Union Station and Shady Grove, Maryland. If you are on the Blue or Orange line do not go past Eastern Market (Capitol Hill) toward the Potomac Avenue stop and beyond; stay in NW DC and points in Virginia. Do not use the Green line or the Yellow line. These rules are even more important at night. There is of course nothing wrong with many other areas; but you don’t know where you are, so you should not explore them.

(Um, just for the record, the yellow line goes to many of the same places as the blue line. So on the one hand, thank you for the tip because we didn’t have to fight to get on the train. It was a real pleasure to watch the train behind us pull up packed to the rim with people who were too afraid to take the same stops just on a different coloured train. Ooppss there I go again adding a U to words. I’d also like to know why you shouldn’t explore new things, would that be because you might just find out that it’s not a scary world or is it because you haven’t been able to profile every street for it’s suitability. Why are you so afraid of your own shadow?)

If on foot or in a cab or bus, stay in Bethesda, Arlington (preferably north Arlington), Crystal City, Falls Church, Annandale, or Alexandria, or in DC only in northwest DC west …

(Okay let me stop there. What exactly is wrong with south Arlington? And where exactly is the dividing line between north and south? I live in what you might refer to as south Arlington and I just can’t see what’s so scary about me. Actually you’re right, there is no telling what an educated graduate student will do to you. And heaven forbid you might run into someone who doesn’t look JUST like you. My bad, this is good advice.)

If any of what was said above doesn’t scare you, this just might. From the Restoring Honor Facebook page, I give you excerpts from Becky Todiza’s genius musings on “leftists”:

I am NOT one to “alarm” people by any means. I cant stand those that try to scare others from attending any of these types of event but people should be aware of what will happen at these events.

There WILL be lots of leftists/progressives, activists, socialists, unions, environmentalists, feminists, code pink, and all other Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin haters at this rally.

(Note to self: apparently there is an alarm to sound and apparently leftists are the problem. Is Code Pink a euphemism for people with personal hygiene and great taste in shoes? Why would anyone be afraid of a group of women who don’t like war?)

They will have signs and be yelling things that arent very nice. It’s what the hate of the left does.Try not to take it too personally and by ALL means DO NOT REACT to them. It’s exactly what they want.

(I’m confused here, because the people we saw yelling “not very nice” things, were in fact the rally supporters. One women even looked at a protester – who stood there silently with a sign – and yelled for everyone else to kick his ass. Becky, I think that supports also have ‘the hate’.)

If you see a good hearted Patriot being filmed and questioned…..kindly mention to them that they are probably being filmed by leftists. Ive seen them act all innocent and ask people questions, filming them…and then walk away laughing and mocking them. DONT think it wont happen.

(Last time I checked, camera equipment didn’t have a political philosophy. EVERYONE there had a camera of some sort, it’s the age of digital photography. If you don’t want to be filmed saying something you’ll regret, don’t stand there in the first place and don’t assume that everyone with a camera is out to get you.)

We learned a lot that weekend. We learned that a substantial amount of people are afraid of the “other”. And the scary thing is that there was a large group of American’s that didn’t understand the terms they used to describe their own President. (Click here for some of the best examples.) They think he’s a racists and a bigot when in fact their the ones afraid of immigrants and alternative lifestyles. Most people we saw also believed that the term socialism is synonymous with dictatorship. A quick google search will tell you that’s not true, but that would involve taking a moment to think it it out.

The people we met were afraid of their own shadow. They hate what they don’t know and they don’t know anything but their own up bringing and race. As one of my god friends asked: “Exactly when was the US at it’s full capacity of honor and virtuousness? Because then we’d know what we were striving for” This whole event seemed to me to be nothing but an ego trip for Beck and Palin. It was meant to show just how many people they can influence and to show what kind of power they have over a flock of misguided, uniformed sheep. There was no restoring honour there, they were just restoring their bank accounts and egos.

I’m a little scared for the future.