Yes It Is, It’s True: Let’s separate Facebook wheat from chaff

“All of your children are poor unfortunate victims of lies you believe — a plague upon your ignorance.” — Frank Zappa

Facebook is often depressing because too many post racist, homophobic comments and circulate assertions that just aren’t true.

Hopkins Village President and former Hopkins Elementary Principal Mary Howard made my day not long ago when she issued rebuttal to the wrongful notion that schools do not have the Pledge of Allegiance recited any more. She said during her recently concluded career in education children virtually every day learned and said the Pledge. It hasn’t been banned.

I use Facebook as a tool to get stories, but I sometimes get exasperated by the posting and distribution of misinformation I suspect somebody with nefarious intentions spreads by manipulating emotions.

I hereby submit the following 10 examples of wrongful assertions with the understanding they are just a few of many:

• The Confederate flag had nothing to do with slavery. Horse hockey! Some re-write history and even take great pains to find black people posing and smiling with the flag. William T. Thompson, designer of the flag, said, “As a national emblem, it is significant of our higher cause of a superior race.” (See illustration)

Furthermore, this flag is commonly associated with the treasonous effort of a group of states willing to secede from the United States and fight to the death to defend an evil institution.

• The Confederate flag now has been banned. Not! This flag has been removed from public places, such as state capitol buildings. You can fly it on your own property without penalty and on other private property with the owner’s permission.

Losing the Dukes of Hazzard and the flag at NASCAR races both are business, not government, decisions.

• The U.S., when it adopted the Constitution in 1791, suddenly afforded us freedom. The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments, then applied only to free, white, male property owners over 21 years of age. Rights for women, blacks, Native Americans and 18-year-olds only came after further amendments and lots of public agitation. We had to fight for it.
• Barack Obama is a Muslim and the Anti-Christ. Obama has been a member of the United Church of Christ, and his pastor got a lot of negative publicity for his comments. If you think he’s the Anti-Christ, seek professional help or leave your right-wing whacko church that’s been hoodwinking you.
• The government plans to take away peoples’ guns. No, the gun control advocates want to regulate what guns can be owned legally and regulate how they can be obtained to make getting a gun more like getting a driver’s license.
• Those 19 Islamic nuts who hit the Twin Towers on Sept. 11 were from Iraq and Afghanistan. No, 15 were from Saudi Arabia and four were from Egypt. It was a heinous crime, not a declaration of war.
• Ministers now will be required to perform gay marriages against their wishes. That’s never been true and it still isn’t. A Catholic priest refused to marry my wife and I, so we went elsewhere.
• Obama is a Marxist and a socialist. These two words are thrown around a lot without an understanding of what they are. Good examples of socialism are credit unions and food co-ops. A good example of communism was exhibited by the Twelve Apostles — “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
• All welfare recipients should be tested for drugs and benefits taken away if they test positive. Somehow, all recipients of corporate welfare (tax breaks for the rich) are exempt though some have cocaine habits.
• Michael Brown, whose death at the hands of police in Ferguson, Mo., sparked riots, supposedly was shown in a video “The Real Michael Brown,” in which he savagely beat up an aging veteran. Snopes.com insisted it wasn’t Michael Brown in the video. But I suppose some racist apologists would maintain “they all look alike.”

I love the Internet and use Facebook. But we need critical thinking skills in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, or as the late Calhoun County Commission Chairwoman Bess Jordan used to say, “separate the buckwheat from the bullshit.”