This is what happens when you think your friends, family, and neighbors are evil socialists who want to destroy America and people with power and influence tell you you’re right. This is what happens when your religious leaders endorse a man who coddles racists and assaults women. This is what happens you don’t trust professional journalists but trust a man who lies nearly every time he speaks. What did you think you were going to get when you voted for Trump again in 2020?
Dear Everyone,
I am deleting my Facebook page tomorrow. I no longer wish to use Facebook to promote my business for many reasons, but the main impetus behind my decision is my disgust with how well misinformation, disinformation, and hate spreads on Facebook. I’m under no illusion that this is only Facebook’s fault and not the people who use it, but Facebook is financially incentivized to promote it and certainly has promoted it. I’ve found after not using Facebook for several months that it’s not something my business needs, nor do I miss knowing that people are seeing my Alaska pictures in between hateful memes and conspiracy theory posts. I am cautiously optimistic Facebook will build on its recent actions combating misinformation and extremism on its platform. Thank you to everyone who has followed and supported my photography work over the past years.
“It must be true, I heard it on the internet.” Haven’t we all heard this joke, or become the butt of it at some point? Back in 2001, when the joke was still fresh, one of my high school teachers read a hoax email to my class warning about someone who died by drinking a can of Coke, the lid of which had been contaminated by rat urine. My teacher believed drinking soda was sinful, so she didn’t hesitate to accept the false story because it confirmed her personal bias. She then spread the false information to her students, using it as justification for her position that we shouldn’t drink soda. She didn’t mean to spread false information, but she certainly didn’t ask questions a skeptical person would have asked. How could doctors trace the contamination to a can the person drank from days earlier and probably discarded? How could the victim not have noticed the rat urine on the can? Why would bottling plants leave soda cans exposed long enough for rats to urinate on them? Doesn’t a rat infestation in a beverage processing facility seem like a health code violation? Why doesn’t this email contain any names, dates, or links to a reputable news source? Thanks to Snopes.com, you can still find the email online.
Fast forward nearly two decades and it seems millions of people still haven’t heard that joke about the internet, yet, including the President of the United States. Right now, the internet is teeming with false accusations of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Each one sounds simple on its face—like the way a 12-year-old would imagine voter fraud occurring. In one widely shared video, a man burns dozens of what he claims are ballots marked with votes for Trump in dramatized fashion. Many people shared the video without giving it a second thought—those evil liberals! But a skeptical person might ask, “Why would someone post a video online of themselves committing a serious crime?” This isn’t a teenager committing criminal mischief we’re talking about, or a moron in a mob taking selfies while they storm the Capitol Building. Why don’t you take two seconds to google the video and quickly find the fact check proving the ballots weren’t real before you like, comment, and share? The only way you immediately accept a video like this at face value is if you believe everyone on your side only acts in good faith and the other side doesn’t. It’s quite possible, and I would contend probable, that a Trump supporter made the video. You might ask, “Why would a Trump supporter fake a video like that, though?” The answer is simple. There are deceitful people in the world, including people on your side. A fanatical QAnon believer would fake that video. A neo-Nazi who marched with a torch in Charlottesville would fake that video. A militia member who planned to kidnap a governor and execute politicians would fake that video. And each one would think they were righteous. And they DO create disinformation like this. They expect you to spread the disinformation they create because you don’t ask questions when it agrees with your bias. They may be small in number, but with your help their lies are amplified incredibly. You might not be racist, violent, crazy, or want to undermine our democratic elections. In fact, you might be a sweet, old grandmother who cooks for homeless veterans and goes to church twice a week. But it doesn’t mean you’re not letting people exploit your personal biases, your faith, your patriotism, your lack of education or expertise, your fear of change, your perceived identity as a conservative or Republican, or your natural inclination to trust people, and by doing so letting them manipulate you into believing and spreading false narratives that damage our relationships with one another and our ability to have an honest discussion about political issues in this country. How can you accuse mainstream news organizations of purveying “fake news” and whine about their anonymous sources when you fall for fake videos and conspiracy theories you see on the internet which, for all you know, could have been created by an internet troll who lives in their parent’s basement, or even by a foreign adversary trying to sow discord in our country? Laugh at me for trusting CNN, the New York Times, or even the “straight news” side of Fox News, but you’re the one who believes everything you see on Facebook and doesn’t seem to understand the difference between news and opinion.
I created this business page in 2015, but long ago in 2004 I created a personal Facebook profile in college. I deleted my personal profile in 2008 and have never regretted it. I encourage all of you to do the same. Facebook was quite different back then, and I dumped it because I felt it cheapened close, personal relationships and lured its users to “Facebook stalk” people with whom they only have superficial relationships. When I created this page, I didn’t fully appreciate the cesspool of vitriol and misinformation Facebook had become in the intervening time. Facebook, in combination with right-wing media, has contributed to an epidemic of miseducation, paranoia, and delusion in a large percentage of the American public that simply staggers me. Throughout my life, I’ve been reticent about politics, preferring to keep my opinions to myself. I’m not particularly liberal or conservative. I’ve voted for both Democrats and Republicans. Until the rise of Donald Trump, I never felt strongly enough for or against a political figure to speak out publicly like this or demonstrate in the streets. But Donald Trump is corrupt. He is anti-democratic. He is Donald Trump first, America last. He has purposefully driven this epidemic to untenable heights. But, again, I’m under no illusion that he’s the only one responsible for it.
Some of you may not know that I worked for six years as an engineer for the Missile Defense Agency and took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States as a federal employee, the same oath Donald Trump took at his inauguration. I worked at Fort Greely for five of those years, home of our nation’s Ground-Based Interceptor fleet. (ICBM defense missiles housed in underground silos.) While I worked there, it was discovered that one of the interceptor silo covers did not close completely, allowing water and debris to infiltrate the silo. The gap was wide enough that you could stick your pinky finger through it. Anyone with a pair of eyes, or a single eye, or just a pinky finger, could clearly observe the problem, but the chief engineer for the defense contractor responsible for fixing it tried to convince my government leadership the gap didn’t exist. He intimidated the defense contractor’s on-site team—his own people—into not contradicting him, suppressed their findings, and persuaded my boss’s boss, who worked in another state and couldn’t observe the issue in person, that there was no problem by purposefully confusing him with obtuse engineering data he knew this person wouldn’t challenge and withholding data that clearly demonstrated the problem. The strange part is that the government would have wanted the silo cover fixed, and the contractor would have made money by fixing it; it was in everyone’s interest to admit the problem existed, but the chief engineer wouldn’t do so, presumably because he oversaw the original construction of the silo and didn’t want to embarrass himself or the contractor by admitting an error. Instead, driven solely by his ego, he took advantage of his stature and waged a pathetic campaign to convince people of something that obviously wasn’t true. I watched as his demoralized colleagues failed to speak up. I watched as he took advantage of his close personal relationships with his government counterparts, who assumed he wouldn’t lie to them. I watched as he almost succeeded. But, as a 20-something junior engineer, I stood up to this chief engineer who was 30 years my senior and several pay grades above me by calling out his ridiculous lying when no one else would. I did it because it was right and in the best interest of our nation.
I learned from that experience how easily an unscrupulous person in power could charm people into believing they were telling the truth while intimidating those who realized they weren’t into silence. But manipulative people like him overestimate their ability to charm and intimidate, and they always find problems in people like me who have the courage and integrity to challenge them. Over the last five years I’ve similarly watched Donald Trump try to convince Americans of so many things that are obviously untrue, while intimidating other Republicans and government officials into silence. Some of his lies were downright absurd and easy to disprove, like his lies about his inauguration crowd size or that COVID-19 was going away while hospitalizations and deaths trended upward. I’ve watched him and people representing him like Rudy Giuliani spew crazy conspiracy theories that insult my and the American public’s intelligence. Donald Trump has failed to convince me and over half of Americans that he’s remotely interested in serving the nation, but too many Americans still naively believe he’s on their side, and too many Republicans are afraid to challenge him, even after he lost decisively to Joe Biden and even now after he incited a mob to attack the Capitol. How many times do you have to watch someone brazenly lie, throw their closest allies under the bus, or openly take millions of taxpayer dollars and campaign funds for private benefit after they said they would divest themself from their business before you question their integrity? How many times do you need to hear someone tell you hydroxychloroquine is a miracle drug or a coronavirus vaccine will be out before the election—and then be wrong about it—before you realize they are recklessly politicizing a public health crisis? How many times do you need to see someone’s lawyers get laughed out of court before you realize their election fraud claims are phony and they are maliciously trying to undermine democracy? Like watching someone stay in a toxic relationship, I’m wondering whether you’re just too scared to leave or if you still think that, deep down, Donald Trump is a good person and might change, despite all those times you caught him cheating on the country.
I have watched Donald Trump commit egregious acts of neglect during his term out of pure self-interest, from ignoring intelligence assessments about foreign adversaries to actively undermining efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. He is currently demonstrating that he would tear up the Constitution and burn down democracy if he could. Yet, it’s not Donald Trump that scares me. It’s how almost half the nation doesn’t outright reject his total lack of moral, ethical, or democratic principles, or his dangerous brand of incompetent leadership. It’s how many of my former colleagues who worked for the Department of Defense or a defense contractor, who should understand the danger of a President who disregards intelligence reports and politicizes the military, repeat conservative talking points in support of that President like parrots. It’s how many of the sweet grandmothers and soccer moms I know spend their time raging against “fake news” and socialist liberals coming to take their guns and suburbs and religion and freedom in their spare time on Facebook. These people sound like robots to me. They sound like Winston at the end of 1984, when he finally loved Big Brother. They sound like the North Koreans weeping in the streets after the death of Kim Jong Il. They are the “some of the people” who can be “fooled all of the time”. Brainwashed. It’s a harsh word, but it’s merited. I don’t care if you’re my friend, family, coworker, or customer. A political party that tries to subvert the will of the voters through a malicious disinformation campaign is a threat to democracy and your repudiation of it is necessary. The Republican Party will continue operating in bad faith as long as you continue allowing it—it draws its power through you. I defended the Constitution of the United States by speaking out before the election, by voting against Donald Trump, and by speaking out again now. Now’s your time to step up for your country and admit you were wrong about Donald Trump. He really is the bad person he seems to be—the same bad person he seemed to be while publicly insulting women and leading the Obama birther conspiracy before he ever ran for President, which should have been enough for any reasonable person to reject him outright. Better late than never, and infinitely so in this case. It doesn’t mean you need to support the Democratic Party, or stop being a conservative. But it means you can’t continue letting your party follow a self-consumed maniac with no regard for the Constitution or rule of law. It means you can’t keep rewarding the cynics and sycophants like Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, and so many more who protect and encourage Trump to gain power for themselves. Even if you *are* a completely racist, liberal-hating, diehard Trump fan, do you really think Trump would stand a chance in 2024 after four more years of his stale act? Consider me pre-registered to vote against him if he does run again, or any of his family, or anyone else like Ted Cruz who shamelessly kissed his ass for four years. After all, I don’t think it’s fair that I had to answer “no,” when I was asked during my background investigation for my old job if I ever “attempted to overthrow the United States government” while they all gave it their best shot.
If you know me personally and disagree vehemently with everything I’m saying, consider this me splashing water on your face, shaking you, and slapping you trying to wake you up to reality. You know I’m an honest guy, intelligent, and wouldn’t say this without conviction. Donald Trump is not your champion, your friend, nor savior. He’s exactly what he acts like: a man with massive character flaws and no regard for other people’s interests, let alone the best interests of our nation. He will stab you in the back as soon as it’s convenient for him, the same way he did to so many people who were once loyal to him. He’s already done it to you by failing to stand up to foreign adversaries, by actively thwarting our nation’s response to the pandemic, and by turning his Presidency into a source of income for the Trump Organization. And Republicans in positions of power, whether they embrace him out of fear of backlash or in pursuit of their own power or because they are truly beholden to his personality cult, have almost unanimously chosen to cede their power to him and enable his chaos and corruption. Even as he openly tried to subvert our democracy and his lawyers spewed ridiculous conspiracy theories involving the long-dead Hugo Chavez on TV, the Republican Party mostly followed him—with only a few prominent office-holding Republicans like Mitt Romney or my Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski speaking out against his actions. Like you, they think they are getting what they want, but we’re all getting only what Donald Trump wants, and that’s the danger of authoritarian rule.
When I think about it, it’s not surprising that some people believe Joe Biden is an evil socialist pedophile with dementia who falls asleep in interviews and is being kept in a basement while being controlled by the radical left, because how else could good people rationalize voting for Donald Trump? (But the memes I saw on Facebook and the edited video I saw on YouTube said so!) Only if you’ve been brainwashed into believing the other side is evil and hates America would you give these claims any more than the two seconds they deserve. Only if you live in a right-wing media bubble or solid red Trump country could you possibly believe that there was no way the other side could have won without committing voter fraud. Do you really think over half of the nation is evil and wants to destroy America? Do you think I’m the brainwashed one? Maybe I am. But, if I’m the one who wants to take away your right to free speech, why does Trump call the press, whose freedom is enshrined in the First Amendment, the “enemy of the people”? If I’m the one who wants to control America, why is Trump the one who says his “authority is total”? If I’m evil, why is Trump the one whom all the white supremacists and neo-Nazis cheer? Both of us can’t be right. Even if I’m wrong, I’m happy to stand with the generals and national security professionals who called out Trump over his tenure. I’m happy to stand with John McCain. I’m happy to stand with Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, who had the courage to publicly criticize Trump when the rest of their party cowered.
Those who would indulge the kooks like Alex Jones, Rudy Giuliani, and the MyPillow Guy, or the ambitious cowards like Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz, or the bloated windbags like Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity who make mega-millions by keeping people perpetually frightened and angry, or Donald Trump are directly contributing to crazy guys in Viking costumes storming the United States Capitol. These leaders and voices of the Republican Party in its current form have created a nascent American ISIS, a collection of delusional and paranoid people cocooned in conspiracy theories, many of whom are white supremacists and religious zealots primed and ready for violence. The MyPillow Guy will tell you Donald Trump was sent by God to save America in the same breath that he tells you to go to his website and buy his pillows. Alex Jones will tell you the Sandy Hook massacre was fake in the same breath he asks you to buy his health supplements. Donald Trump will tell you he’s working hard for you while he tweets, watches TV, and golfs at taxpayer expense at one of his properties while the pandemic rages and he plots to undermine a democratic election. Quit indulging these people. Quit giving them money and power as they purposefully rip apart our nation for their personal gain. Stop being naïve and assuming someone is sincere or trustworthy just because they hug the American flag, praise Jesus, or wave a pocket Constitution at you. These people are greedy, power-hungry, and shameless. Some of them are also paranoid and delusional themselves. They have been exploiting you. You gave them power, and only you can take it away.
Support the immediate resignation or impeachment and removal of President Trump, if you don’t already. He was impeached once and spared conviction, and it only emboldened him. He’s burned almost every bridge he’s ever had and doesn’t care if he literally torches the Capitol Building with his violent rhetoric on his way out. Other politicians still emulate Trump and are quite ready to follow in his footsteps. They need to know their attempts will be futile before they try.
More importantly, reject Trumpism. Stop believing everything you see on the internet and start accepting responsibility for the information you share. Stop putting your trust in people who rely on fear and hate to gain influence. Stop rejecting scientists and experts. Stop voting for two-faced representatives who represent the worst in you like Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, Ron Johnson, Matt Gaetz, Rick Scott, Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lindsey Graham, Devin Nunes, Mo Brooks, and so many more. Stop calling racist, armed people who play militia dress-up “patriots” when they show up to protests to threaten, intimidate, and cause violence. Stop vilifying your fellow citizens.
Politicians aren’t going to change until you change.