Before the Internet, we had to rely mostly on Critical Thinking Skills, which used to be overtly taught in decent American school systems (not Republican states).
If someone in a bar said something as dumb as “No Jews died on 9/11,” most people would recognize that as almost certainly wrong, just on the face of it. Two enormous NYC office buildings, filled with primarily financial companies, in a city with one of the highest Jewish populations in the world, and not ONE of them was Jewish?
Even if you could buy the ludicrous story that somehow EVERY single Jew was warned to stay out of the Twin Towers (and presumably all the airplanes, too), are we supposed to believe that wouldn’t somehow leak out in the non-Jewish world? Some Jew wouldn’t call a co-worker who is also a close trusted friend, and warn them to not go to work tomorrow? That someone wouldn’t contact the media? That would require us to believe that the entire Jewish community is such a strong monolithic block that they would hide this massive secret from the rest of the world, and simply let their non-Jewish fellow citizens perish that day, instead of warning the authorities and stopping it.
Does that make any logical sense at all? It might if you are so virulently racist that you think the Jewish community would actually do that. But a thinking person would just look at them like they are either an idiot, crazy, or both.
Of course, the real problem in the pre-Internet era, is that you couldn’t pull out your phone and slam the moron with sources and facts, so stupid arguments like this one would often end with a highly unsatisfying Agree to Disagree.
If someone in a bar said something dumb before the internet, most people actually believed it outright. I don’t know what school taught you critical thinking, you lucky bastard, but you’re in an enormous minority.
Most people carried so many misconceptions around, from small to big, it’s not even funny. There was less connectivity in stupid people, so their bullshit wasn’t that refined, but it was absolutely more ubiquitous.
Before the Internet, we had to rely mostly on Critical Thinking Skills, which used to be overtly taught in decent American school systems (not Republican states).
If someone in a bar said something as dumb as “No Jews died on 9/11,” most people would recognize that as almost certainly wrong, just on the face of it. Two enormous NYC office buildings, filled with primarily financial companies, in a city with one of the highest Jewish populations in the world, and not ONE of them was Jewish?
Even if you could buy the ludicrous story that somehow EVERY single Jew was warned to stay out of the Twin Towers (and presumably all the airplanes, too), are we supposed to believe that wouldn’t somehow leak out in the non-Jewish world? Some Jew wouldn’t call a co-worker who is also a close trusted friend, and warn them to not go to work tomorrow? That someone wouldn’t contact the media? That would require us to believe that the entire Jewish community is such a strong monolithic block that they would hide this massive secret from the rest of the world, and simply let their non-Jewish fellow citizens perish that day, instead of warning the authorities and stopping it.
Does that make any logical sense at all? It might if you are so virulently racist that you think the Jewish community would actually do that. But a thinking person would just look at them like they are either an idiot, crazy, or both.
Of course, the real problem in the pre-Internet era, is that you couldn’t pull out your phone and slam the moron with sources and facts, so stupid arguments like this one would often end with a highly unsatisfying Agree to Disagree.
If someone in a bar said something dumb before the internet, most people actually believed it outright. I don’t know what school taught you critical thinking, you lucky bastard, but you’re in an enormous minority.
Most people carried so many misconceptions around, from small to big, it’s not even funny. There was less connectivity in stupid people, so their bullshit wasn’t that refined, but it was absolutely more ubiquitous.