The Downfall of American Civility

Recently I was scrolling through posts made by friends on Facebook. There's the usual mix of cats and dogs participating in their secret conspiracy to suck human bandwidth dry,  photos of unattractive food, puzzles with the tag line "99% of people will get this wrong" (but everyone gets it right), and posts with captions ending in "you won't believe what happens next" and we do believe it because it wasn't that unbelievable. All innocuous time wasters, but harmless unless you should be doing real work instead of reading meaningless pap.

More and more however, I'm seeing posts (Lets be clear, they are re-posts. Very few people on Facebook are inclined to take the time to share an original thought) that serve only to misinform the reader, and create a sense of revulsion towards another group of people. Typically these are conservative creations that denigrate a particular religion, sexual orientation, political party, or race. Liberals are not immune from creating, or falling victim to this deceit, but anyone with a mouse and and an internet connection can see the right leaning imbalance.

Here is a an example of the length conservative web sites will go to advance their agenda. This post come to us from Tellmenow.com/ which from what I can tell makes the National Enquirer look like the New York Times.

Obama Admin Changes 4th of July So Muslims ‘Aren’t Offended’

"According to Conservative Tribune, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia held their July 4 celebration one month early, on June 4. Robert O. Blake, the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, told the press that this was done out of respect for the Muslim holiday Ramadan, which runs from June 17-July 17.
The festivities at the embassy included singing both the American national anthem AND the Indonesian national anthem, just in case any local Muslims felt uncomfortable!
Embassies in foreign nations should of course be respectful of local culture, but this is just ridiculous. Americans who are at the Indonesian embassy should be allowed to celebrate July 4 on the same date as everyone else does, and they should be allowed to celebrate however they please.
This is yet another example of Obama submitting to the Muslim agenda. If July 4 conflicted with Christmas, you can be sure that Obama would not change anything to make Christians feel more comfortable.
Sheesh, 2016 can’t come quick enough!"

 That's it. That's the whole story as reported by Tellmenow.com. What follows is what you would expect. Thousands of red-blooded Americans ready to rally behind the flag, post this on their timeline with comments pretty much divided between their hatred of Muslims and hatred of the president.

Not one of these people bother to think beyond the few sentences they've just distributed or even find the comment "...included singing both the American national anthem AND the Indonesian national anthem" ironic since as I last checked, every time an American hockey team plays one from Canada we sing both anthems. The same is true during the Olympics and whenever the U.S. government hosts a head of state. Imagine Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush playing the anthem of a foreign government in the White House? Wait, they did.

The bigger irony is that the changing of the celebratory party (Not the 4th of July itself) was done to allow Indonesians to celebrate our independence WITH us. As Ramadan begins in July, all the Muslim dignitaries and the Muslim employees of the embassy would be fasting and not able to participate (Given the number of Muslims in Indonesia it would have been a small party indeed if held on July 4th).

The end result of people falling victim to this type of over-hyped, misinformation campaign is exactly the opposite of what the bible-thumping, gun-wielding, Jingoists are trying to achieve. America is marginalizing itself around the world, and like the Romans, Greeks, and British empires, will collapse under her own bigoted weight.