Fair or Not - A Significant 2020 Dilemma

If 2020 didn’t affect our lives enough, the flood of announcements that state fairs throughout a majority of the country would be cancelled really hit home for many of us who had various reasons for wanting to attend the annual event. The two that I attended the past two years - Oklahoma and Texas - were among them that decided it was best to not put a large number of people in a crowded area when a pandemic continued to take hold throughout the nation.

Nebraska was not among those that cancelled its state fair, which was held in Grand Island in late August through early September. Grand Island also happened to be my first lunch stop on my recent trip through some Midwestern and Rocky Mountain states in early September, which is the reason for this latest series of blog posts.

Nebraska’s state fair was missing some of its normal events such as concerts and other entertainment options, but the hosts did offer free parking and free entry to offset the lack of fun. My trek through Nebraska cut the state in half as I started on the south part and drove north into South Dakota. However, I stopped off for brunch at the Farmer’s Daughter Cafe in Grand Island and found out that not only was the fair in town but that it was significantly cutting into business for the local diner.

Grand Island was actually one of the bigger cities I encountered during my trip, especially in the early days. It was also the only city that had much of a police presence during my first few days. And when I walked into the diner I stood out like an alien as I came through the doors wearing a mask. Apparently, only nerds (who want to live) wear masks in Grand Island, Nebraska.

My knowledge of Nebraska prior to this trip extended to college football and corn. Only this week did the football team finally begin its football season and, ironically or at least not surprisingly, corn was the vegetable of the day at the diner the day I was there. I did see lots of corn fields as I drove through the state but not much else. But compared to Kansas - which was the leg of my trip, with an overnight stay in Salina - the drive was more interesting and provided more scenery.

Overall, Nebraska was pretty much what I thought it would be - lots of small towns, corn fields, and not much else. Granted, I didn’t make it to some of Nebraska’s bigger cities like Lincoln or Omaha, but I doubt I would have seen much that was significantly different than what I found in Grand Island.

Next stop will be South Dakota, where there was definitely much more going on than at the 2020 Nebraska State Fair. For me, anyway.

No Credit for Being Credible in 2020

 A few years ago, highly-acclaimed filmmaker Errol Morris brought the docuseries “Wormwood” Netflix as a hybrid documentary/fictionally acted look into the Project MKUltra “conspiracy theory” that has for decades involved accusations that the U.S. government provided LSD to U.S. citizens as part of a mind control experiment in the early 1950’s.

“Wormwood” uses a combination of interviews and reenactments to dive into the historical accuracy of the project and what may or may not have happened. Eric Olson, the oldest son of one of the possible experiment subjects who died under mysterious circumstances, talked about his life-long journey in chasing down the truth, and the docuseries ends with Olson being convinced more than ever that the experiments occurred and that his father’s death was tied to what the government was doing at the time.

From all accounts and the generally-accepted belief that this was not an actual conspiracy theory but was something the government actually did at the time and spent decades covering up, Olson may continue to be frustrated but he was also apparently at least mostly correct. The government did, in fact, participate in experiments that involved giving LSD to various individuals in the 1950’s.

The thing is, however, is that this was only exposed even at the level it is at today because of the commitment Eric Olson had to doing research and finding evidence that would lead to the full truth being told. Not once did he share unoriginal memes on Facebook or seek out YouTube videos to validate his belief.

On the other side of conspiracy theories is Alex Jones, who spearheaded a public propaganda campaign to discredit the existence of the school shooting in Sandy Hook in 2012. If you are reading that for the first time, then yes, the head of Inforwars and one of President Donald Trump’s advisors pushed out a conspiracy theory that all of those kids who died as a result of the mass murder at Sandy Hook weren’t actually real.

A judge saw the danger in Jones’ words and he was ordered to pay a $100,000 as a result in a civil suit. The more significant damage to Jones, however, was the damage done to his credibility in a court of law.

Jones has long been an activist in pushing out wild theories that have either been debunked or at least discredited based on the narrow scope in which he has publicized it. However, as Jones has found fewer people willing to listen to his rarely true and often dangerously inaccurate theories, a new crop of conspiracy theorists generated by memes and videos put together by white nationalists, Russian troll farms and QAnon have fueled the fire for people who have more time on their hands and a complete willingness to share information they took zero effort to research.

In a world where Alex Jones and Eric Olson can be tied together by their pursuit of the truth, the manner in which they pursued it is completely different. Olson worked hard to talk to the people involved and he attempted to get answers. Jones and the literally hundreds of thousands of anti-maskers, Pizzagaters, and Wayfairers on social media have taken a much different approach - they just throw out misinformation and hope that it gains traction with enough people that it will spread. They don’t care what happens as a result, they don’t care if there is any truth to it and they don’t care who gets hurt by their position - they just like the attention it gets them.

I’m not one to automatically discredit anyone for embracing a particular train of thought. Every once in a while, those conspiracy theories turn out to be true. But if you are going to trot out information without doing valid research (please understand that anything called RedStatePatriot.org is probably not going to be anything more than a conservative blog) or taking some form of action beyond sitting behind a computer and hoping for likes, you are just as much a part of the problem and not the solution.

Alex Jones has zero credibility at this point. Don’t become a lesser version of Alex Jones. Try to be more responsible with your conspiracy theories, the way Eric Olson handled it. As it turns out, when you actually seek the truth, the world tends to join you.