DENNIS GARVIN: Cock Fighting and Fake News

Cockfighting has a long history.  Humans took a natural tendency of roosters to resist any encroachment upon their perceived domain by another rooster.  Looking for a blood sport that would provide entertainment and financial gain through betting, men began to breed these birds to maximize their aggression, size and strength.

The technique for cockfighting is to for the handlers to go to opposite corners of the fighting area (the cockpit) and to hold the birds and move them each forward and back.  Each bird perceives the movement of the opposite bird as an aggressive move.  All they know is that they are not responsible for any movement on their own.  Alternatively, they put the birds in transparent boxes that do not permit them to back up or turn sideways.  They see the other bird as not backing up or turning aside–clearly aggressive posturing.  The result is a fight to either death or (if the handlers are humane), mere defenselessness.  The handlers who are responsible for the erroneous aggressive posturing are not hurt and they make money on wagering.

The modern human equivalent of this kind of manipulation-leading-to-aggression is fake news.  It is generated by those who stand to gain by its misapplication, whether it is money or power or prestige.  The one immutable fact remains: the originator of the fake news is never at risk.

Fake news is anything but new.  “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Most sources attribute this quote to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister who orchestrated the disinformation leading up to the Holocaust against the Jews of Europe.

In World War II, Japanese emperor Hirohito and others (like warlord Tojo) wanted to ensure that the empire of Japan would never be successfully invaded.  They flooded the Japanese civilians with propaganda about the barbaric behavior of American soldiers and the nearly religious imperative of resisting the Allied advance toward mainland Japan.  They did not need to encourage their soldiers: all Japanese military were imbued with the bushido code (also known as the Code of the Samurai) that taught, among other things, that it was shameful to be captured.

The Americans learned of this military ethic at the battles of Peleliu, Guadalcanal, and Iwo Jima.  It was this warrior ethic that prompted American War planners to understand the enormous military death and casualty implications of a direct assault on the Japanese mainland.

An even greater shock, however, came with other battles (such as Okinawa and Saipan) when civilians committed mass suicide.  The numbers will never be confirmed, but could have gone as high as 20,000.   These deaths were directly linked to the fake news/propaganda that American soldiers would brutalize the civilians.

How can this be applied to our current domestic mindset?   The most recent result of fake news is the totality of the confused message of the Women’s March in various cities.  The people who were interviewed were universally, legitimately, afraid of the future but unable to clearly articulate a specific sinister program being promoted by the incoming administration. This is the basis of fake news and its consequence; the victims of fake news are left with bumper sticker indictments, their lack of supportive data covered up by the level of their passion.  Just like the WWII Japanese civilians who committed suicide because of lies told to them about the US soldiers, these people are prepared to do more harm to themselves and their country than the incoming administration could perpetrate.

The Bible has a verse:  My people perish for a want of understanding (this is my paraphrase.  It is found in Proverbs 10:21 and Hosea 4:6). I am not happy that today’s America is how I learned what this verse means.

Dennis Garvin

ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY IN RESPONSE TO LETTERS RECEIVED:

IN response to feedback received this is a follow-up on my previous commentary.

First, fake news is a combination of:

1. Outright lies
2. Failure to report the truth
3. Distortion or incompleteness
4. Selective reporting

Let us apply this to the current media situation.  The Women’s March is representative of Fake News in both how fake news influenced the marchers and in how the whole Women’s March was portrayed.

First, let us look at some of the so-called responsible media:

1. CNN- 8^th largest contributor to the Clinton Presidential campaign
2. All of the alphabet media (ABC, CBS, NBC) are on the Clinton Foundation Donor List. (That this was completely influence buying is proven by the immediate cancellation of donations by foreign nations when Hillary lost.)
3. The New York Times – the major shareholder in this company, Carlos Slim, was a major Clinton supporter. The CEO of the NYT holding company also donated to the Clinton Foundation.
4. Today, 29 January, all of the alphabet cable news stations used the identical banner headline, ‘Chaos and Confusion’ to describe the vetting process enacted by Executive Order. That is not coincidence; that is collusion.
5. Notice that every single news station that has declared that it ‘will work to keep the Trump administration accountable’ never said the same thing about holding the Obama administration accountable.
6. All of the above are cautionary indicators showing how a media entity can morph from journalism into propagandism.

The official purpose of the March was to represent the views and needs of the American woman and, to a modified extent, women all over the world.  The official website of the March provides a mention of issues to “stand for”:  https://www.womensmarch.com/

1. Gender justice
2. LBGTQ rights
3. Immigrant rights
4. Reproductive rights
5. Economic justice
6. Disability rights
7. And more…

While proclaiming this to be about women, it is obvious from the above suggested issues that this was not purely female concerns.  It is clearly anti-Trump.  For those who would argue that improvements in the above issues help women both directly and indirectly, they base it on the idea that ‘a rising tide lifts all ships.’  That is the narrow view.  The wider view realizes that a rising tide on one side of an ocean means a dropping tide on the other side.  The water of the rising tide has to come from somewhere else.  The other problem is that, when you leave it up to the aggrieved party to decide when they have been compensated enough, the answer is ‘never.’  With that in mind, let us look at these issues.

Gender Justice: I have no problem with stopping violence against women (who would?) but I do have a problem with the very low level of proof that is being applied in certain jurisdictions.  Currently, it is sufficient for a man to be accused of violence against a woman for his life to be ruined.  He need not be convicted.  There is also no such thing as re-education or rehabilitation, such as there is for those convicted of nonviolent crime or drug crimes.

1. Affirmative Action- this is clearly gender bias in favor of both females and non-whites. I understand the need to establish equity, but this is not equity. This is preference.  My three year old grandson has done nothing to deserve less consideration in areas of being selected for higher education or jobs.
2. Women will always be unique in being the sex that is tasked with giving birth. Aside, from being a sperm donor, the American male is being told that there is nothing that is unique about a man, except for his violence and misanthropy.  Commercials invariably include a stupid husband/father/boss who needs direction and control by the far smarter children and/or women in his life.
3. Women are being pushed into combat roles, despite their lesser tolerance for its rigors. (Sorry to disabuse you, but an average fit male has greater strength and endurance than an average fit female). The reason for the push?  Higher rank has always gone to those soldiers who have served in combat.  Feminists had only partial success in nullifying that tradition (under Obama, who never served in the military at all).  It is instructive that, in 1948, Israel tried to put women in the frontline of combat and gave it up, despite being a nation surrounded and attacked by enemies.  The reason:  it is instinctual, in a male, to protect a female. In a military action, nothing must compromise the mission.  Where an Israeli male soldier would press ahead in an attack and leave a wounded male friend to be tended by medics, he would not abandon a female soldier.  For those who would say that the man should ‘learn’ not to do that, or that it is altogether proper to subordinate mission success and stop to care for a fellow soldier, I would simply say that, if the problem could have been solved, the Israelis would have done it.
4. These feminists never bother to wonder how much of a man’s nature must be suppressed in order to support and defend their agenda:

For each person kills the thing he or she loves,
Yet each person does not die – Oscar Wilde

This quote is modified to provide gender equality.  There are men who have bought into the entire feminist agenda without exception.  I wonder: while some women might appreciate such willingness and self-abnegation, do they actually respect and admire such men?  As a Urologist of some 40 years’ experience, I can say that I am seeing more young men with issues of sexual performance and self- perception.  Is there a cause/effect relationship?  The feminists will, of course, disagree; for them, there must be absolutely no downside to their agenda.