You couldn’t make this up.
Yesterday several blogs I subscribed to began with identical words:
A recent Freedom of Information Act request has revealed that the FBI wants what it calls “food activists” prosecuted as terrorists, perhaps because nothing could more terrifying than exposing where our so-called food comes from and how it is manufactured.”
I didn’t disbelieve it initially, but it seemed a bit sloppy, though not outside the realms of the possible. What bothered me about it was the fact nothing was mentioned about who made the FOIA request, why, and the precise wording of the contents of the FBI document.
So I plugged the sentence, A recent Freedom of Information Act request has revealed that the FBI wants what it calls “food activists” into the dogpile dot com search engine. http://tinyurl.com/7y6cokz
My thought was that it wouldn’t require much search to find an initial post with the core information. Instead, as of early evening yesterday, there were 20 pages of posts repeating the one I’d recieved. Earliest I found was December 23, then more a couple of days later, gradually building up to a landslide yesterday. Blogs all over the web re-posting the same piece of writing, some with variations or addenda of their own.
Not one expressing the slightest doubt the story was true. Not one questioning where the original claim originated. Today there’ll be more as the panic spreads, I’m thinking.
The problem is the powers running this country opened a door to a new avenue of the believable. Indefinite detention Act voids US Constitution, Get a Job! Internment/Resettlement Specialist, US Army, Sunday morning thoughts December 18, 2011, and The Long Watch referred to the activities of the US Congress a few days back, along with the way some people were responding to it.
But once that desire to be able to lock US Citizens up without any due process based on being suspected of terrorism was enshrined in Congressional activity, all bets were off. Suddenly it makes all kinds of sense for the folks charged with law enforcement and pesky people doing all manner of legal things they’d like to lock them up for to want to squeeze them into the meaning of the word terrorist. They know that, and you and I know they know that.
So out of nowhere comes a claim the FBI’s already doing it. How much disbelief does the discerning reader need to suspend to accept it as gospel without the acquired skepticism of experience with the huge mass of BS on the web?
Heck. Maybe it’s even true. The only evidence it isn’t true is the fact there isn’t a grain of evidence it is.
Expecting the unexpected has some inherent pitfalls. One being that we see what we expect to see.
Old Jules
So Far From Heaven 
