Slashdot Mirror
Onion Story Gets Blown Out of Proportion
A 3-year-old Onion video titled "Martial Law Plans Revealed?" has swept across the internet recently, and taken the gullible along with it. The video has some preaching from the highest mountain top about the evils of a government turning fascist, and an equal number explaining until red in the face what The Onion is.
I attend political debates, couple of times a month with different audiences and I have yet to meet a single person from the left mistake Onion with real news. I have also very rarely seen people from the right make that mistake. However, people who attend these talks are most likely better educated.
Back on topic, regarding general public this was released three years ago and at the time the left didn't come out and mistake this with real news. From looking at Facebook and Twitter, it seems like a whole lot of people on the right have been duped.
My favorite was always the 2000 article Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over... almost everything in the article came true.
E pluribus unum
There's something amazing about invoking Poe's Law here, similar to the number of far-rightists who think that Stephen Colbert is secretly a real conservative who's just pretending to play a fake one so that he has a chance to mock liberals - that even when you make it clear up front that you have a parody, some fundamentalists will still miss or ignore that part. Apparently, there's nothing you can do to get 100% certain with parody.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
This is utterly true, not only about 9/11, but also about martial law. You wouldn't believe how many of my liberal friends thought Bush would cancel the elections and call martial law before Obama could get elected. It was really depressing because they were mostly well-educated and should have known better. Here is an example of one guy defending his position, in case you want to see what it looks like.
I don't think it actually shows Americans are crazy, I think it reflects the deep-set distrust Americans have of their government. And this is something that extends from the left to the right. And it's probably a good thing.
Qxe4