Have You Been Scrubbed Lately?

WWH – When it was suggested I write an article on scrubbing the internet, I replied, “What the fuck is that?” The answer was, “Google it!” So I did.

Up came so many sites about “Scrubbing the Internet,” I felt as if I had been held captive in a dark room this whole time, solitary confinement, no visitors allowed, no information to be shared. I felt stupid and naïve like I did a couple of years ago when someone asked me in an email if they could “friend” me on Facebook and I had no idea what they were talking about! I quickly learned. And now I have learned what “scrubbing” means. So depress me more, while I do the same to you!

“Scrubbing” the internet occurs in a number of ways. It can be revisionist history, revisionist reality, disinformation, mutated perceptions, and outright lies. I may be biased, but it seems like it is mainly a malicious hobby of the right wing and their new breed of young, tech-savvy, tea baggers. But for all I know, the left does the same. I would like to believe they don’t. I would like to believe that the left is more moral and ethical. But I can’t prove it. All I can prove is that “scrubbing” exists. This means that for all those times someone has told you “you can’t trust mainstream news,” they can now add, “you can’t trust the alternative news, either.” Whoopee! Doesn’t that make you feel just so very warm and fuzzy all over?

This topic could be a textbook and not an article, so I will just give you my personal experience with “scrubbing,” and some possible ways to detect it and the available resources I have found to be the most useful.

My experience: I googled, “internet scrubbing.” Too many results appeared! I found it a bit scary to see so many websites and links to blogs that spoke about this phenomenon of which I knew so little. Or at least whose extent I didn’t appreciate. I chose one near the top of the list that said, “Internet Scrubbing,” an obvious choice, don’t you agree?

You know how when you start to explore one site, you might end up at another, ten degrees removed from the first because you happened to click on a hotlink on the site which led you to another site which had a hotlink you clicked on that swooped you over to yet another website? Well, I think you get the picture. Anyway, I found myself on this website called Citizen WElls News. At first glance it seemed “fair and balanced” because of the many “topics” in the header.

I scrolled down a few inches and read the author’s rant on how Wikipedia changed information he had posted there and HE was accusing Wikipedia of “Scrubbing the Internet.” The following is from Citizen WElls News:

We have the second instance of internet scrubbing reported on this blog in the past several
weeks. Today, one of the great commenters (sic) on this blog, GBAmerica brought this to our
attention:

“They scrubbed Wiki! Our founding father John Bingham from the state of Ohio defined

Natural Born Citizen! To hold highest office you must be a natural born citizen which means
to be born on US soil and BOTH PARENTS to be BORN on US soil with no Foreign or
Domestic Soverigty (sic) from any of them! It doesn’t matter where he is born his father was
NOT BORN HERE!!! John Bingham put that there to protect WE THE PEOPLE!!! Look it
up at the library!”

Needless to say I was horrified and appalled! I was horrified because when I clicked on the “About” tab, this is what I found:

“I have been meaning to do this for some time. I hate injustice. I despise inaccurate or biased
news. I don’t like it when innocent people are wronged or taken advantage of. You get the
picture, when it affects me the stakes go up. I don’t know where this is headed. I do have lot’s
of ideas. Maybe a combination of crusader and accurate news reporter. Sounds good to me.”

This, dear friends, from a man who has the gall to post an outright lie about the requirements for Presidency of the United States, and the swinging low bowling balls to tell us he is a good guy who believes in truth and justice! The greatest horror: That he probably does believe he is on the side of truth and justice! We all know how authoritative John Bingham was, whoever the hell he is!

By the way, just to make sure the allegations quoted from his hero had no substance, I went to a number of U.S. Constitution sites, friends sitting at my side, and together we corroborated that NOWHERE in the Constitution does it require that the parents of a President be native born Americans.

At one of these U.S. Constitution sites I found a short essay about the Constitution published in a sidebar to the document itself. The author had quoted something by the CAGW, which was also a hotlink… whisking me away to Citizens Against Government Waste, “America’s #1 Watchdog!”

These are the fine people who paid for that obnoxious ad called the “Chinese Professor” in which a sleazy looking professor gesturing with his cigarette holder boasts to his hundreds of commie looking uniformed Chinese college students, that because of America’s (read that “democrat’s”) taxing and spending policies, the Americans now work for the Chinese. He chuckles, the students join in, fade to black. You can watch the ad on their site, www.cagw.com. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I had to learn more about them so I clicked on “About Us.” According to their mission statement,

“The CAGW is a private, non-partisan, non-profit organization representing more than one million members and supporters nationwide. CAGW’s mission is to eliminate waste, mismanagement, and inefficiency in the federal government.”

Well, that sounds reasonable. But can I be sure they are truly non-partisan? I clicked on “Staff.” I did not recognize any of the names except for a nod to Ronald Reagan. I started googling the name of each Director on the Board. “Damn,” I said to myself. “Is this what I am going to have to do to make sure I’m not being misled, duped… scrubbed!

Not surprisingly, every Director on the CAGW Board is a Republican, and some are former staff members of Republican administrations. How can the website, therefore, claim to be non-partisan? Yet those who visit this site and read its biased views and skewed statistics might very well believe everything they post, every view they present. This is especially true if the visitor knows nothing about thinking critically. They will get… scrubbed!

Conservative groups set up websites with very progressive sounding names, and I assume the opposite may be true of some progressive groups, though I have found no examples of any. I tell you quite honestly, but without a smidgen of evidence, that I believe progressives are far less inclined to resort to scrubbing than conservatives. Progressives seem more likely to sleuth out scrubbing wherever it may exist. However, if any of you find examples of scrubbing from the left, please let me know.

The purposeful misnaming of a website is just another example of internet scrubbing. Though the site claims to be objective, fact-based, and non-partisan, it is probably a ruse to lure the unsuspecting visitor into their lair. The websites which have nothing to hide, like Worldwide Hippies, make no bones about which side of the fence they are on. They announce it loudly and proudly. Mother Jones and The Progressive are other examples.

Other forms of “scrubbing” include tactics similar to those used by corporations to control the content and delivery of mainstream media. Corporate money does more than you realize in controlling search engines. Corporate money pays for freelance writers, many of whom seem to have no compunction in writing things they themselves do not believe. And let’s just admit it. Young Republicans have mastered the art of finding the perfect keywords to bring you to their site and then seduce you. But you needn’t be defenseless.

How do we learn to recognize “scrubbing?” The best answer I can come up with is Critical Thinking. The subject in itself is worthy of a doctorate’s degree, so far be it from me to start instructing you on its complexities. Ironically, the complexities are best and most easily learned at a young age, especially through art and music, programs which sadly are the first to be cut when funds are low. Are we afraid to encourage critical thinking in our classrooms? Whatever might it lead to?

Maybe if I give you just a few general rules, you will be motivated to learn more about the subject. I think most of you reading this article already think critically, but it always helps to watch for verbal pitfalls and be reminded of traps. If you are a parent, it will also help you teach your children how to think more critically. Here are just some hurdles you might encounter when arguing an issue with someone of an opposing view. These basic obstacles to rational dialogue are from Brian Yoder’s, The Fallacy Zoo:

Fallacies of Distraction

In 1605, Francis Bacon said, “For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things … and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture.”

Or to put it in other words, “The art of being right!”

Peace! Here are links to some websites I found very useful:

http://www.goodart.org/fallazoo.htm

http://www.xenu.net/archive/baloney_detection.html

http://library.humboldt.edu/~ccm/crithink.html

http://austhink.com/critical/
http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/11605_12008.cfm
http://www.downes.ca/post/4

To contact Phil or find out more: check out his website and blog For a copy of HUNGA DUNGA
Phil Polizatto – Worldwide Hippies Bureau Chief – West Coast USA, is a graduate of The School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. He was a feature writer for the overseas division of UPI, a copywriter for CBS, and an award-winning corporate film producer. Mr. Polizatto is a published poet and a regular contributor to Worldwide Hippies as well as a variety of other arts and literary journals. Hunga Dunga is his first published novel. He resides in the Pacific Northwest.