A friend of mine was kind enough to recently inform me of an opinion piece on Herald-Mail titled "Don Stevenson: The alligator conspiracy". This particular opinion piece starts off with a rather shocked Mr. Stevenson relaying the disturbing revelation that Wikipedia's entry for Hagerstown City Park contains the mention of a "trained alligator" in the park responsible for population control of the geese. Mr. Stevenson became so concerned if this could be true or not that he actually called the city's Department of Parks and Recreation to find out if it was real or not. Mr. Stevenson then states, after confirming with the city that there is no alligator, that the alligator was "conspired data had been created which had no base in reality." and stops researching the alligator's origins.
I found myself quite amused at this comment, but surely using the word "conspired" was a typo of some sort, yes? After all, reviewing the Wikipedia page shows that the alligator reference was only a single edit hidden alongside other edits back in August 2019. Shrugging this off, I continued down the page and laughed when Mr. Stevenson admitted to actually looking around City Park for the alligator. This laughter was abruptly halted when Mr. Stevenson once again used the word "conspiracy" in association with the alligator reference.
Mr. Stevenson continues to take further jabs at the "alligator" by calling it a "conspiratorial story" and "lying" with the intent to deceive. Ironically, Mr. Stevenson in his attempts to expose this "grand conspiracy" involving a single Wikipedia edit has completely missed the bigger picture, and the intentions behind not only the Wikipedia edit, but also the stories of the alligator itself.
Let us discuss the Wikipedia edit for a moment. This edit a year and a half ago was created to prove a single, solitary point, that Wikipedia should not be relied upon as an authoritative source. This point was illustrated through the addition of information which was so outlandish, so ridiculous, that anyone familiar at all with Hagerstown City Park would immediately see its inaccuracy and remove it from Wikipedia. However, what is absolutely remarkable is that since my last edit on that page, there have been six additional edits, and none of them removed the alligator. Even more laughable is that one of the edits was actually a fan of the satire site The Hagerstown Report adding to the alligator sentence, but their comment was removed because they failed to include a link to a source.
Even more laughable about Mr. Stevenson's grand revelation about how the alligator sentence was added to Wikipedia "for reasons we do not know" and "perhaps they were bored individuals who wanted to prank us. But it does illustrate how one may create a bogus twist on reality and send it spiraling..." If only there were a way to search the internet for articles relating to a Hagerstown alligator, perhaps through a website such as Google or other search engines?
Mr. Stevenson then continues on with a rather ironic statement that the "birth of conspiracy perhaps includes those who need intrigue in their life." I do not disagree with Mr. Stevenson, as it is quite clear that he needs some intrigue in his own life since he is seeing conspiracies where none exist. There is no grand conspiracy behind the Hagerstown alligator, no secret agenda. The alligator, in fact, was dreamed up several years ago by myself and several other family members as a symbol of government waste. Mr. Stevenson even goes so far as to say that those who tell such tales "seem to be dissatisfied with the way things are." You're right, many people ARE dissatisfied with the way things are, and with very good reason.
The entire point of the alligator was to illustrate how government often wastes its peoples' money by "solving" problems which did not need solved in the first place, quite often with ridiculous overpriced solutions. And when the government does things such as spend $356,000 on studying sexual tendency of quails on cocaine, it's not hard to draw a parallel at all. The fact that Mr. Stevenson disregards "conspiracies" as simply the "blame-game" against government or a person in government they do not like is truly ironic since government waste on ridiculous projects is not at all a conspiracy, but documented time and time again, even the time the CIA actually researched mind control drugs or the fact that The Men Who Stare at Goats was based on a true story. Summarily dismissing any and all criticism of the government as a "conspiracy theory" is damaging to not only government accountability, but essentially gaslighting of any person who dares question if the government is telling us the truth and extremely dangerous to democracy. The news media should also not be free from criticism, especially when news media intentionally edits a year-old story just to put the vice-president in more favorable light and hopes that no-one will notice. Today's news media displays extremely questionable ethics, reporting based upon their favored political candidate. Long gone are the days of no-nonsense reporting without editorialization. Now news media is simply about who can stretch the truth enough to get the highest ratings.
Speaking of stretching the truth, in what is probably the biggest stretch of all, Mr. Stevenson actually attempts to link adding the alligator sentence to Wikipedia to the storming of the Capitol on January 6th, saying that people who post such things that "such a temperament is vulnerable to violent acts." Yes ladies and gentlemen, I have now been accused of possibly being a violent person because I added a humorous and ridiculous sentence to a Wikipedia page claiming that there is an alligator in Hagerstown City Park. This is absolutely, truly amazing and horrifying at the same time, that someone who dares to think differently, that someone who strays outside Mr. Stevenson's perceived "norms" is now instantly a potentially violent person capable of storming the Capitol. (By the way for those unaware, not only am I probably one of the most peaceful people you'll ever meet, but I'm also a very vocal supporter of the Einstein Institute which promotes nonviolent means of advancing freedom in countries with oppressive dictatorships.)
However, after making the assumptions regarding my character and temperament, Mr. Stevenson does then acknowledge that we all have limitations in understanding and knowing, and that it should be acknowledged that none of us know the whole truth of many things. I wish Mr. Stevenson would have taken his own advice before he made such terrible assumptions about my character.
Mr. Stevenson is correct that "much of our politics is more about sniping, evoking desired feelings from hearers, allowing lies to live and the truth to die." I do wish that he would have taken his own advice on this, and actually sought out the truth (through a simple Google search) about the Hagerstown alligator before making the assumptions that it was part of some grand conspiracy related to the storming of the Capitol. This sort of jumping to conclusions without the complete picture is disappointing at the least, but quite possibly dangerous. Indeed, reason and good sense do appear to have been abandoned when crafting his opinion regarding the purpose of the alligator in the article.
Ironically, where Mr. Stevenson sees a "conspiracy" none exists, much like how I wrote in my book Hacking of the Free that the perceived 2016 "election interference" through "fake news" was not in fact a Russian conspiracy with the Trump campaign, but in fact a profit-driven campaign designed for one purpose only - to increase ad revenue of "clickbait" articles targeting supporters of Donald Trump. And by the way, those clickbait articles sometimes will infect your computer with malware. This wasn't a grand conspiracy to get people to vote for Trump, it was a grand pursuit of the almighty dollar at the expense of Trump supporters.
"While no trained, geese-devouring alligator exists at Hagerstown's city park..." is an accurate statement, the symbol the alligator represents, government waste, is very real at all levels of government, and absolutely not a conspiracy theory. We do indeed deserve better - from all levels of our government, and from our news media.
Ken Buckler is the editor of The Hagerstown Report. The opinions expressed in this article are his own, and do not reflect those of his employer or clients.
No comments:
Post a Comment