Food for Thinkers: Panic In Aisle Five

This article originally appeared on December 14, 2016.

In the United States, where some significant portion of the public believes that the government is out to take their guns, the idea that a mass shooting was orchestrated by the government in an attempt to make guns look bad may be appealing both psychologically and ideologically.

Our studies of mass shootings and conspiracy theories help to shed some light on why these events seem particularly prone to the development of such theories and what the media can do to limit the ideas' spread.

Back to the 1990s

Mass shootings and conspiracy theories have a long history. As far back as the mid-1990s, amid a spate of school shootings, Cutting Edge Ministries, a Christian fundamentalist website, found a supposed connection between the attacks and then-President Bill Clinton.

The group's website claimed that when lines were drawn between groups of school-shooting locations across the U.S., they crossed in Hope, Arkansas, Clinton's hometown. The Cutting Edge Ministries concluded from this map that the "shootings were planned events, with the purpose of convincing enough Americans that guns are an evil that needs to be dealt with severely, thus allowing the Federal Government to achieve its Illuminist goal of seizing all weapons."

Beliefs persist today that mass shootings are staged events, complete with "crisis actors," people who are paid to pretend to be victims of a crime or disaster, all as part of a conspiracy by the government to take away people's guns. The idea has been linked to such tragedies as the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, and the Sandy Hook Elementary attack that resulted in the deaths of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.

These beliefs can become widespread when peddled by prominent people. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been in the news recently because of her belief that the Parkland shooting was a "false flag," an event that was disguised to look like another group was responsible. It's not clear, though, in this instance who Rep. Greene felt was really to blame.

Conservative personality Alex Jones recently failed to persuade the Texas Supreme Court to dismiss defamation and injury lawsuits against him by parents of children who were killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. Jones has, for years, claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre didn't happen, saying "the whole thing was fake," and alleging it happened at the behest of gun-control groups and complicit media outlets.

After the country's deadliest mass shooting to date, with 59 dead and hundreds injured in Las Vegas in 2017, the pattern continued: A conspiracy theory arose that there were multiple shooters, and the notion that the shooting was really done for some other purpose than mass murder.

Making sense of the senseless

These conspiracy theories are all attempts to make sense of incomprehensibly terrifying events. If a lone shooter, with no clear motive, can singlehandedly take the lives of 60 individuals, while injuring hundreds more, then is anyone really safe?

Conspiracy theories are a way of understanding information. Historian Richard Hofstadter has indicated they can provide motives for events that defy explanation. Mass shootings, then, create an opportunity for people to believe there are larger forces at play, or an ultimate cause that explains the event.

For instance, an idea that a shooter was driven mad by antipsychoticdrugs, distributed by the pharmaceutical industry, can provide comfort as opposed to the thought that anyone can be a victim or perpetrator.

Polls have shown that people worry a lot about mass shootings, and more than 30% of Americans said in 2019 that they refused to go particular places such as public events or the mall for fear of being shot.

If the shootings are staged, or the results of an enormous, unknowable or mysterious effort, then they at least becomes somewhat comprehensible. That thought process satisfies the search for a reason that can help people feel more comfort and security in a complex and uncertain world – especially when the reason found either removes the threat or makes it somehow less random.

Some people blame mass shootings on other factors like mental illness that make gun violence an individual issue, not a societal one, or say these events are somehow explained by outside forces. These ideas may seem implausible to most, but they do what conspiracy theories are intended to do: provide people with a sense of knowing and control.

Conspiracy theories have consequences

Conspiracy theories can spark real-world threats – including the QAnon-inspired attack on a pizza restaurant in 2016 and the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

They also misdirect blame and distract from efforts to better understand tragedies such as mass shootings. High-quality scholarship could investigate how to better protect public places. But robust debates about how to reduce events such as mass shootings will be less effective if some significant portion of the public believes they are manufactured.

Some journalists and news organizations have already started taking steps to identify and warn audiences against conspiracy theories. Open access to reputable news sources on COVID-19, for example, has helped manage the misinformation of coronavirus conspiracies.

Explicit and clear evaluation of evidence and sources – in headlines and TV subtitles – have helped keep news consumers alert. And pop-up prompts from Twitter and Facebook encourage users to read articles before reposting.

These steps can work, as shown by the substantial drop in misinformation on Twitter following former President Donald Trump's removal from the platform.

Mass shootings may be good fodder for conspiracy theories, but that does not mean people should actually consume such ideas without necessary context or disclaimers.

Michael Rocque is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Bates College.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies at Bates College

This article first appeared on The Conversation on 02.20.21.. You can read it here.

This article originally appeared on 01.09.16

"Phasing out coal from the electricity sector is the single most important step to get in line with the 1.5 degree goal," Guterres continued, referring to the policy objective of preventing planetary temperatures from rising more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. "Global coal use in electricity generation must fall by 80% below 2010 levels by 2030," he added.

Meeting the 1.5 °C climate target over the course of this decade is possible, according to Guterres, but will require eliminating "the dirtiest, most polluting and, yes, more and more costly fossil fuel from our power sectors."

In his address, the U.N. chief outlined three steps that must be taken by public authorities as well as companies to "end the deadly addiction to coal."

• Cancel all global coal projects in the pipeline;
• End the international financing of coal plants and shift investment to renewable energy projects; and
• Jump-start a global effort to finally organize a just transition.

Guterres called on the 37 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—a group of relatively rich countries with a greater historical responsibility for extracting fossil fuels and emitting the greenhouse gasses that are causing deadly pollution and destroying the climate—to "commit to phasing out coal" by 2030, while urging non-OECD countries to do so by 2040.

Pleading for an end to the global bankrolling of coal projects and a move toward supporting developing countries in transitioning to clean energy, Guterres asked "all multilateral and public banks—as well as investors in commercial banks or pension funds—to shift their investments now in the new economy of renewable energy."

While stressing that "the transition from coal to renewable[s] will result in the net creation of millions of jobs by 2030," Guterres acknowledged that "the impact on regional and local levels will be varied."

"We have a collective and urgent responsibility to address the serious challenges that come with the speed and scale of the transition," he continued. "The needs of coal communities must be recognized, and concrete solutions must be provided at a very local level."

The U.N. chief urged "all countries to embrace the International Labor Organization's guidelines for a just transition and adopt them as minimum standard to ensure progress on decent work for all."

The coronavirus pandemic, Guterres noted, has "accelerated" the decline in "coal's economic viability," while recovery plans provide an opportunity to bring about a green transformation of the world's infrastructure.

In many parts of the world, a just transition dovetails with guaranteeing universal access to energy, said Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and special representative of the secretary-general for Sustainable Energy for All.

Ogunbiyi told conference attendees that almost 800 million people worldwide still lack access to basic electricity, while 2.8 billion are without clean cooking fuels.

"Right now, we're at a crossroads where people do want to recover better, but they are looking for the best opportunities to do that," she said. "And we're emphasizing investments in sustainable energy to spur economic development, create new jobs, and give opportunities to fulfill the full potential."

Eighteen states currently have laws that force women to delay their abortions unnecessarily: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin. In a number of other states, mandatory-delay laws have been enacted but are enjoined or otherwise unenforced.

To help women get around these burdensome regulations, The Satanic Temple is promoting a religious ritual it believes provides an exemption from restrictions. According to the Temple, the ritual is supported by the federal Religious Freedoms Restoration Act.

The Temple is a religious organization that claims it doesn't believe "in the existence of Satan or the supernatural" but that "religion can, and should, be divorced from superstition."

The Temple says its exemption is made possible by a precedent set by the Supreme Court's 2014 Hobby Lobby decision. According to the Temple, it prevents the government from putting a "burden on free exercise of religion without a compelling reason."

Ironically, Hobby Lobby's case claimed that providing insurance coverage for birth control conflicted with the employer's Christian faith. The Satanic Temple argues that unnecessary roadblocks to abortion conflict with theirs.

The Temple is promoting the ritual on I-95 billboards in Florida where women must endure an ultrasound and go through pre-procedure, anti-choice counseling before having an abortion.

The Temple's billboards inform women that they can circumvent the restrictions by simply citing a Satanic ritual.

"Susan, you're telling me I do not have to endure a waiting period when I have an abortion?" one of the women on the billboard says.

"That's true if you're a SATANIST!" the other replies.

Next to the ladies is a symbol of a goat head in a pentagram and a message about the ritual.

The Temple also provides a letter that women seeking abortions can provide to medical staff. It explains the ritual and why it exempts them from obligations that are an undue burden to their religious practice.

The Temple believes that some medical practitioners may reject its requests. However, it believes that doing so is a violation of religious freedom and it will take legal action if necessary.

"It would be unconstitutional to require a waiting period before receiving holy communion," the temple says in a video. "It would be illegal to demand Muslims receive counseling prior to Ramadan. It would be ridiculous to demand that Christians affirm in writing the unscientific assertion that baptism can cause brain cancers."

"So we expect the same rights as any other religious organization," the video says.

To perform the ritual, a woman looks into a mirror to affirm their personhood and responsibility to herself. Once the woman is focused and comfortable, they are to recite two of the Temple's Seven Tenets.

Tenet III: One's body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone. One's body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone.

Tenet V. Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.

Then they are to recite a personal affirmation: "By my body, my blood. Then by my will, it is done."

The ritual affirms The Temple's belief in personal responsibility and liberty that, coincidentally, mirror that of the U.S. Constitution.

"Satan is a symbol of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority, forever defending personal sovereignty even in the face of insurmountable odds," the Temple's website reads.

Hail Satan!

But just how far can you drive your car once that gas light comes on? Should you trust your manual?

Now, thanks to Your Mechanic sharing this information in a recent post, you can know for sure. Of course, they also want to warn you that driving on a low fuel level or running out of gas can actually damage your car.

Proceed at your own risk.

Here's a link to a larger version of the chart.

Now, thanks to Your Mechanic sharing this information in a recent post, you can know for sure. Of course, they also want to warn you that driving on a low fuel level or running out of gas can actually damage your car.

Proceed at your own risk.

These are, of course, approximations that depend on several factors, including how you drive, your car's condition, etc. So don't automatically blame your mechanic if you find yourself stranded on the side of the road.

This article originally appeared on 06.25.21.

Some of the images are certainly amusing, but the collective result is an interesting look at what people find attractive around the world.

This article originally appeared on 09.14.17

A woman on Twitter who goes by the name Salome Strangelove recently went viral for discussing the importance of female body autonomy.

Here's how it started.

She continued talking about how her mother had a difficult pregnancy.

Her mother asked her doctor about the possibility of sterilization.

As was typical of the times, she was chastised by her male, Catholic doctor.

Her mother was made to feel guilty about simply exploring the medical options about her own body. But later on, a new doctor made her feel more comfortable about her situation.

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Once her mother had the courage to speak up, her own family members supported her.

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Amen.

This article originally appeared on 6.20.21.