Ordinarily I refrain from posting much, if anything, political on this blog. I can post such stuff on logikalblog.com if I wish. In this particular case though, I must breach this personal policy.
Many of you reading this blog either have or will at some point in the future participate in a project much like NaNoWriMo. The challenge of writing N-thousand words inside of a month, especially if you have a full time job with other family obligations, can be incredibly focusing. Since most of you reading this either are or wish to be writers, I must create this post because the NaNoWriMo email taking a position on a recent executive order temporarily banning immigration from a select list of countries was a violation of trust, purpose and protocol.
Every writer needs one invaluable personal trait, a limitless bullshit filter. Today most writers do little in the way of research. People have been conditioned to think a couple of clicks in a search engine locating something which supports a belief no matter how erroneous the belief nor how untrustworthy the supporting “source” is a “heavily researched” position.
Recent articles and studies have documented humans by and large believe stories over facts. We connect emotionally with stories, especially stories which support what we believe. Most accept them without question. This is both the boon and the bane of a writer. While most do not accept it the simple truth is the writer is obligated to completely research what they write, even for a blog post or a fictional love story set in a real place.
Don’t believe a fiction or romance writer has to do research? Try setting your love story in a New York borough which doesn’t exist or on J street in Washington D.C. A large section of potential readers will be instantly poisoned by the reviewers who point out these fatal flaws. There is danger setting your story in the real world and that danger is you getting the real world wrong because you trusted a few mouse clicks instead of actual research.
I have said many times on this blog and will continue to say that many of you will be offered paying jobs to write fictional bullshit which supports an equally fictional belief. Today they call it “fake news” but we used to call it spin. The problem with spin is that it became institutionalized. So much so we have now all heard the term “spin room” where candidate proxies meet with reporters after a debate to try and “spin” people’s belief of how the debate went. People became numb and ceased listening to it so now we have fake stories which permeate the media and someone, possibly you, are writing these stories. People read them and re-iterate these stories in one form or another until the lie becomes a mental truth.
Personally I place anyone who does this in the same bucket as Holocaust deniers. They are using the same tactic and have just as much moral fiber.
While we can dislike anything anyone does, we cannot lambaste it with fake news reports. NaNoWriMo fell victim to fake news when they sent this email out. It is neither ethical nor moral to perpetuate fake news simply because one does not like something or they perceive a hidden agenda. One must research the actual facts presented with the Executive Order and judge those facts with research. Here is the ugly fact purveyors of fake news and those mindless enough to repeat fake news didn’t bother to look at.
It is physically impossible to vet a person or persons coming from a failed state. By failed state one means there is little to know legitimate government or legitimate police force to document and verify a person’s background.
Despite what one wishes to believe, criminals are allowed in, depending on the crime. If someone was jailed because they championed giving women the right to vote, since we already have the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote, it would not be a blot on their application. Conversely, there are things legal in some countries which are hideous crimes here such as “honor killings” and other truly nasty things not allowed in America.
Vetting people requires the ability to pull information from various government agencies as well as financial history. Without the government infrastructure in place in the country from which someone is coming, there is physically no way to do it. This leaves the receiving country with only one option. Setting up internment camps where the people will be held, isolated from the population, for years, possibly decades, until it is safe to return them. We have all seen the stories of the camps in other countries and the public scorn those countries receive over said camps.
It is okay to not like something. It’s a hideous crime for a person to manufacture or perpetuate fake news about it.