October 8, 2018
A screenshot of one of the Facebook posts that were used to circulate the false image of Dr. Ford.
Two images are placed next to each other.
One is a yearbook photo of a man named Brett Kavanaugh. He is 17 in the picture, so the year is 1982. It is the photo that has been brought to the public consciousness lately, resulting from the landmark sexual assault case against the Supreme Court nominee.
Next to it, a less instantly recognizable image. A young girl, obviously placed next to Kavanaugh’s image to juxtapose his looks to hers. She has braces. She has glasses. She is smiling wide. This image is labelled “Christina [sic] Ford, 15.”
Two things are instantly repulsive about this Facebook post.
The first thing is the captions.
One caption, written by Lanny Lancaster, Cabarrus County GOP chairman, stated “This is the alleged sexual assault victim. Wow.”
Another caption, as seen in the featured image and written by an unknown author, urges readers to “be realistic” and “use logic.”
The second thing is that the picture isn’t even of Christine Blasey Ford.
The image, as explained by Snopes, has been in use as an example of bad yearbook photos since around 2011.
There’s a reason why these hearings have been blowing everyone’s social media out of the water.
Not many people find channels like C-SPAN particularly alluring. The mainstream media has a draw because it’s essentially Diet C-SPAN; it’s a flashy, diluted cocktail of current events and puppies learning how to water ski.
Normally, folks aren’t interested in the raw, uncut political landscape. We need spice, or else the flurry of drab beige and suit jackets begins to rub our brains raw, and we need to stop to see what Kanye West said today or what modern thing the Today Show has decided rots your teeth.
Something about this case, however, has brought a frightening tendency up in Americans all over the Internet.
We no longer talk of politics in terms of politics.
It has become a baseless world of whether or not what you say is hurtful enough to the opposing side to gain you more support. Partisan or not, most people talking about this case, on either side of the aisle, have done no research past “how can I best incite an argument in this Twitter thread?”
Increasingly, we’re putting bare-knuckle political fist fights in the Walmart parking lot that we call Facebook comments over actual fostering of debate. There’s no relenting, there’s no “maybe you’re right”. Whenever we log in to anything, there’s always some flaming vitriolic war in the responses to anything with a political slant.
We’re blinded by our fervor to identify with a party, a group, an ideology, instead of being fueled by our need to treat others with dignity. Memes have overtaken personal statements, and we are one hundred percent worse off for it.
We’ve dulled our political process down to screaming louder than the other side and hoping nobody hears them.
The allegiance we used to display for truth, freedom, and the American Way has become a dogmatic excuse to debase ourselves for the amusement of others on social media.
October 6, 2018, Kavanaugh was sworn in.
No matter how you feel about the accuser, the accusations, the hearings, the political nightmare this has all been, doesn’t it scare you that no matter how hard Americans scream, it seems like the government never hears our words?
When will we be able to make a dent in the proceedings that determine every minute aspect of our lives?
Will we ever?
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