Helen Keller and Jewish Space Lasers

 

As I get older, less and less surprises me. But a recent conspiracy theory about Helen Keller not only surprised but flabbergasted me. Apparently many young Tik Tok users think the lady never existed, or her story was false.

Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, in 1880. Every school kid growing up in Alabama, a state that didn’t feature many role models not wearing Confederate Grey, considered Keller a Rock Star before there were rock stars. She lost her sight and hearing when she was two, probably to scarlet fever.

With the support of teacher Anne Sullivan, she learned to read and write and graduated from Radcliff University in 1904, the first deaf and blind person to receive a bachelor of arts degree. She wrote 14 books, hundreds of speeches and essays, and worked for the American Foundation for the Blind from 1924 until 1968. During her spare time she campaigned for people with disabilities, women’s suffrage, labor rights, and world peace.

Now what started as a Tik Tok joke by some anonymous trickster has been accepted by 15 million young people as truth, with absolutely no evidence to support that belief. This story stunned me as I initially read it. After a moment of thought, I realized it is just the way things are.

America was founded on the idea of freedom for all. At the time, all only included white men. But we took that basic idea and extended freedom, little by little. We are still working on that concept.

America was also founded on two basic foundational requirements— a fair and accurate press and a voting public that took the responsibility to assure its beliefs were based on truth. We’ve never been good at those.

Exposed political and community leaders began blaming news organizations for their discrepancies before the ink was dry on the Constitution, and people amazingly accepted those allegations rather than published truth. It’s as if fantasy and magic are hard wired into our brains. We accept those things much more readily than actual facts.

I shouldn’t be surprised at this. Today, with unlimited possibilities for factual information available online, we instead support fantastical explanations for human frailties— things like Jewish space lasers, faked school shootings, long dead dictators controlling elections, and baby killing Hollywood celebrities. Even Hank Aaron was implicated in COVID-19 related conspiracy theories, and the Puppy Bowl, an alternative to the Super Bowl airing on February 7, has been linked to Qanon.

I understand how this happened during the Dark Ages, but today all information can be confirmed with a few keyboard clicks. Instead, many opt for an insane idea involving thousands of people keeping a secret, millions of dollars spent by James Bond level villains, and more plot twists than Gone Girl. If you’ve ever trusted more than two people to keep a secret, you know just that requirement is scientifically impossible.

I also can’t understand the willingness to keep believing a fantastical story after it’s proved wrong. Honesty is important to me. Should be to all of us. We desperately need more critical thinking and personal responsibility.

But still, Jewish Space Lasers is a great Death Metal band name.