Why civilized dialogue doesn't work

I've been getting sucked in some odd debates on Facebook lately. I know I shouldn't because it's generally a total waste of time, but I'm still enough of an idealist (aka naive idiot) that I believe that if the reasons why something is an obvious fake are made clear someone may have one of those dope slap moments, that brief instance of clarity, where they go "Fuck, how could I have been fooled by that?!" And having realized one fairly meaningless meme was actually a photoshopped piece of crap they'll be a little more critical the next time they see something that's a little too good to be true. Yes, I know I'm dreaming, but still I try.

Yesterday was a classic. The item in question was a badly photoshopped supposed official State of Texas marker that commemorated the Second Amendment. It included what purported to be a quote from George Washington. It was so wrong on so many levels that from the viewpoint of someone whose career (and personal inclinations) included spending a lot of time looking at real books-on-sticks ranging from the vintage wayside signage in cannonball parks to brand new historic markers put up by various states it was flat out laughable.

To begin, the only thing the fake marker got right was the general shape of a typical State of Texas historic marker. The underlying template was probably a photo of a really old marker -- maybe. The really early metal markers in Texas had a circular seal at the top with the outline of the state in the middle and 3 stars at the bottom but they changed pretty quickly to including two phrases in the border of the circle: Texas Historical Commission at the top and Official Historical Medallion at the bottom. Note illustration to the right. There may be some old examples standing that don't include the medallion as shown, but that gets us to the next clue.

That clue was the reference to the Second Amendment. Although it can seem at times like American society has been arguing about the Second Amendment forever, it hasn't. It's actually a recent debate. The National Rifle Association didn't start stirring up shit on this issue until the 1970s. Gun manufacturers were experiencing dwindling sales so the NRA (which exists to support manufacturers and not gun owners) begun pushing the importance of self defense. I'm not going to try outlining recent history, but trust me on this one. No one cared about the 2nd Amendment 50 years ago. It was not a hot political issue. After Lee Harvey Oswald used a mail order rifle to shoot John F. Kennedy, the federal government passed regulations making it harder to get guns that easily, but you didn't have high profile celebrities posturing about guns being taken from their cold dead fingers (that speech happened a mere 18 years ago).

In any case, supposedly commemorating the Second Amendment on a state marker is pretty bizarre in itself. That's clue number 3. It would make sense if it mentioned something that happened in Texas that had to do with the Second Amendment, but it doesn't. It's just weird when it comes to the general category of books on sticks. It makes no sense.

Clue Number Four: The purported George Washington quote and its anachronistic phrasing. It referred to "arms and ammunition." This is one of those points that a nonhistorian probably wouldn't pick up on, but back in the George's day that phrase would have been considered redundant. Arms were ammunition. So was everything else used in a military campaign. The word was still evolving; it hadn't yet come to narrowly meaning only what went into the guns.

Clue Number Five: Two different fonts were used -- one for a brief phrase about the Second Amendment; one for the George Washington quote.

Clue Number Six: The extreme brevity of the text. It is amazing just how many words the people who put up the markers can fit on to one of the books on a stick. The people who write the content manage to cram a lot of information on to one metal slab. If you see a photo of a supposed marker that has less than 100 words on it, it's a fake.

Anyway, this was a case of attempting to have a dialogue with people where I didn't even get into the Second Amendment debate at all. I just pointed the photo was a badly done photoshop. Holy wah. First I got told that the reason the text was so terse (and badly written) was space considerations. Pshaw. I countered that one with a photo of a genuine State of Texas book on a stick. The response to that was that it was different because it was newer. So then I found one from 1962.

End result of this useless exchange? The person who was so insistent the marker was real trotted out his ultimate argument: he's almost 70 and used to live in Texas. He's seen a bunch of the markers by the side of the road so he knows for sure what they look like.

That's when I figured out it was pointless. The dude is so locked in to believing something that he saw on Facebook that even if it's something that doesn't really say anything at all he still refuses to believe it's not genuine. I guess it's true. You can't cure stupid.