Imigongo

"A Lie is half way around the world before Truth has
a chance to get its pants on." - Winston Churchill

Imigongo is an art form popular in Rwanda from at least the 18th century. It is created using cow dung, chiefly by Rwandan women who can't buy acrylic paints at the town Wal-Mart because they don't have any money, or paints, or a Wal-Mart, or, for that matter, a town. The images, such as the one above, are produced from native cow dung sculpted on wooden boards and left to harden. They are then decorated using colors made from "other organic material," perhaps best left undescribed. The traditional colors are black, white, red, gray and beige-yellow but increasingly other colors are used.

Imigongo art, as well as written imigongo, such as email, has become increasingly popular in recent years, but popularity is not a criterion of authenticity. Truth is truth and falsehood is falsehood regardless of the number of stupid people who believe otherwise. The written form in the Internet consists of ideas perhaps best characterized as "bullshit." If you get lots of email, it is only a matter of time until somebody sends you a message "proving" that the Bible is right and science is wrong, that Muslims have been observed rehearsing atrocities in the United States, or that there is a giant conspiracy at work that the American press is too timid to print. It's still cow dung.

The first indication that a communication is imigongo is the source. There are people with too much time on their hands who have a hobby of forwarding crap to others. Some of them are highly placed (!) officials who should know better. When most of these people were women and the easiest means of communication was over the back fence, imigongo was called "gossip." Nowadays it's called "news," and is sometimes reported by commentators like Alex Jones and Steve Bannon and just about everybody on Fox News or Truth Social. If your correspondent is usually pretty reliable, it is likely that he or she is this time, too. On the other hand, if your source has a long history of foolishness and lies, it's not very likely that this time is any different.

The second indication is the subject line. The purpose of the email subject line is to let you know what the communication is about. If you receive a communication from someone with the same subject line as one you sent, chances are that the incoming communication is a response to yours, about the same thing. The subject line allows you to decide whether you want to open the communication and read it or just trash it.

Because very few people are likely to read email with subjects like "Stupid Crap from a Prejudiced Moron," the subject of imigongo is rarely what the message is about. Often, the sender will try to make the decision to read it for you, by using subject lines like, "This One Is Real," "Read and Heed," "Very Important," "Please Send to Everyone You Know," "Beware," "Must Watch," "Eye Opener," "Don't Delete," "You Need to Know This," "You Could Lose Everything," or "Unbelievable!" They may also used key words that they think may invoke an emotional fascination, such as, "God," "Prayer Request," "Muslim," "Obama," "Supreme Court," "Atheist," "ACLU," "Bad Virus," or "Attack on Religion." Sometimes they even dictate the emotion by use of "Pissed Off," "Blood Boil," "Angry," "*$+#$*&@=," "$#|+!," or suchlike. It's still cow dung.

Presentation, either in the subject or body (or both) is informative, too. The sender's educational level is frequently indicated by his ability (or lack thereof) to compose, organize, capitalize and punctuate correctly, which I learned in second grade. Back then, words in a subject that is not a sentence are capitalized except for prepositions, conjunctions and articles. They may have changed since then. Some people use all capitals in the subject and/or the body of the message, which is the written equivalent of shouting. This doesn't make the communication a bit more important, true, believable, or worthy of your time to read. It's still cow dung.

Presentation in the body of the message is a tipoff if it is mostly in capital letters, bold, underlined, italic, excessively large type face, highlighted or colored. If the writer is using razzle-dazzle to hold your interest rather than the soundness of his message, there is probably a good reason - the message is basically cow dung.

My experience is that anything circulating on the Internet that references an authority in such a way that you can't check for yourself, ("a famous scientist," "the Catholic Church," "a prominent news source") or uses vague dates like "Monday" or "last week," or claims that someone other than the writer "learned" or "saw" or "was there" is almost certainly a lie.

Imigongo is all about misdirection. "Orly Taitz, a prominent attorney and doctor" is indeed all of those things, but she's prominent for filing all kinds of ridiculous lawsuits regarding the assertion that President Obama is not eligible to serve as President of the United States and being fined $20,000 for willful misconduct. She's also a dentist, not an MD; not necessarily a reliable reference for anything not having to do with teeth. "Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt" is actually a former Navy chaplain who left the Navy after being fined $3,000 for public insubordination and lying. A popular Internet video purportedly showing President Obama "admitting that he's a Muslim," among other remarkable things, is such a bad fake it's laughable, and a widely-circulated photo of the President on an image of a "foreign student" Columbia University ID card with the name "Barry Soetoro" contains the very same card number as class of '98 student Thomas Lugart! What are the chances of that? It's still cow dung.

Sometimes the misdirection is a symptom of schizophrenia. The author uses complex jargon or even invents words (that psychiatrists call "neologisms") to make his point. There's a reason he doesn't want you to understand it. Often, the reason is that he doesn't understand what he's talking about, such as the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, how Congress works, the agenda of the ACLU, or what the Supreme Court does. For the record, the fact that a case has been filed with the Supreme Court does not necessarily mean that it has any merit, or that the Court will even agree hear it, much less rule one way or the other, and a bill in any legislature in the US is only so much paper until it has been voted upon by both houses. Remember "I'm Just A Bill" from Schoolhouse Rock? People who get upset about "filed with the Supreme Court" or "introduced in Congress" need to chill out. It's still cow dung.

If schizophrenia or paranoia is the problem, it may be drug related. Besides the known psychotropic effects of various recreational pharmaceuticals, advertisements for a variety of new medicines for treatment of other than psychiatric symptoms indicate that unwanted psychiatric side effects can occur. These can include anxiety or panic attacks that can manifest themselves in concern about grand conspiracies or feelings of persecution or impending disaster. People who find their correspondents suffering from these symptoms should probably advise them to discuss the problem with a qualified health professional.

Sometimes, the misdirection is a bald-faced lie. "Verified by Snopes" frequently means that Snopes says it's false, or that the purported author actually wrote it, but that the author's premise is demonstrably 100% wrong. Often, this is the result of the author confusing what somebody claimed with what is actually true, which is not the same thing at all! As far as authors are concerned, any damned fool liar can write a book, give lectures, or pass himself (or herself!) off as clergy!

Sometimes the misdirection is just stupidity. The fact that all dogs are animals does not imply that because Shamu is an animal, he's a dog any more than the occurrence of events in succession means that the former is necessarily the cause of the latter. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, either. North America (and its inhabitants) existed in Biblical times even thought it's not mentioned anywhere in the Bible (which also does not say [anywhere] that the universe is less than 7000 years old). In addition, the name of a thing is not the thing named; "pink slime" is, in fact, lean ground beef, and it's good for you, Also, famous people can have stupid ideas and vice versa. It's still cow dung.

Generators of imigongo, such as, famously, President Trump, work in almost total isolation from the political, religious or scientific community in which they claim expertise. They propose their ideas without any peer review or external check whatever. They insult or belittle any censure, often in a manner that is clearly paranoid. They regard disagreements as stupid, dishonest or both, and almost always as the result of "government intimidation" or "media campaign." It's still cow dung.

The fact is, remarkable claims require remarkable evidence. Just claiming, or even swearing under oath, that something is true is no guarantee, no matter how much one would like to believe it! If something is unbelievable, that is probably because it's not true, either. It's still cow dung.

There is a handy way to check the veracity of stories circulating on the Internet. Simply type a few key words into the search box at Snopes.com, Truth or Fiction Search, Urban Legends, Pants on Fire Legends, Fact Check, Hoax Slayer or Legislation Tracker. If anyone tells you that these sites are not reliable, treat that as imigongo. It's still cow dung.

John Lindorfer