"Vaccinate" against misinformation, part 2; no, "preach" against it

About six months ago, I blogged about how a Nielsen Lab piece piece showing both information and disinformation aren't that powerful crystalized thoughts I had on that subject and on Kevin Kruse's new, US duopoly politics based book. And now, I've had some new thoughts related to that, which show what I mean by the "preach."

Here's a highly condensed version of my own review, followed with new thoughts on why, not just how, that is wrong and what we can do differently:

Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past by Kevin M. Kruse
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Howlers include one from Joshua Zeitz, in his chapter on "The Great Society." He notes that, in her campaign memoir, Hillary Clinton says she came very close to proposing a basic income. "Sure she did," but Zeitz appears to take this claim at face value. In short, he appears to be engaged in the type of "motivated reasoning" that is itself part of the problem, not the solution, when done without recognizing one's own motivated reasoning.

This Smithsonian piece, which looks in-depth at things like people seeing Monticello updated with a detailed history of Thomas Jefferson's enslaving and what slavery was like there, then the vast majority of them not remembering any of this, shows in more detail why you can't "vaccinate" against misinformation. (Thompson has a whole book on the subject, as it turns out, which is great reading.)

Again, it's called "motivated reasoning," generally, a version of "thinking" with your emotions and your ego. If you don't want to accept that Jefferson was a fairly bad enslaver, that Bobby Lee was a harsh slave master, or other similar such things? You won't accept it. It's like the old psychological blind spot of people being told to count the number of basketball passes in a video and getting so focused on this that they ignore the person in a gorilla suit walking through the video. Only in this case, it's a much more willful blind spot, not an "attentional bias." And yes, per the likes of Daniel Wegner, subconscious intentionality is indeed possible.

I totally agree with Laurajane Smith, a professor at Australian National University. Smith, who had done studies on this, says that less than 3 percent of people in such cases have their minds changed by "conventional" new displays.

Solution? Go to those emotions, as noted in Thompson's essay at The Conversation:

Smith, the professor who studies visitor responses to heritage sites, told me that she thinks these sites need to shift their focus from education to emotion. Since research reveals that people aren’t going to historical sites to learn, she believes sites should “provide the resources to allow visitors to work through difficult and challenging emotions in in a way that is constructive.” As an example, Smith pointed to the Immigration Museum of Melbourne, Australia, which uses tools like an interactive simulation of a hate speech incident on a tram to guide visitors into thinking about the experience of discrimination from different points of view. This experience can be uncomfortable, but Smith insists that the heritage is not “cuddly and warm and fuzzy.” What happened in history, and what that should mean to us, is always contested.

And THAT is what I mean by "preach." A direct challenge to the emotions that lie behind motivated reasoning.

Now, how do museums and historic sites DO that? Especially on the budget limits many generally face?

That said, having now read Thompson's book, I post my review.

Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments by Erin L. Thompson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A slim volume, but it touches all the bases it needs to.

Did you think that a lot of Confederate and other offensive statues were permanently — note that word — put on ice after Dylann Roof’s Charleston shootup in 2015? After Heather Heyer was killed at Unite the Right? Even after George Floyd?

Think again, especially in the first two cases. And in all three, especially in many Southern states, state laws override local government and prohibit such statues from being permanently removed without being relocated. Sure, in a New Orleans, the temporary haul-down has been stretched out …. But, still; they’re on deferred adjudication, if you will, and no more.

Many, after the first two instances, and even some after Floyd’s killing, have been moved to other communities, put in cemeteries, donated or sold to folks like the United Daughters of the Confederacy who first erected them, or put in museums — and usually without historic context, which, per an essay by Thompson at The Conversation, usually doesn’t change most people’s minds, anyway, as they “self-inoculate” against any cognitive dissonance.

“Shuffling statues around our cities is like moving an abusive priest to another parish.”

“Taking down a monument doesn’t erase history — but it does remove honor.” (Sic on the em-dash instead of comma.) At this point, Thompson again references the statue of George III toppled in New York City in 1776. It’s who’s writing history.

The irony, or worse, of largely Black Georgia inmates working on Stone Mountain is made even more stark by presidential candidate Slick Willie Clinton speaking in front of a bunch of them in 1992, with picture in the epilogue.

Although this issue in general seems peculiarly American, Thompson also notes in her epilogue East German disputes over a Lenin statue after the fall of the Wall.

The “white guilt” issue should be addressed, and for that, I jump back to a chapter that started with George Floyd, and from there moved to the toppling of a Columbus statue in St. Paul, Minnesota, that had been the site of not just protests but “targeted actions” by Sioux and other American Indians for years.

I quote her quote of Mike Forcia, the Anishinaabe activist who led its takedown:

You weren’t there. You didn’t do it. And I wasn’t there. It didn’t happen to me. Your ancestors were there and they may have done some very awful things to my ancestors, but you didn’t do it. Don’t feel guilty. … But what you have to understand is that you all are still benefiting from those atrocities. And me and my family and my people are still suffering to this day from those atrocities. And that’s what we have to come to terms with.

To me, that sounds so much more nuanced that White professional race hustler Robin D’Angelo.

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