*sigh*
Probably once a week I get email trumpeting this, that or t’other conspiracy theory of the week, or whatever. Usually, these come from people who are easily smart enough to either know better or be able to find out “better” with a couple of simple clicks. Here’s the most recent from the tinfoil hat population, although it’s actually been around for three or four years in some form or another and its ancestry goes all the way back to conspiracy theories and hoax petitions circulated in the 60s and 70s, at least.
The text of the hoax/tinfoil hat conspiracy theory is this:
REFUSE NEW COINS
This simple action will make a strong statement.
Please help do this.. Refuse to accept these when they are handed to you.
I received one from the Post Office as change and I asked for a dollar bill instead.
The lady just smiled and said ‘way to go’ , so she had read this e -mail.
Please help out..our world is in enough trouble without this too!!!!!
U.S.Government to Release New Dollar Coins
You guessed it ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’ IS GONE!!!
If ever there was a reason to boycott something, THIS IS IT!!!!
DO NOT ACCEPT THE NEW DOLLAR COINS AS CHANGE
Together we can force them out of circulation…
The email included one picture of the obverse of the 2007 issue (so much for the contrafactual “U.S.Government to Release New Dollar Coins “) of the George Washington dollar coin and went on to “argue” that this supposed elimination of the motto was a part of a conspiracy to remove God from the public forum, yada-yada.
Here’s a picture of the obverse side of the coin:
Sure enough, “In God We Trust” isn’t there. How about the reverse side of the coin?
*huh* Not there either. So, at least the “missing motto” part of this nutso email is right, right?
Nope. If you buy the thing with only this much information, you’re the sucker.
That’s right, the “edge-incused inscriptions” include “In God We Trust,” “E Pluribus Unum,” and the date and mint marking. But since this idiot-attractor conspiracy theory/hoax gained so much traction a few years ago, dumbasses in Congress felt it necessary to assuage their dumbass conspiracy theory-hoaxed constituents who were up in arms over the “missing motto” and ordered the mint to redesign future American President coins with the motto where even idiots could find it (if they could manage to puzzle out the letters well enough to know what it said), and so in 2009 the motto was moved to the obverse of the coins with the minting of the Harrison and all future Presidential series coins.
So, although the first eight Presidential series coins had the motto, “In God We Trust” on the edge, where it was subject to less wear than on the coins’ faces and even served a sort of symbolic purpose, to my mind (a part of “binding” the two sides together, eh? ;-)), all eight coins already circulated in the years 2009 and 2010 had the motto plainly on their faces where even the stupidest sheeple might eventually find them.
But has that stopped this dumbass hoax/conspiracy theory from circulating? Nope. Not any more than the facts have stopped the “Madeline Murry O’Hare/FCC” hoax petition that’s been around in one form or another for 40-some-odd years.
Dumbasses come in all sizes, shapes and IQ measurements.
Yes, I suppose I could be more charitable in correcting this sort of thing, and I was with the person who sent me the email. As Jerry Pournelle put it when someone corrected him about a factual error he made,
One of the neat things about the Internet is that if you get something wrong you’re not stuck with being an uncorrected idiot. There will be someone out there who knows, and will offer the correction. My thanks.
Classy, Dr. Pournelle. But then, the error he made wasn’t so glaring as the ones in the email, nor was he hyperventilating about some vast conspiracy. Indeed, his error was a simple lack of information in a specific field of endeavor in which he has never claimed expertise, and the person correcting his lack of knowledge understood that.
The chief differences between Dr. Pournelle’s error and the ones in the email are several:
1. The email called for widespread social action based on grossly inaccurate and quite likely deliberately deceptive (as it originated) information. Dr. Pornelle’s inaccurate comment fit neither of those criteria.
2. ANYONE–literally, anyone with literacy skills above that of a typical kindergärtner–could readily verify the falsity of the claims made by the email simply by looking at one of the coins. Not so with the information a reader corrected in Dr. Pournelle’s offhand comment.
Still, I recognize that “smart” people say and do as many stupid things as anyone else, and so calling people who fall for things like this hoax “dumbasses” may be a bit harsh.
But it’s still true, IMO.
I hear ya on the tinfoil hat stuff.
I’d wager that there is a high percentage of the populace that has never even seen a dollar coin these days.
I’d say deliberately deceptive and insulting to the reader’s intelligence. This part illustrates that…
“The lady just smiled and said ‘way to go’ , so she had read this e -mail.”
After all, anyone with the intellect of a Zabriskan fontema would understand that the lady in the post-office couldn’t possibly have read an e-mail that hadn’t even been composed yet.
Either that or the woman in the post office was clairvoyant. And that’s something else I don’t believe.
Perri, I have yet to read a single one of these hoax emails that didn’t match your description, and most are worse. Still, otherwise “smart” people send them on, because someone they trust sent them the email. All it takes is one Aunt Blanche sending it to all her relatives to get these things a foot hold among people who would know better if they ever pulled their brains out of the distal portion of their alimentary canal.
Nicole, probably right. I know a turnpike that used to give change in Sacajawea dollars until they were overwhelmed with protests by folks who hated the things. But that was years ago. My objection to these coins is that they’re not worth their face value in metallic content, but then I have the same objection to most U.S. coinage. (Well, all, but nickels do frequently at least approach their face value in metallic content.)
BTW, Perri, nice slider: “…anyone with the intellect of a Zabriskan fontema…” although I’m not sure that’s not an insult to Zabriskan fontemas. *heh* Been many, many, many years since I even thought of “Doc” Smith, so I owe you a tip o’ the tam for the pleasant memories you evoked.
You know the scary part to me David is that there are so many naive people out there that believe this rubbish. I have a very naive sister-in-law who is good hearted and well-meaning, but has no common sense. She would believe this crap.
It really irritates me that there is so much spam e-mail, but then my spam goes straight to spam. I just check to be sure nothing of importance went their by mistake, if it did – I remove it from spam, otherwise I delete it forever.
But, and this is the clincher, nothing goes away forever–these spammers always find a way to send another one or something similiar to their original lie.