In the years since my dad discovered the internet, he has become obsessed with economic theory, but has not become obsessed with reliable sources. To wit, he is invigorated by many questionable Youtube channels, and appears to be under the impression that anything published on the internet is both true and useful. How he can reconcile this with the fact that it’s very easy to find competing information on the internet, I’m not sure. In fact, his beloved Youtube, praise be upon it, will suggest “watch next” videos that are antithetical to the current video, leaving us to wonder how the question of credible sources did not temper his research fervor long ago.

A few years ago, I was helping him with something on his phone and found that he had installed a Russian news app popular with the alt right and implicated in the 2016 election scandals. I asked my mom to talk to him about that one, assuming he just might not be aware he was choosing a source that wouldn’t give him good information. Countless “maybe you should check your source” interactions have occurred since then.

During the pandemic, activity on our family group chat has increased quite a bit. Today, my sister sent a photo of my six year old niece’s essay on why she would like to be president. It’s short, so I present to you the unabridged text: 

I  believe  that being the presdent  wholud  be the best job evir!  I feel that I wholud make good choises. I like it because I can help my community stae safe. In my opinion I wolud help pepol get mor  munee.

After you’ve taken a moment to appreciate how wonderful and precious she is, please read on.

My dad’s reaction to this is also presented here, unabridged:

I can see Bea as president. May I propose, my treat, one week summer camp at Mises Institute in Auburn AL where Bea will learn Austrian Economics. Free market economics based on precious metal backed currency.

Having been to this rodeo before, and assuming a foundation espousing the tenets of “Austrian economics” in the American South would have some whack-ass acolytes, I immediately looked up the Mises Institute. It turns out, this right-wing/libertarian think tank (you already know) has some whack-ass acolytes, including leaders who are also founding members of the League of the South, a high profile white supremacist organization. I learned this information from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a source I (and many others who accept the concept of universal human rights) have determined is credible. 

This is not to say that my dad is a right-wing nut job who wishes slavery would be reinstated. If he is, he’s hiding it pretty well, particularly from my mom, who wouldn’t hang around if that was the case. This is all to say: I can’t figure out what the hell is happening with my dad. 

This is a person who is a scientist–and not only in his own mind. He has the degree to back it up, as well as a career that involved real life science in the pursuit of fluffier, more stable hamburger buns. More than once, I have suggested to him that economics is not the same kind of science as, let’s say, chemistry. I expect this to at least make him stop talking about it for a little while, but it isn’t usually successful. Despite the fact that he knows that economic structures don’t interact much with the scientific world–other than the fact that we have to ensure the alloys, fabric blends, and polymers we choose to represent the value of our labor are structurally sound, and the computers that manage our banking operate efficiently and securely–he discusses the market as if it is something that can be harnessed like a chemical reaction. I cannot comprehend this, since his approach appears to have the academic rigor of a fourth grade book report.

I can understand that seeing your lifetime of income suddenly, and in his case a bit unexpectedly, stop incoming could make you overly protective of your horde. In lieu of working for a wage, my dad has made a hobby of doing independent research in an effort to help multiply his horde. This is not really a bad way to spend one’s retirement, especially considering that many retirees just lean heavily into xenophobia and other right-wing ideologies under the assumption that doing so will protect their hordes, without doing any research at all. The fact that my father’s research has unwittingly led him to similar, although not precisely the same ends upsets me deeply.

As his child, I endured (and still endure) hours of instruction and socratic questioning. The subject matter is everchanging, but the core message is that critical thinking is the only path to enlightenment, and the true key to survival. Nay, the true key to living one’s best life. My mom encouraged us to perform academically, but always emphasized that even if a person was unable to meet the expectations of others, they were succeeding whenever they chose kindness. With my excellent grades and sometimes very poor social skills, she wasn’t always sure where I would land, but I’m hoping I turned out alright in her eyes. Dad valued social intelligence well enough to have been a very successful salesman at one point during his career, but his reward system (bonus bucks) definitely placed a premium on both rote memorization and the ability to draw a conclusion through critical thinking. After all, how can one think critically about a subject without being able to draw on a vast reservoir of objective facts, figures, and formulae?

In his old age, he is hoisted by his own petard in that he has taught me too well the value of critical thinking. I, too, received a diploma with the word SCIENCE on it. Logic and objectivity are so deeply ingrained in me that I’m frequently accused by my husband of being a robot and/or heartless monster. A scientist would never accept data without learning its source and determining that the methodology was correct. Even if the methodology was correct, a scientist would look for additional sources, if the source in question was from a party who had shown poor judgment or published bad work in the past.

I truly believe that Youtube has done my dad dirty. He appears to be totally unaware of the algorithms that have perverted his nerdy interest in monetary policy into a borderline psychotic interest in talking about the economy as if its improvement justifies any and all means. By virtue of the fact that I’ve said it to him more than once, I know he’s aware that money is a human invention, and that gold and silver–just like paper money–only have as much value as human beings agree to apply to them. For example, if there is an apocalyptic event that causes our paper money to lose all of its value, there is no guarantee that gold and silver will retain any value either. They might, but it’s also possible that any form of a money economy would cease in the aftermath of a disaster significant enough to completely destroy the value of USD. Nonetheless, this guy continues to fetishize gold like he’s auditioning to be Yukon Cornelius in the inevitable reboot. 

Recently, he commented that the Civil War absolutely destroyed the economy of the South, and implied that this meant that the United States’ choice to wage war on the rebs was not the best course of action at the time. I was too mad to let him attempt to explain himself in front of his impressionable grandchildren, but I’m pretty sure he’s not aware that we understood him to mean that unchecked growth of the southern economy in the mid-1800s would have been preferable to the abolition of slavery. If he is aware that we followed his words to that logical conclusion, then maybe the formal intervention is long overdue. I assumed my dad was mistaking the dog whistles in the content he was blindly consuming for sound information because he was too pure of heart, but maybe he is just one of the dogs.

---