Snake Oil then, is Snake Oil Now, Except it's on the Internet

   A post comes along Facebook, assailing the election and saying there is absolute proof the Chinese stole the election for Biden. If you believe in the law of gravity, you'll have to believe this, as well, suggests one of these videos. My friend posting the video might be wary of fact-checkers, and he posts one version in which fact-checking is attached, and then somehow gets hold of one that does not come with any notes from fact-checkers -- an end-around out-smarting "Big Tech." 

   "We should lament that there is NOT a good fact-checker for this video," I write. And, then, continuing, I write something along the lines of the following:

   In honor of fact-checkers, who receive none in our world -- at least none in the world of those who are reading this thread -- I salute them. I cherish them. Fact-checkers are but those who see a story and check it. That's all. They are those who ask, Is this true? We live in a world of rumors and lies and disinformation, where people spin falsehoods and announce them as 100-percent truth. Back in the day when circuses came to to town and people came to see their wonders, I wonder if some of those "wonders" were cleverly disguised as truth and peddled off as facts. "You've got my 100-percent word that this is the truth," the traveling salesperson would say. "I wouldn't lie." 

  Snake oil then is snake oil now, except its on the Internet.

  The video spins itself as providing proof beyond question. I will only say that which is truth can be proven. Do they really have proof? Can you go to all their sources and check them? Do they even tell you where they got all their charts and information? What of it, if they throw a log on the screen and say, "Look, this log showing that in the middle of the night while everyone was sleeping, thousands of votes were dumped in. Some of these dumps were more severe than others, with just four of the extreme updates being enough to decide and overturn the entire election."

   Well, then, if this is proof, can we check it? How do we know they aren't just making this up and just supposing we're gullible enough to swallow it? Proof can be fact-checked, and if it can't, it isn't proof. If the makers of this video are really providing the truth, why do they run from the fact-checkers?

  As the story goes -- the one making the rounds in versions of these videos -- there was a super-super computer named "Hammer," and Biden got hold of it, along with a super-duper software called "Scorecard," and used it to steal the 2012 election for him and Obama. And, come 2020, he used Hammer and Scorecard all over again to cheat Trump out of office. 

   I am not a movie-goer, but it seems there was a movie about a clandestine takeover of America, and people walked out of the movie thinking, "Wow! That was a great movie!" Well, to those who believe these videos, you've just walked out of the movie, saying, "Wow, it really happened! That movie was true!"

   Somebody's handed you a sci-fi novel, and you're using it as a textbook.