https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/how_liars_wreck_a_country.html
Last year, Forbes concluded that “only 16% of adults in the U.S. say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers, and just 11% said the same for television news.” Anyone confronting these stats must conclude that our media are deeply incompetent or crooked or both.
The New York Times announced a few years ago that defeating Trump was the important thing. They gave themselves a free pass to lie all they wanted. How can they now reclaim their honor or their usefulness?
Real journalists, when they hear an assertion, immediately try to determine whether the assertion is true or false. This is also what scientists do. It’s honest, valuable work.
Unfortunately, our liberal journalists do not care about true or false. When they hear an assertion, they try to determine whether it will help their agenda…their narrative.
If it won’t help, they know they must attack the assertion, typically by declaring it debunked, fake news, or misinformation.
Let’s try to recapture what the Founding Fathers imagined when they put freedom of press at a high place in the national plan. Ideally, we could always assume that major media were telling us the truth as honestly as they could. But nothing can be assumed anymore.
Novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) and Czech statesman Václav Havel (1936–2011), having lived under communist dictatorships, knew what hell on earth looks like.
They ended up with the same obsession that, before all else, we must “live in truth.” Conversely, they figured out that societies start to crumble when the leaders are concerned primarily with their own ambitions, their own realities. (Sound familiar folks?)
George Orwell was also obsessed with the necessity of living in truth. His novel 1984 is full of references to truth, freedom, slavery, power, manipulation, and warping reality.
Once you’re separated from truth, everything becomes a cruel game; ordinary citizens don’t have a chance. Lies and bad government go together. That was the point of 1984.
The USA is now sinking into near-1984 reality. Almost every day, the White House lies, the CDC lies, the FBI lies, the CIA lies, the DOJ lies, and famous media giants lie, blatantly and clumsily.
At this point, doesn’t the whole world know that the Biden family took lots of money from foreign governments? How is he able to run for a second term?
Indeed, of a Great Reset, we watched a Great Convergence of dishonest media and disingenuous education. Schools won’t teach truth, and media won’t report truth. If students don’t know any history, they are not surprised that our president takes millions from foreign countries. Probably it was always like that.
Václav Havel, in The Power of the Powerless, concludes, “Life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies. … Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in The Gulag Archipelago, said, “And the lie has, in fact, led us so far away from a normal society that you cannot even orient yourself any longer; in its dense, gray fog not even one pillar can be seen.”
Many people might think the distinguishing characteristic of communism is cruelty. But before you get to that point, the distinguishing trait is cynicism. Recall Lenin promising bread, peace, and land if the Russian people joined his revolution. The Russian people got none of the above, but then it was too late.
The shocking thing that Biden’s presidency has given us is that more than 100 people are in jail several years after they are alleged to have committed misdemeanors, even as Democrats are letting murderers out as fast as possible. So much violates what Western civilization is supposedly devoted to: the rights of the accused.
Look how far we have fallen. Journalists should be like referees in a football game. They must not belong to political parties or factions. They must not, in effect, be secret agents working against this country.
That is when the Fourth Estate (press) becomes a Fifth Column (traitors), in both media and schools.
Biden needs a crooked press to keep him and his family out of jail, even if it’s going to kill the rest of us.
Orwell supposedly said that in a dishonest age, telling the truth is a revolutionary action. Many sources say this line is not by Orwell.
Now that I look at it closely, I don’t know why that’s so important. It does not capture the essential problem with pervasive dishonesty — namely, that everything becomes soft and vague.
Nobody can say what is true or real or actual. That’s when the executions can begin. The Wall Street Journal calculated that communist regimes murdered 100 million people in 100 years.
Sometimes, political lies corrupt all aspects of life and infect every corner of society. This occurrence reveals that totalitarianism is winning.
As the political philosopher Hannah Arendt noted, totalitarianism, at its essence, is an attempt at “transforming reality into fiction.” Fiction, of course, can be written and rewritten as you please.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, towards the end of his life, expressed political salvation in these simple terms, “Our way must be: never knowingly support lies.”
So how do we as citizens do that? Simple.
Critical Thinking
What is the hardest task in the world? To think. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it. – Henry Ford
Critical thinking is just deliberately and systematically processing information so that you can make better decisions and generally understand things better.
So, the next time the national media attempts to feed you their misinformation and outright lies, here are methods you can use to help you find the truth.
1. Don’t Take Anything at Face Value
The first step to thinking critically is to learn to evaluate what you hear, what you read, and what you decide to do. So, rather than doing something because it’s what you’ve always done or accepting what you’ve heard as the truth, spend some time just thinking. What’s the problem? What are the possible solutions? What are the pros and cons of each? If you really evaluate things, you’re likely to make a better, more reasoned choice.
As the saying goes, “When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.” It’s quite easy to make an ass of yourself simply by failing to question your basic assumptions.
Some of the greatest innovators in human history were those who simply looked up for a moment and wondered if one of everyone’s general assumptions was wrong. From Newton to Einstein, questioning assumptions is where innovation happens.
If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking. – George S. Patton
2. Consider Motive
Where information is coming from is a key part of thinking critically about it. Everyone has a motive and a bias. Sometimes, it’s pretty obvious; other times, it’s a lot harder to detect. Just know that where any information comes from should affect how you evaluate it — and whether you decide to act on it.
3. Do Your Research
All the information that gets thrown at us on a daily basis can be overwhelming, but if you decide to take matters into your own hands, it can also be a very powerful tool. If you have a problem to solve, a decision to make, or a perspective to evaluate, get onto Google and start reading about it. The more information you have, the better prepared you’ll be to think things through and come up with a reasonable answer to your query.
I have a personal library of over 3500 books and I use them all the time for research. You have access to your local library and an unlimited amount of good info on the net.
Don’t rely solely on Google. The Library of Congress online is a great source of information. Another search engine I use a lot is called Refseek (www.refseek.com) It contains over a billion books, documents, journals and newspapers.
When you’re trying to solve a problem, it’s always helpful to look at other work that has been done in the same area.
It’s important, however, to evaluate this information critically, or else you can easily reach the wrong conclusion. Ask the following questions of any evidence you encounter:
How was it gathered, by whom, and why?
4. Ask Questions
I sometimes find myself shying away from questions. They can make me feel a little stupid. But mostly, I can’t help myself. I just need to know! And once you go down that rabbit hole, you not only learn more, but often discover whole new ways of thinking about things. I tell people all the time, there are no stupid questions. That is how you learn.
Sometimes an explanation becomes so complex that the basic, original questions get lost. To avoid this, continually go back to the basic questions you asked when you set out to solve the problem. What do you already know? How do you know that? What are you trying to prove, disprove, demonstrated, critique, etc.?
5. Don’t always assume You’re Right
I know it’s hard. I struggle with the hard-headed desire to be right as much as the next person. Because being right feels great. But assuming you’re right will often put you on the wrong track when it comes to thinking critically. Because if you don’t take in other perspectives and points of view, and think them over, and compare them to your own, you really aren’t doing much thinking at all — and certainly not the critical kind.
Human thought is amazing, but the speed and automation with which it happens can be a disadvantage when we’re trying to think critically. Our brains naturally use mental shortcuts to explain what’s happening around us.
This was beneficial to humans when we were hunting large game and fighting off wild animals, but it can be disastrous when we try to decide who to vote for.
A critical thinker is aware of their biases and personal prejudices and how they influence seemingly “objective” decisions and solutions.
All of us have biases in our thinking–it’s awareness of them that makes thought critical.
6. Break It Down
Being able to see the big picture is often touted as a great quality, but I’d wager that being able to see that picture for all its components is even better.
After all, most problems are too big to solve all at once, but they can be broken down into smaller parts. The smaller the parts, the easier it’ll be to evaluate them individually and arrive at a solution. This is essentially what scientists do; before they can figure out how a bigger system — such as our bodies or an ecosystem — works, they have to understand all the parts of that system, how they work, and how they relate to each other.
7. Keep It Simple
In the scientific community, a line of reasoning called Occam’s razor is often used to decide which hypothesis is most likely to be true. This means finding the simplest explanation that fits all facts. This is what you would call the most obvious explanation, at least until it’s proven wrong. Often, Occam’s razor is just plain common sense. When you do your research and finally lay out what you believe to be the facts, you’ll probably be surprised by what you uncover. It might not be what you were expecting, but chances are it’ll be closer to the truth.
Some of the most amazing solutions to problems are astounding not because of their complexity, but because of their elegant simplicity. Look for the simple solution first.
Conclusion:
Critical thinking is not an easy topic to understand or explain, but the benefits of learning it and incorporating it into your life are huge.
Remember :
1. Don’t Take Anything at Face Value
2. Consider the Motive
3. Do Your Research
4. Ask Questions
5. Don’t always assume You’re Right
6. Break It Down
7. Keep It Simple
I will close with one final quote:
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. – Henry Ford
What do you think? Can you adopt critical thinking in your life? Better yet, can you pass it on to those who refuse to use it?
You now have a homework assignment.
I want each of you to practice critical thinking.
Thanks to all of my followers out there.