CTH has encountered criticism for our position on information. Perhaps it is important to step back and explain exactly why we should not be playing by rules established to control us while engaged in the battle of ideas. First, my position:
…”There is no such thing as “disinformation” or “misinformation”. There is only information you accept and information you do not accept. You were not born with a requirement to believe everything you are told; rather, you were born with a brain that allows you to process the information you receive and make independent decisions.”…
There are only two elements within the public discussion of information, truth and not truth.
In an era filled with “fact-checkers” and institutional guardians at the gates of Big Tech, let me explain exactly why it is important not to accept the speech rules of the guards.
When you accept the terms “disinformation”, “misinformation” or the newest lingo, “malinformation,” you are beginning to categorize truth and lies in various shades. You are merging black and white, right and wrong, into various shades of grey.
When your mind works in the grey zone, you are, by direct and factual consequence, saying there is a problem. You are correct; however, this is where people may make a mistake. The problem is supposed to be there.
It is not a solution to the problem to try and remove the grey simply because it takes too much work to separate the white pixels from the black ones. You were born with a gift, the greatest gift a loving God could provide. You were born with a brain and set of natural instincts that are tools to do this pixel separation, use them.
If you define the grey work as a problem you cannot solve on your own, you open the door for others to solve that problem for you. You begin to abdicate the work, and that’s when trouble can enter.
The sliding scale of Pinocchio’s is one of the most familiar yet goofy outcomes.
Put more clearly, when you accept the terminology “disinformation”, you accept a problem.
The problem is then the tool by which authorities will step in to make judgements.
Speech, in its most consequential form, is then qualified by others to whom you have sub-contracted your thinking.
When you willingly sub-contract information filters to others, you have lost connection with the raw information.
CTH was founded upon the belief that truth has no agenda, nor does it care about you, your feelings, or your opinion of it. It just sits there, empirically existing as evidence of information in its most pure form.
The search for truth, in all things, is the mission objective of this assembly. Often, we don’t like the truth; often, the truth is bitter, cold, challenging and even painful to accept. However, the truth doesn’t care. Information in its most raw form is ambivalent to your opinion. If you struggle to accept these things, that’s when you need grey. The New York Times is not called the “grey lady” accidentally.
Personally, I am an absorber of information – perhaps on a scale that is unusual. But I do not discount information from any form until I can put context to it and see if the information makes sense given all the variables present. When something doesn’t feel right, it’s almost always because it isn’t right.
Often, I find myself struggling in the grey and complex. It is not unusual to spend days researching, digging, clarifying a situation, only to discover the path to finding the truth is in another direction entirely. Erasing everything and starting over is frustrating, but it is genuinely the only approach that works; and often finding truth is supposed to be difficult, that’s why it is rewarding.
In the digital information age, we are bombarded with information. It is easy to be overwhelmed and need to find something or someone who has better skills at separating the black grains from the white ones. All opinions in this quest should be considered; thus, it is important to allow the free flow of information.
I am not necessarily a speech absolutist. There is some language that needs to be constrained if we are to participate in a respectful society, with grandma’s rules and knowing the audience. The CTH has guidelines for comments for this exact reason. However, those constraints need to be based on a set of inherent values. When it comes to information it is important to draw a distinction from speech.
There needs to be an open venue for all information. Unfortunately, when we begin to apply labels or categorization to information, there’s an opportunity for information to be manipulated – even weaponized. Saul Alinsky spent decades pondering the best techniques to weaponize information and speech. Alinsky’s intentions in the endeavor to change society by changing how language and information was used were not good. He devoted his completed rulebook book to Lucifer.
Be careful about anyone saying we need to label or categorize information in order to control or remove speech from the discussion.
You were not born with a requirement to believe everything you are told; rather, you were born with a God-given brain that allows you to process the information you receive and make independent decisions.
What is called “disinformation” by Leftists are called “facts” by knowledgeable, thinking adults. Example: Leftists think calling a boy a boy–someone born with a penis and xy chromosome pairs–is somehow “disinformation,” and they have gotten people fired for stating such an obvious fact. Leftists have even taken a boy from his father when he refused to call him a girl!
https://nypost.com/2022/02/26/dad-lost-custody-after-questioning-sons-transgender-identity/
‘Facts’ depend on the location of the observer relative to the ‘data’. We humans don’t get all of the data, we get miniscule amounts of it. It takes a lot of corroborating accounts to turn data into facts.
The powers to be are assaulting rights to freedom of association and freedom of speech. Those freedoms are the cornerstones of the corroborating process by which populations turn collective experience into ‘facts’. So for instance, if you are not allowed to say that men pretending to be women are not women, then eventually men pretending to be women will be women.
Everyone talks about the weather. Everyone shares their actual experience and compares it to the forecast. As a result, the forecast does not become the weather. The actual shared experience becomes the weather.
The weather experienced is a Fact. Not because everyone experiences it but because it is observable.
You must look and compare. Get rid of preconceptions and Question Everything.
I think that propagandists take advantage of two weak points we all have: we can easily be deceived by language, and we can’t reason well when we are emotionally upset. What is the remedy? I think it is the development of our intuition, which can be thought of as our relationship to the truth, and a healthy distrust of our emotions. All propaganda manipulates these two things, language and emotion.
Someone told the story of an event that happed when he was a child of about 5. A stranger came to the door, and he accompanied his mother. The man was a smooth talker, and was convincing the mom that some repair or other excuse to enter the house was needed.
The child, looking up at the stranger, really couldn’t understand all the language, but he knew the guy was evil. He blurted out, You are a bad man, and you want to do bad things and you need to go away right now! The man was so stunned at hearing the truth, he went away.
When our language skills are limited, we use and rely more on our intuition. We may have been better judges of character as children. Dogs may be better judges of character than most adults, they have almost no language skills!
As to our second weakness, we need to always be on guard against highly emotional states because they derail rational decision-making.
Neurolinguistic programming makes use of logical gaps in language. Our minds seek logical continuity. The NLP practitioner will slip in logical non-sequitors that we will passively accept if we are not really thinking with attention.
Your explanation is exactly why the Deep State employs experts in this field to guide the crafting of “disinformation” (lies that slip past the mental filters of the deceivers’ target audience).
Unrestrained by either social or ethical convention, the original progenitor of Aleister Crowley’s moral
Everything-App advocates “…. do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
Yes, the devil is depicted as a male goat for good reason.
Aleister Crowley was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aleister-Crowley
Satan lures many minions into doing his bidding.
Lovely story, thanks! Dogs can do that too. It is frightening how smooth words can hypnotize a vulnerable person.
When I was a very small child I became aware that words made “strings” into my mind like puppet strings, which others could use to pull me by. I spent my time with the farm animals and dogs and cats whom I loved because they did not use words. I called them “anti-mutuals.” My parents thought I was a difficult child.
“1984”: Don’t change the word, change the meaning of the word.
Psychologist? A friend who is one tried to convince me there are greys in this world. I said, No. There is good or bad, right or wrong. And, there is nothing between them. Just because we are told there are grey areas (law uses it all the time) doesn’t make them real. Twisting of words, redefining words must be fought against!
Our schools are not longer education centers but social engineering centers (and have been for a long time).
Or as MGBSE above says: Don’t change the word, change the meaning of the word! Schools at all levels now equal “re-education or “new” social engineering centers, and all state backed news now equals radicalized propaganda!
Those words are used as a quick way to say, “That is wrong, here is what is right.” Then they spew lies from the jaws of hell, henceforth and forevermore, amen.
There are words we use that are actually in the category of “absolutes.”
You can see a nice list of them here…..scroll down about midway:
https://kathysteinemann.com/Musings/absolute/
Demonrats twist the language to fit their agenda.
You will see the adjective “informed” is on the adjective word list. You cannot be “misinformed.” You can only be “informed.” She says to use caution with adding “mis” or “dis” and there’s a list of those too on the same webpage.
Never concede language.
Never concede facts not in evidence. “She says” is an appeal to authority. It is not a valid argument. Dictionaries are (or perhaps used to be) authorities on words and their meanings.
Not so. My Chambers 20th Century Dictionary 1983 edition defines ‘misinform’ as being “to inform or tell incorrectly”. There is nothing wrong with the word misinform.
Using a dictionary is also an appeal to authority. There are plenty of words in dictionaries that are improperly being used by people.
The purpose of the dictionary is to show all words people are using with the most common understanding of definition. That doesn’t automatically make those words proper grammar.
The most important thing is to be understood. I know what someone means when they say “mis” or “dis.” So, I just remember to listen and understand them no matter how they say or write it.
If the authority of a dictionary is not insisted on and definitions adhered to, understanding must decrease. For example, the increasing usage of ‘refute’ synonymously with ‘deny’.
‘I refute that allegation.’
—I look forward to that.
‘I strongly refute it.’
—Ahhh, still waiting for *any* attempt at refutation, strong or otherwise.
If ‘refute’ is allowed to become synonymous with ‘deny’, what word will mean ‘refute’? And how long until that word (e.g. ‘disprove’) is also rendered meaningless in turn?
It’s similar to Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Syme enthusing over the Newspeak dictionary, ‘We’re getting the language into its final shape—the shape it’s going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we’ve finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words—scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone.’ But instead of removing words, we’re changing their meanings and making different words unnecessarily synonymous.
Almost sounds like a lie.
Excellent article Sundance, thanks for putting into writing what most of us have been feeling way to long. It is horribly frustrating to see people, who seem to have smart minds, fall completely into the false narratives spread today. That’s why I turn to the Treehouse every day, because I know that what I get there is the truth.
I take great pleasure in using my own mind to guide me in every decision I make and for 79 years have never been disappointed.
Here is some content from this week.
https://brownstone.org/
“Personally, I am an absorber of information – perhaps on a scale that is unusual. But I do not discount information from any form until I can put context to it and see if the information makes sense given all the variables present. When something doesn’t feel right, it’s almost always because it isn’t right.”
Sundance, I am an information absorber as well.
That’s why I keep pressing you to delve deeper into OWS, the death clot jabs, the “magical” TRILLIONS spent by the FEDS (8 billion bill signed by DJT in March 2020), DJT’s dealings with Pfizer (Gottlieb, Azar, etc.), and why DJT LISTENED to Kushner and Pottinger regarding lockdowns, face diapers, etc.
Yep, something doesn’t make sense about that whole situation. The doubt doesn’t prove guilt, but it does make me very suspicious.
Why did trump push warp speed? Why did he push the VAX after all the proof it wasn’t safe? Why did he play along with the pandemic when he knew it was a lie? Why did he keep Fauchi in power? Why didn’t he prevent the stealing of the election by nor turning power over to cheaters? Why didn’t he push in on the success of J6 day and have the people seize control?
Some of these are likely easy answers, some are probably stupid questions and others are very complex… But the man has answered none!
I think PDJT felt a “vaccine” could stop the lockdowns. He said the cure cannot be worse than the disease. He thought that re-starting his beautiful bountiful economy would fix everything.
In addition to depopulation, the mission of Fauci et al was to destroy the Trump economy. They lied to him about everything.
There has never been a traditional vaccine (attenuated form of virus)—never mind an mRNA jab (these are gene therapy) produced to adequately stop the spread of a coronavirus.
It is DJT’s responsibility to surround himself with REAL scientists and not “bloviating bureaucrats”!
Fauci has been a LIAR his whole life—see AIDS/AZT.
Why would DJT ever listen to such a pompous, self-righteous DIMWIT???
Mark, I have been urging Sundance and his researchers to delve deeper into the points raised by both you and me.
Typically, me posts don’t get published when I mention Matthew Pottinger. It’s amazing how many folks (even on CTH) have no idea who he is and how responsible he was for lockdowns and masks.
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-talented-mr-pottinger-the-us-intelligence-agent-who-pushed-lockdowns/
https://brownstone.org/articles/it-was-birx-all-birx/
DJT never should have listened to Pottinger, Kushner, Fauci, Birx, Gottleib, Azar, etc. regarding Wuflu.
All he had to do was call on QUALIFIED doctors like McCullough, Bhattacharya, Kuldorff, Risch, Cole, etc.
Hindsight is 20/20.
Trust but verify.. I live by that in every aspect of my life..
Thank you and well said, Sundance!
My Mother called it “God given discernment” between good, bad, truth and lives. Be silent and listen to the Holy Spirit that lives within you and you will discern right and wrong.
that should have been “lies” not lives
Excellent Column….it will be forwarded to family and friends
Its just a damn shame, and a sign of how far we have fallen, that this has to be explained to AMERICANS. GOD. HELP. US.
The truth does not hurt. The hurt comes from the realization that previously you had been deceived.
Really?
When you are informed of the death of a loved one who you knew was terminally ill, is there not pain? Where is the deception?
The pain you describe is not from the truth, but from the death.
Politician rhetoric.
The truth is death, for everyone, is inevitable.
Perhaps not for Yossarian? ‘He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.’ (Joseph Heller, Catch-22)
Talking about communication – Do you remember the Judge’s decision in the Rachael Maddow case?
Here lies the real humor in this decision. In the process of denigrating OAN as an illegitimate news source, Rachael Maddow had to rest on the defense that what she was delivering was itself illegitimate ‘’infotainment’’. By her own admission, the primetime hostess has declared her own words to be little more than sparkly storytelling. While the network has appealed the decision, in a manner OAN has won a victory.
It managed to get Rachael Maddow to declare in court records that she is a fabulist whose reporting does not need to be taken as the least bit accurate. It is not to be taken lightly when a major name in the media universe has gone on the record to declare what she traffics in on the air is fake news.
https://redstate.com/bradslager/2020/05/28/845430-n138406
I had this conversation last week with my oldest daughter (26). She wanted to know why we process information diffrent than others. She asked why others go along with the information spoon fed to them and don’t look to find answers when something feels wrong.
My answer was that others are not taught how to think on their own but will accept whatever information is given to them no matter how idioc it may seem to us.
Sheep are not allowed out of the corral.
300
That’s an important conversation to have with a child, even an adult child. It’s a shame we all don’t have that conversation with them every two or six. months beginning when they are old enough to remember and learn from what they hear and read.
What a different world this might be if all schoolchildren “felt” or knew that the lies taught to them by leftwing school teachers were false. But so many children soak up all or most of the lies because they weren’t previously exposed to the truth from sources they trusted or they did not take the time to research and corroborate the information that was presented in class.
And it has been going on for a LONG time, at least here in the U.S.
Adults lie to children constantly, especially their parents. I knew when my parents were not telling the whole truth, for whatever reason. Is there any adult whom children can ask for and get the whole truth? I would say not many, if any, adults tell children the truth. So how do children learn the truth if no one around them speaks truly.
I’m sure many do. Not all do. When necessary, my wife and I crafted our answers to their questions to be age appropriate yet not be false. We simply did not tell them false stories or embellish a story to mislead them. If the factual answer to their question was inappropriate for their ages we tactfully changed the topic or explained to them (when they grew older) that the information was either not ours to share (if true) or was personal & private to someone else. We taught them manners and to respect other’s privacy. They learned those lessons well.
There is this story in the Bible about a group of people called “Jews” they were held captive in Egypt for many years and prayed for God to free them. Their captors were actually lead by a Jew named Joseph who encouraged Israel, Joseph’s dad, to live in Egypt with him because the land was in a drought.
God answered the prayers, mosses was chosen to lead them out of Egypt. Once out they were to “follow God”. He lead them out now he expected them to “follow” him.
Most of the sheep or the Jews, did not like the new freedom, they wanted food stamps EBT cards and free housing and complained until they died in the desert. They were slaves in mind and spirit and WOULD not revert to a free society. The next generation occupied the promises God gave the sheep/Jews.
The moral of this little story is, if you want to be free give back what the masters have given you and let God guide you. It’s not yours, it’s their system and their money. Until that truth is alive within you, you will cling to a slave mind. Just walk away.
God even gave the path, are you willing?
America is a group who walked away, struggled, fought, died and made it. And a clue is this, they did it to worship our lord, gave everything, risked it all and won.
This is so accurate and so well put. Thank you.
Very important point:
When it comes to information it is important to draw a distinction from speech.
Yes. Both Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris make speeches the are entirely devoid of information. 🙂
Correct you are GB Bari. Yes , Kamals is devoid of information because she isn’t that bright. Petey boys is devoid of info because he was trained that way.
On a related note, my Mother always reminded me that I had two ears and one mouth so that I should listen and learn twice as much before anything that I might say. It has kept me from saying a lot of stupid things and from becoming a liberal for sure.
A philosophical view of information disinformation, and bias: https://proceedings.informingscience.org/InSITE2006/IISITZbig250.pdf
I’m in complete agreement, God gave us all (most all) brains, exercise this organ.
In the trade, it is called “PsyOps = Psychological Operations.” It is an insidious attack against the perspectives, belief, self-image and morale of the opponent’s society and citizens.
It requires that the target does not realize what is being done.
So, the remedy is to genuinely return to God and His Church. Praying a daily Rosary, at least, wouldn’t hurt either.
I agree with going to church, it is a good place with good people. However, how many “faith leaders” told their flock to get the jab?
Just because it’s called a “church,” and there are “faith leaders,” doesn’t mean there’s truthful information there.
It is the responsibility of the “followers” to make the effort to know whether they’re being told the truth they claim they’re there to be “given.”
And to eschew the half-truths and untruths, the places and the people telling them, they’re being fed when they learn this truth.
Words and their true meanings matter, even when they’re twisted by those abusing them freely because we are taught to trust them implicitly: they, by virtue of their “calling” and vocation and education, usually get a pass on the excuse that they’re where they are because we don’t have all that. That’s why they’re still listening to such as Fauci . . . Knowing this fact especially is the difference between life and death. The true information is available, just not prominently or conveniently, and not without deliberately seeking it. It’s easier to just listen in ignorance. Ignorance is bliss, after all, right?
If even 10% of Christian church-goers really bothered to study and know their Bible, things would be a lot different.
And that measly 10% would grow and grow exponentially, to the goodness, pleasantness, prosperity, and well-being of all.
Sadly we had to leave our church during the covid mess.
Our church leaders allowed us to go into lockdown with no pushback whatso ever.
Our church leader announced that he was going to send out weekly emails so we could keep in touch and try to keep up a sense of our churches spiritual congregation so to speak.
But the first two emails had the phrase ” Do what your government tells you to do” in them and I felt chills all over my body.
We left that church and never looked back and have still not been able to find one that does not have a creepy ” love your government” vibe about it.
So we just read the scriptures at home and do the best we can talking with friends who feel the same way we do.
There are a lot of us out here looking.
The Church’s here in America are not what they use to be but the Good People are still here and still strong.
Look up Chuck Baldwin. No punches pulled by him. Dunno where you’re located, but likely through him/his church/congregation you can find kindred Christian spirits.
Prayers for all of you.
Thanks for encapsulating this so well.
Online forums such as this one have become essential to accessing information that is otherwise being censored by our government, mainstream media and tech oligarchs.
I critically assess everything I read or hear, no matter where it comes from, and I’ve found that an open forum like this one of similarly-skeptical thinkers is the best thing going in the free speech movement today. BS doesn’t fly far under the scrutiny of commenters on a site like this.
I think Sundance has become my pastor. The CTH has become my favorite source of information. Truth is it’s own reward. And I truly am rewarded. And blessed. And encouraged. Thank you, Sundance, for being here in the wasteland of not truth and lies to point us in the right direction.
“Disinformation” is merely an Orwellian word for what used to be called “propaganda”.
Anyone who’s studied law (or sat on a jury or watched a trial) knows that facts are proven by admissible evidence, and that not all evidence is admissible, only relevant, competent, trustworthy evidence.
In a trial, a judge decides what is admissible and what isn’t.
In life, it’s the job of every individual person to use their common sense and ascertain for themselves what is “admissible” and what isn’t.
Between Benjamin Franklin and Sundance, I’ve got all the information I need! Well Done Sundance!!
Leftists have their false reality and anything that challenges that is disinformation.
I pick and choose where and what I read and believe. In most blogs like CTH I get enough of BOTH SIDES of the information to make solid decisions. The left ALWAYS changes the wording to fit their narrative. Look at the definition of illegal alien, illegal, illegal immigrant, immigrant, undocumented alien, undocumented…..on and on until citizen. Thank you Sundance for STOPPING this devolution of our language into censorship. You’re the best.
I have always liked puzzles. Evenly, a picture of the truth is formed.
This is a crime scene but it is the FBI and DOJ that acted like criminals. They created a false crime scene. They inserted docs. They tampered with evidence.
https*//www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/11/breaking-exclusive-caught-corrupt-fbi-caught-inserting-docs-mar-lago-raid-make-trump-look-bad/
Link doesn’t work.
On this one be careful since it has not been confirmed
I have always liked puzzles.
y
AZ Election Center next to Maricopa County Democratic Part
Well now, by using my super powers I am able to immediately inform you that the second picture is false.
I base this on the fact that there is no ‘Democratic’ party.
Sundance, thank you.
One of my favorite quotes:
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -Aristotle
Discernment. God gave us all the gift of discernment. And encourages us to use it. Sadly, many don’t. And fall for deception. Often it’s linguistic sorcery. Merlins wielding the trickery of words instead of potions and crystals. There’s a reason Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics: change the language and you can change a society.
Deception is often wrapped into known and verifiable truths. An easy leap to the lie once wrapped in known facts to the intended audience. There’s a technique of deception that’s been known, taught and practiced by intelligence agencies for a very, very long time. This is a Freedom Fox Substack piece on “The Credibility of Three” which is based on a column first penned by a Miami Herald columnist in 1980:
https://freedomfox.substack.com/p/the-credibility-of-three
The Credibility of Three is a technique that was taught to OSS spies at least as far back as WWII. The Miami Herald column is a humorous presentation of the concept. That I understood at the time was important enough to know and familiarize myself with at the time, so much so I clipped the column and have kept it all these years. Because I understood the importance of being able to think for myself and read information, even propaganda from adversaries, in order to spot the lies inside factual truths.
That discernment thing. I got so good at it I was able to study and analyze propaganda of the USSR as presented by Radio Moscow, TASS and Pravda during the Cold War. Serving in the USAF to defend my nation from the ideology of the Soviet Union, not just that nation. For my nation that until recent years defended free speech because it trusted the people to use their discernment on their own, without “trusted” government information gatekeepers. Knowing that regimes hostile to freedom, like the Soviet Union, deploy armies of government information gatekeepers. Fearful that truth shared among citizens threatens their totalitarian power more than any other threat they face.
thank you for another excellent analysis sundance! I think this is relevant: this article argues that parents hate to see their kids fed leftist propaganda and that walker should make it an issue.
https://amac.us/school-indoctrination-could-be-deciding-factor-in-georgia-senate-runoff/
Do have any reason to think this was not repeated in 2022 midterm? Then what are the State Databases Google and ERIC.
White House Extends National Election Emergency, Granting Authority for Federal Intelligence Agencies to Enter State Election Databases for Mid-Term Election
September 8, 2021
In the lead-up to the critical 2018 mid-term elections, President Trump’s political opposition needed a control mechanism in order to remove him from office and support the impeachment path. The administrative state -writ large- produced an overwhelming narrative leading to the issuance of a Executive Declaration of A National Emergency to Avoid Foreign Interference in Our Elections.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/09/08/white-house-extends-national-election-emergency-granting-authority-for-federal-intelligence-agencies-to-enter-state-election-databases-for-mid-term-election/
ALL truth Sundance? With all grace would you like to discuss sound doctrine and Catholic doctrine? Keep seeking, praying for you.
I am very concerned about a number of issues where key information is not disputed, it is missing entirely. Aninformation?
The fact that something has been omitted is also information.
I start with the Indiana Jones movie quotation: “If it’s truth you’re interested in, Dr. Tyree’s philosophy class is right down the hall”. As someone trained in Computer Science, information is tied to Information Theory and concepts by scientists like Shannon.
But here we have to consider evidence. Our ability to gather and assess evidence is limited. We try to have things like juries to evaluate evidence and deduce “facts”. In practice, the most useful facts are accompanied by a “findings of fact” which relates facts to the supporting evidence, with rationale for resolving contradictory or missing evidence. Like the concept of “the dog that didn’t bark”.
The conclusions that one draws from facts I don’t think are subject to “fact-checking”.
One factor that needs to be taken into account is the institutional indoctrination relating to the personal responsibility for thinking and reasoning for oneself. For quite some time the ‘institutions’ of society have been teaching that not only should people not think for themselves but that people are incapable of thinking for themselves. The ‘commoners’ are taught by the institutions that they trust that common people must turn to the ‘experts’. Not just to know what to think about a particular subject but also what subjects to think about.
This practice of institutional intellectual disincentification has been practiced by government, education, entertainment, business, religion, et al in most cases for decades and generations if not longer.
When this was used by one of our institutions to ‘justify’ the abdication of its proper role and introduce a non-accountable absolute authority it became the beginning of the end of our Constitutional Republic form of government. The system of regulatory agencies within our government was ‘justified’ on the basis that issues had become too complex and varied (from the 1880’s forward) for those we sent to Congress to be able understand with thought and reason. Rather than establish a system of advisories bodies Congress delegated their legislative mandates to ‘experts’ within the non-Constitutional regulatory agencies.
So not only do our ‘institutions’ teach that we should not and can not think and reason for ourselves but we are also taught that our ‘elite’ representatives in government are incapable of doing so as well.
The more you know, the more you know, knowledge is KING!
A super majority of us were taught that if we put a tooth under our pillow the Tooth Fairy would take it and leave money,Santa would bring presents,the Easter Bunny hid eggs full of treats,ect…. No one had to teach us these stories were not true.
A problem arises with ‘true’ and ‘truth’
Many people consider their religion as ‘true’ or ‘the Truth’ yet those are opinions based on belief. Trust enters with belief for reinforcement creating a catchall ‘faith’ Feelings towards religion does not equate into ‘truth’ One may hold dear their faith, which is absolutely allowed in this country, as I do mine.
If the point of the article is for the political and social parts of society, then ‘true’ and ‘truth’ are OK.
“…perhaps on a scale that is unusual.”
And we’re glad for it.
Thank you for doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
A little notion about Saul Alinsky that’s been rattling around in my head for ages, and now seems as good a time as any to share it since he’s been mentioned.
Leftists lie with such constancy that even the name of Alinsky’s book is a lie. “Rules for Radicals” isn’t a rule book at all, it’s a tactical manual.
Leftists hold to no rules other than their desires of the moment because they are fundamentally evil.
Exactly! When researching, let the “witnesses” of history and today (at least two or three, though there will be many more) direct you to putting the puzzle together. Too many glom onto one author. Watch for the same names to appear over and over. Never begin with a conclusion because you will do all you can to get to that conclusion: let the facts documented by many lead to the logical conclusion. And, if you’re like me, you’ll be saying to yourself, “You’ve gotta be kidding me!!” A LOT!
False information like SAFE & EFFECTIVE , IRS assistances etc…
We can never believe what our government tells us
NOTHING other than BOHICA