Why Civility Failed
The Real Problem With American Politics
Fake News
“The time is coming when everything will be revealed; all that is secret will be made public. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear!” – Luke 12:2-3
“They hate the light because they want to sin in the darkness. They stay away from the light for fear their sins will be exposed and they will be punished. But those who do what is right come to the light gladly, so everyone can see that they are doing what God wants.” – John 3:20-21
A king cannot make good decisions unless he knows what is happening in his kingdom. Without messengers, he has no way of knowing what happens beyond the walls of his castle or whether his kingdom still exists. Communication is essential to governance.
In a democracy, we are all kings and queens that rule jointly. Our decisions are limited to voting for whom to put in charge of making all the other decisions. Knowing the candidates’ backgrounds, what they are up to once in office, and what is happening outside our backyards is necessary to making good decisions. Communication is essential to governance.
Because so much is at stake, unscrupulous reporters will spread lies to support one cause over another and these lies will be repeated and believed by the gullible. Whether in a kingdom or a democracy, smart monarchs do their best to separate fact from fiction.
One should always expect some sensationalism – some slight bending of the truth for ratings. This explains why an article about measuring miniscule amounts of naturally-occurring radioisotopes in a stream was titled “Radioactive Fish Found In Vermont” and only halfway through the article it is mentioned that the natural baseline had yet to be established. This type of manipulation the country can stand. What is less clear is whether it can stand outright lies.
I don’t know anyone I can trust. Sooner or later, everyone lets me down. Most people on the other hand are very trusting. They repeat lies they find on the internet and have no capacity for critical thought. Whenever someone continues to deliver me questionable information, I start to tune them out. When the Democrats kept telling lies about Bush and how the Iraq war was going, I stopped listening. Only years later did I discover that a few of the things they told me were true. Later, Sean Hannity was so unfair in his criticism of Obama that I concluded he was just being partisan. He was never able to support anything he said. Today, the news media is notoriously misleading. They are called fake news – and not just by Donald Trump. Trump too has been accused of being loose with his facts. There are those so turned off by the continuous lies being published about Trump that they have stopped listening and will miss it if Trump ever does do something that should concern them. Then there are those so tired of Trump’s lack of clarity and other antics that they are predisposed to believe anything bad about him without questioning the source.
Mexicans Are Rapists?
Trump’s comments on those illegally sneaking across the Mexican border is the quote played over and over supposedly showing Trump calling Mexicans rapists. More than any other of his quotes it is used as the example proving him to be racist against Mexicans. However, actually listening to the quote in context with an open mind proves quite the opposite (35).
First, Trump opines that when Mexico sends its people, it does not send its best. In other words, the “good” Mexicans stay in Mexico (or come in legally) and the “bad” Mexicans sneak across the border illegally. Obviously, he recognizes that some Mexicans are better than others – just as in any people group. He does not lump all Mexicans together and all Americans together and imply one inferior to the other.
Then he says “they aren’t sending you,” apparently speaking to those he recognizes as good Mexicans, thus reinforcing the proof that he is not valuing people based on race.
He then lists some of the crimes (such as rape) committed by the criminal Mexicans (sneaking across the border illegally being by definition a criminal act), following it up by saying, “and some, I assume, are good people,” again showing he is not only not being racist, but is not even going so far as assuming that those guilty of one criminal act must be guilty of other criminal acts.
After this, he goes on to say that a lot of those sneaking across the Mexican border are not even from Mexico, showing he is not picking on any one particular group. Only a very very very very stupid person could see anything racist in these comments. They are quite possibly the LEAST RACIST thing ever said! Trump DID NOT call Mexicans rapists; he called rapists rapists, a few of which happen to be Mexican. Whenever I hear people repeat the lie that Trump called all or most Mexicans rapists, my ears shut tight and I hear nothing more they say. Why would anyone listen to such liars?
Founders of ISIS?
Fortunately, just because I don’t trust the news doesn’t mean that I have started to trust Trump and his supporters either. He has also been rather careless with his words. During the campaign, he accused Obama and Hillary of being the founders of ISIS (36). Even after listening to his words in context, I still hear him making ridiculous accusations. On at least two separate occasions I heard reporters ask Trump if he wanted to explain, suggesting that he might have simply meant that Obama indirectly enabled them by creating the power vacuum that allowed ISIS to thrive, but Trump dug in his heels and refused to elaborate. With statements like these, why would anyone believe anything that comes out of Trump’s mouth? Why would anybody read his Twitter feed? The man is a clown.
At this point, I don’t know who to believe. I can trust nobody. Without access to reliable information, I cannot vote. Democracy is dead. Unfortunately, many people still believe fake news. This is a big problem. It causes people to reject the results of elections, it turns people against each other, and it turns people against the government.
Meddling In Elections:
The Russians are not the only ones to meddle in US elections. Plenty of Americans do the same thing. This often goes beyond simply adding opinion and bad analysis to the facts. The facts themselves are often bad. In 2012, during the race between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, MSNBC played a tape of Romney giving a speech at a Wawa store, edited such that many of Romney’s words were removed (37). The result was that it made Romney look foolish and out of touch with average people, which the analysts then reinforced, knowing all along they were lying. There is no way it could have been a mistake.
There are millions of people who strongly believe that Romney was clearly a better choice than Obama and believe that he might have won if not for the media bias against him. From their point of view, the election was stolen. Since our leaders are often trusted with important decisions, elections are not something to be taken lightly.
In the intervening years, not much has changed. Candidate Donald Trump was asked whether he would disavow David Duke, a white supremacist who had endorsed him. At first, Trump said it would be premature to do so since he didn’t remember who he was. However, within days Trump clearly disavowed Duke on television for all to hear (38). Even as Trump was repeatedly asked the same question over and over and disavowed Duke over and over, I still heard false media reports that he still had not done so.
Later, during Trump’s first term, when Antifa protestors started a fight with neo-Nazi protestors, Trump went on television to denounce the violence on both sides. The next day, Trump went on television again, denouncing both sides again, but making sure to mention the Nazis by name. He did not mention Antifa by name, though they are an equally extremist and violent organization. The third day, Trump held a press conference, denounced both sides by name, explained in detail what had actually happened in Charlottesville that day, and had a long discussion with reporters so there was no excuse to think that he in any way sided with the Nazis (39). For several days afterwards, the news kept pushing the idea that Trump would not clearly denounce the Nazis and several of my “friends” repeated the lies.
The media also lies by omission. I am shocked sometimes at how utterly uninformed some people are about the basic issues. For example, understanding the core of the controversy over the Affordable Care Act means knowing that it was to be enforced through the IRS. Knowing this fact is central to having an opinion on the matter. However, a friend of my father did not know this and refused to believe it when told, thinking it was some conspiracy theory peddled by FOX News. He only watched MSNBC and nothing else. Just why did he think people were so against the law? Just how did he think the supreme court considered it constitutional?
Lying isn’t harmless. If just one person’s vote is swapped it could give the election to someone less competent. The policies that result could mean the difference for some people between getting a house, getting a job, getting health care, getting a tax break, or getting nothing at all. When it comes to decisions of military action or law enforcement, it could mean the difference between life and death or between imprisonment and freedom.
Turning Us Against Each Other:
Even worse is when the media uses lies to turn us against each other – especially along religious or racial lines. Some years after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, it was reported that some Muslims were looking to open a mosque there. Analysts implied that these Muslims were sympathetic to the terrorists and wished to build an edifice to “gloat” over their “victory.” Not only is this bad analysis since holding one group of Muslims responsible for 911 is no different than holding all Christians responsible for the child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, but the reporters got the basic facts wrong.
The mosque was not “at” ground zero; it was a full block away (40). It was not a new mosque, but an extension to one that already existed. Officially, it was meant as a community outreach center so that Muslims and non-Muslims could get to know each other and overcome prejudice. Obviously, that didn’t happen.
Some years later, two men had an unfortunate meeting in Florida. What probably began as a misunderstanding ended in a fight with one man shooting the other in a textbook case of self-defense. It is the type of thing that happens from time to time. While tragic, it is not exactly newsworthy. Of course, I’m talking about George and Trayvon.
From the beginning, the news media set us up. The incident was reported as something like “White Man Shoots Unarmed Black Teenager, Police Fail to Press Charges,” ignoring the fact that the “white” man in question was a Hispanic with a dark-skinned mother and the police had no evidence whatsoever to throw any doubt on his self-defense claim. In fact, the evidence strongly supported it. A witness placed Trayvon on top of Zimmerman just before the shot (41) and testimony from Trayvon’s girlfriend revealed that he had already made it to his grandparents’ home safely before going back outside to confront the “cracker” who had been following him (42).
Pundits claimed outright that the shooting was racially motivated when there was no evidence of such a thing. Black Panthers surfaced in riots and the addresses of those with the same name as the shooter were published. FOX reported on random beatings of white people across the country, the perpetrators alleging that they were revenge for Trayvon, which may very well have just been false excuses and wasn’t at all helpful (43). They added fuel to the fire. Later, MSNBC played an edited version of the 911 call George had made, making him sound racist, adding even more fuel to the fire (44). What FOX did was reckless and irresponsible, but what MSNBC did was slander and deliberate incitement to rioting. I would also call it treason.
I’ve even heard reports of fake protestors, by which I mean they are paid to be there (usually by some labor union – your hard-earned dues at work) and have little idea what they are protesting. In other cases, plots to infiltrate protest groups such as the Tea Parties in order to make them look bad on television have been exposed. Outright hoaxes to frame Trump voters for imaginary crimes have happened. Democrat activist groups got caught hiring people to start fights with Trump voters at rallies (45). Politicians not only accuse each other of crimes, but actively encourage the public to harass public officials they don’t like (46). The strife shows no sign of peaking soon.
Turning Us Against Our Government:
In a kingdom, the king has the right to replace any minister who fails in his duties. As citizens in a democracy, this right falls to us. Normally we replace our representatives by voting in someone else, but this is not always enough. When those who work for us are caught manipulating the vote tallies through election fraud, when our representatives are threatened or bribed into voting against the interests of their constituents, when they refuse to leave office when their term is up (assuming powers they no longer have), or when they act outside the constitutional bounds of the office (assuming powers they were never granted in the first place), it is not enough to try to vote them out. They must be removed by whatever means necessary.
However, the use of force is so risky that smart citizens will carefully weigh these risks against the magnitude of the abuse. This can only be done by citizens who are well-informed. However, I have observed news outlets reporting as fact abuses so grave that revolution sounds like the least bad option.
In 2018, the Providence Journal reported that it was illegal in Rhode Island for doctors to advise their underage patients not to go through with gender-reassignment surgery (47). What this means is that doctors who do so would be punished in some way. This is extremely dangerous.
The law not only violates the free-speech rights of the doctor, but it would necessarily create a chilling effect over the medical community so that we could no longer trust that we were getting sound medical advice. Since gender-reassignment surgery is a permanent, life-altering, and some would argue always harmful procedure, the debate should be between allowing freedom to advise either way and outlawing the encouragement of it, not over outlawing the discouragement of it.
For someone to consider such a surgery, they must be mentally unstable. Those who recommend such a thing are thus taking advantage of the handicapped. Those who suggest such things to minors are guilty of child abuse. A doctor in a position to advise a patient who then fails to advise against such things is guilty of negligence. For the government to encourage negligence and criminalize responsibility is every bit as evil as if they had abused the children themselves. Such a government must be opposed at all costs. No action against it could be considered too extreme.
Fortunately, it appears that none of this is actually true. I searched through the Rhode Island criminal code for the law and could not find it. What I did find was that conversion therapy for minors had been made illegal, carrying the caveat that advice given in the spirit of acceptance of the individual with the patient’s well-being in mind was not to be considered conversion therapy. Don’t burn down Rhode Island just yet.
In conclusion, false reporting is dividing us and driving us apart. If we don’t get a handle on it soon, we might have a civil war on our hands. Next time you hear a wild story, check the sources, reason it through, confer with those of different opinions, and never stop asking questions.
Doubt Even This:
When competing claims of truth exist, how is one to sort through it? How can we know that anything written in this book is accurate? Can any of my sources be trusted? Could this whole book be full of lies? Ultimately, there is no way to be certain. After all, this could all just be a dream I’m having. Donald Trump might not even exist. Still, in order to function in society, we must make some working assumptions. How? I’ll tell you what I do.
First, I listen to all sides of a story and take note of the foundational facts that no one disputes. Are they even talking about the same story? These facts I assume to be true until someone calls them into question.
Second, I listen to the chain of logic people use to support their conclusions. I cannot tell when someone lies to me outright, but I can spot half-truth and spin miles away. Any conclusion not supported by the evidence is discarded and any speaker using faulty logic is rejected as unreliable. I may even begin to question their reported facts. So many people’s words are filled with non-sequiturs, circular reasoning, straw men, and other logical fallacies that it is impossible to take what they say as anything other than comedy.
Third, I check every claim against my personal experience and common sense. While it is theoretically possible for my experience to be atypical and for common sense to be wrong, it should still be reliable most of the time. The burden of proof is on those claiming otherwise. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Those who make no effort to support claims they should know are dubious are ignored.
Fourth, anyone who conspicuously leaves out an important part of the story I deem less reliable than one who includes it. So often, I find one news outlet telling only half the story and another filling me in on the rest. While I do not accept everything the second outlet tells me uncritically, if I cannot find anyone countering their claims, I tend to believe them.
Fifth, those sources consistently proven right by the first four methods are accepted as reliable while those caught in lies are viewed with increasing skepticism. It is at this step that feedback bias can manifest, causing me to accept lies if coming from someone shown truthful in the past. Because I am aware of this phenomenon, I purposely keep an open mind.
It is always best to check multiple sources, but often I can tell just from reading one source that they are lying to me about something:
I once read a story about how Trump was giving citizens of El Salvador one year to go home. The article made it sound as if they could stay indefinitely if not for Trump. Only by reading the entire article very carefully did I understand that, because an earthquake had wrecked their country, many Salvadorians were allowed to come here by George W. Bush, who kept extending the deadline of when they had to leave. Obama further extended the deadline. Now Trump was giving them one year. In other words, Trump wasn’t sending them home; he was extending the deadline just as previous presidents had. So, Trump wasn’t sending anyone home. Gotcha!
I once read a story of how a change to the tax code by Trump and the congressional Republicans was likely to cause charitable giving to plummet, since people could no longer write-off all their donations. Carefully reading the entire article, I see that all they did was raise the standard deduction. This means that donations normally itemized and deducted separately were covered by the standard deduction so long as their sum fell below the new threshold. The donations were still covered; the taxpayers were simply spared a little bit of work. So, there was no reason for charitable giving to drop. In fact, it might increase. Gotcha!
When the paper first announced that a whistleblower had accused Trump of asking Ukraine to help dig up dirt on Biden’s family for no valid reason, I read the transcript of the call and saw that Trump did no such thing. He had actually asked President Zelensky to look into claims Biden had been making about stopping a prosecutor. What claims? None of the news I was hearing even mentioned it. They conspicuously left out a very important part of the story. I had to do my own research. That’s how I found a YouTube video of Biden bragging about getting a prosecutor fired. (21) This prosecutor was at that very same time investigating a company on the board of which was Biden’s son. So, there was a valid reason to look into it. Gotcha!
When someone shared a photo on FaceBook purporting to show rich and poor neighborhoods side by side, showing how unequal things had become, I clicked on it. There were several photographs, the top one from Brazil and the rest from the United States. Only in Brazil was there a large difference. The American neighborhoods were hard to tell apart. So, what’s the point? Were they trying to trick me, hoping that I wouldn’t read the captions or scroll past the first photo? Gotcha!
When I heard that it was revealed the Pentagon had invasion plans of Iraq long before 9/11, implying that Bush and his cronies were just looking for any excuse they could find for war, I immediately thought: Doesn’t the Pentagon have invasion plans ready for every country just in case – especially countries we’ve had trouble with for over a decade? Why is that surprising? They should have plans. Gotcha!
There is no point in citing sources anymore. Citations are only as good as the sources they are citing. Obviously, it is always a plus when you can show that others agree with you, but it doesn’t mean much. Democrats’ claims are backed up by sources Republicans deem unreliable. Republicans’ claims are backed up by sources Democrats deem unreliable. There is no authority that we all agree on. Textbooks have been caught in lies. Polls contradict each other. History is revealed as hoax decades later. Official government publications are accused of bias. Authority is dead. The institutions that used to unite us have been shown over and over to be corrupt and make mistakes. The truth is that those inclined to listen have been paying attention all along and are already quite aware of every example I use, while those on the other side of the issues will reject my sources anyways. There is no point.
I don’t have time to check everything out. I need someone I can trust in order to know what’s going on and who to vote for, but I can’t trust any journalist and I can’t trust anyone in government. Both have “cried wolf” so many times that I can’t even be bothered to pay attention. It might be better not to vote, but if I stay home the decision will just be made by the gullible, brainless masses. Democracy is dead.
We need to start listening to each other and stop believing whatever our favorite politician/pundit tells us unquestioningly. The fate of the world rides on this.
“They hate the light because they want to sin in the darkness. They stay away from the light for fear their sins will be exposed and they will be punished. But those who do what is right come to the light gladly, so everyone can see that they are doing what God wants.” – John 3:20-21
A king cannot make good decisions unless he knows what is happening in his kingdom. Without messengers, he has no way of knowing what happens beyond the walls of his castle or whether his kingdom still exists. Communication is essential to governance.
In a democracy, we are all kings and queens that rule jointly. Our decisions are limited to voting for whom to put in charge of making all the other decisions. Knowing the candidates’ backgrounds, what they are up to once in office, and what is happening outside our backyards is necessary to making good decisions. Communication is essential to governance.
Because so much is at stake, unscrupulous reporters will spread lies to support one cause over another and these lies will be repeated and believed by the gullible. Whether in a kingdom or a democracy, smart monarchs do their best to separate fact from fiction.
One should always expect some sensationalism – some slight bending of the truth for ratings. This explains why an article about measuring miniscule amounts of naturally-occurring radioisotopes in a stream was titled “Radioactive Fish Found In Vermont” and only halfway through the article it is mentioned that the natural baseline had yet to be established. This type of manipulation the country can stand. What is less clear is whether it can stand outright lies.
I don’t know anyone I can trust. Sooner or later, everyone lets me down. Most people on the other hand are very trusting. They repeat lies they find on the internet and have no capacity for critical thought. Whenever someone continues to deliver me questionable information, I start to tune them out. When the Democrats kept telling lies about Bush and how the Iraq war was going, I stopped listening. Only years later did I discover that a few of the things they told me were true. Later, Sean Hannity was so unfair in his criticism of Obama that I concluded he was just being partisan. He was never able to support anything he said. Today, the news media is notoriously misleading. They are called fake news – and not just by Donald Trump. Trump too has been accused of being loose with his facts. There are those so turned off by the continuous lies being published about Trump that they have stopped listening and will miss it if Trump ever does do something that should concern them. Then there are those so tired of Trump’s lack of clarity and other antics that they are predisposed to believe anything bad about him without questioning the source.
Mexicans Are Rapists?
Trump’s comments on those illegally sneaking across the Mexican border is the quote played over and over supposedly showing Trump calling Mexicans rapists. More than any other of his quotes it is used as the example proving him to be racist against Mexicans. However, actually listening to the quote in context with an open mind proves quite the opposite (35).
First, Trump opines that when Mexico sends its people, it does not send its best. In other words, the “good” Mexicans stay in Mexico (or come in legally) and the “bad” Mexicans sneak across the border illegally. Obviously, he recognizes that some Mexicans are better than others – just as in any people group. He does not lump all Mexicans together and all Americans together and imply one inferior to the other.
Then he says “they aren’t sending you,” apparently speaking to those he recognizes as good Mexicans, thus reinforcing the proof that he is not valuing people based on race.
He then lists some of the crimes (such as rape) committed by the criminal Mexicans (sneaking across the border illegally being by definition a criminal act), following it up by saying, “and some, I assume, are good people,” again showing he is not only not being racist, but is not even going so far as assuming that those guilty of one criminal act must be guilty of other criminal acts.
After this, he goes on to say that a lot of those sneaking across the Mexican border are not even from Mexico, showing he is not picking on any one particular group. Only a very very very very stupid person could see anything racist in these comments. They are quite possibly the LEAST RACIST thing ever said! Trump DID NOT call Mexicans rapists; he called rapists rapists, a few of which happen to be Mexican. Whenever I hear people repeat the lie that Trump called all or most Mexicans rapists, my ears shut tight and I hear nothing more they say. Why would anyone listen to such liars?
Founders of ISIS?
Fortunately, just because I don’t trust the news doesn’t mean that I have started to trust Trump and his supporters either. He has also been rather careless with his words. During the campaign, he accused Obama and Hillary of being the founders of ISIS (36). Even after listening to his words in context, I still hear him making ridiculous accusations. On at least two separate occasions I heard reporters ask Trump if he wanted to explain, suggesting that he might have simply meant that Obama indirectly enabled them by creating the power vacuum that allowed ISIS to thrive, but Trump dug in his heels and refused to elaborate. With statements like these, why would anyone believe anything that comes out of Trump’s mouth? Why would anybody read his Twitter feed? The man is a clown.
At this point, I don’t know who to believe. I can trust nobody. Without access to reliable information, I cannot vote. Democracy is dead. Unfortunately, many people still believe fake news. This is a big problem. It causes people to reject the results of elections, it turns people against each other, and it turns people against the government.
Meddling In Elections:
The Russians are not the only ones to meddle in US elections. Plenty of Americans do the same thing. This often goes beyond simply adding opinion and bad analysis to the facts. The facts themselves are often bad. In 2012, during the race between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, MSNBC played a tape of Romney giving a speech at a Wawa store, edited such that many of Romney’s words were removed (37). The result was that it made Romney look foolish and out of touch with average people, which the analysts then reinforced, knowing all along they were lying. There is no way it could have been a mistake.
There are millions of people who strongly believe that Romney was clearly a better choice than Obama and believe that he might have won if not for the media bias against him. From their point of view, the election was stolen. Since our leaders are often trusted with important decisions, elections are not something to be taken lightly.
In the intervening years, not much has changed. Candidate Donald Trump was asked whether he would disavow David Duke, a white supremacist who had endorsed him. At first, Trump said it would be premature to do so since he didn’t remember who he was. However, within days Trump clearly disavowed Duke on television for all to hear (38). Even as Trump was repeatedly asked the same question over and over and disavowed Duke over and over, I still heard false media reports that he still had not done so.
Later, during Trump’s first term, when Antifa protestors started a fight with neo-Nazi protestors, Trump went on television to denounce the violence on both sides. The next day, Trump went on television again, denouncing both sides again, but making sure to mention the Nazis by name. He did not mention Antifa by name, though they are an equally extremist and violent organization. The third day, Trump held a press conference, denounced both sides by name, explained in detail what had actually happened in Charlottesville that day, and had a long discussion with reporters so there was no excuse to think that he in any way sided with the Nazis (39). For several days afterwards, the news kept pushing the idea that Trump would not clearly denounce the Nazis and several of my “friends” repeated the lies.
The media also lies by omission. I am shocked sometimes at how utterly uninformed some people are about the basic issues. For example, understanding the core of the controversy over the Affordable Care Act means knowing that it was to be enforced through the IRS. Knowing this fact is central to having an opinion on the matter. However, a friend of my father did not know this and refused to believe it when told, thinking it was some conspiracy theory peddled by FOX News. He only watched MSNBC and nothing else. Just why did he think people were so against the law? Just how did he think the supreme court considered it constitutional?
Lying isn’t harmless. If just one person’s vote is swapped it could give the election to someone less competent. The policies that result could mean the difference for some people between getting a house, getting a job, getting health care, getting a tax break, or getting nothing at all. When it comes to decisions of military action or law enforcement, it could mean the difference between life and death or between imprisonment and freedom.
Turning Us Against Each Other:
Even worse is when the media uses lies to turn us against each other – especially along religious or racial lines. Some years after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, it was reported that some Muslims were looking to open a mosque there. Analysts implied that these Muslims were sympathetic to the terrorists and wished to build an edifice to “gloat” over their “victory.” Not only is this bad analysis since holding one group of Muslims responsible for 911 is no different than holding all Christians responsible for the child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, but the reporters got the basic facts wrong.
The mosque was not “at” ground zero; it was a full block away (40). It was not a new mosque, but an extension to one that already existed. Officially, it was meant as a community outreach center so that Muslims and non-Muslims could get to know each other and overcome prejudice. Obviously, that didn’t happen.
Some years later, two men had an unfortunate meeting in Florida. What probably began as a misunderstanding ended in a fight with one man shooting the other in a textbook case of self-defense. It is the type of thing that happens from time to time. While tragic, it is not exactly newsworthy. Of course, I’m talking about George and Trayvon.
From the beginning, the news media set us up. The incident was reported as something like “White Man Shoots Unarmed Black Teenager, Police Fail to Press Charges,” ignoring the fact that the “white” man in question was a Hispanic with a dark-skinned mother and the police had no evidence whatsoever to throw any doubt on his self-defense claim. In fact, the evidence strongly supported it. A witness placed Trayvon on top of Zimmerman just before the shot (41) and testimony from Trayvon’s girlfriend revealed that he had already made it to his grandparents’ home safely before going back outside to confront the “cracker” who had been following him (42).
Pundits claimed outright that the shooting was racially motivated when there was no evidence of such a thing. Black Panthers surfaced in riots and the addresses of those with the same name as the shooter were published. FOX reported on random beatings of white people across the country, the perpetrators alleging that they were revenge for Trayvon, which may very well have just been false excuses and wasn’t at all helpful (43). They added fuel to the fire. Later, MSNBC played an edited version of the 911 call George had made, making him sound racist, adding even more fuel to the fire (44). What FOX did was reckless and irresponsible, but what MSNBC did was slander and deliberate incitement to rioting. I would also call it treason.
I’ve even heard reports of fake protestors, by which I mean they are paid to be there (usually by some labor union – your hard-earned dues at work) and have little idea what they are protesting. In other cases, plots to infiltrate protest groups such as the Tea Parties in order to make them look bad on television have been exposed. Outright hoaxes to frame Trump voters for imaginary crimes have happened. Democrat activist groups got caught hiring people to start fights with Trump voters at rallies (45). Politicians not only accuse each other of crimes, but actively encourage the public to harass public officials they don’t like (46). The strife shows no sign of peaking soon.
Turning Us Against Our Government:
In a kingdom, the king has the right to replace any minister who fails in his duties. As citizens in a democracy, this right falls to us. Normally we replace our representatives by voting in someone else, but this is not always enough. When those who work for us are caught manipulating the vote tallies through election fraud, when our representatives are threatened or bribed into voting against the interests of their constituents, when they refuse to leave office when their term is up (assuming powers they no longer have), or when they act outside the constitutional bounds of the office (assuming powers they were never granted in the first place), it is not enough to try to vote them out. They must be removed by whatever means necessary.
However, the use of force is so risky that smart citizens will carefully weigh these risks against the magnitude of the abuse. This can only be done by citizens who are well-informed. However, I have observed news outlets reporting as fact abuses so grave that revolution sounds like the least bad option.
In 2018, the Providence Journal reported that it was illegal in Rhode Island for doctors to advise their underage patients not to go through with gender-reassignment surgery (47). What this means is that doctors who do so would be punished in some way. This is extremely dangerous.
The law not only violates the free-speech rights of the doctor, but it would necessarily create a chilling effect over the medical community so that we could no longer trust that we were getting sound medical advice. Since gender-reassignment surgery is a permanent, life-altering, and some would argue always harmful procedure, the debate should be between allowing freedom to advise either way and outlawing the encouragement of it, not over outlawing the discouragement of it.
For someone to consider such a surgery, they must be mentally unstable. Those who recommend such a thing are thus taking advantage of the handicapped. Those who suggest such things to minors are guilty of child abuse. A doctor in a position to advise a patient who then fails to advise against such things is guilty of negligence. For the government to encourage negligence and criminalize responsibility is every bit as evil as if they had abused the children themselves. Such a government must be opposed at all costs. No action against it could be considered too extreme.
Fortunately, it appears that none of this is actually true. I searched through the Rhode Island criminal code for the law and could not find it. What I did find was that conversion therapy for minors had been made illegal, carrying the caveat that advice given in the spirit of acceptance of the individual with the patient’s well-being in mind was not to be considered conversion therapy. Don’t burn down Rhode Island just yet.
In conclusion, false reporting is dividing us and driving us apart. If we don’t get a handle on it soon, we might have a civil war on our hands. Next time you hear a wild story, check the sources, reason it through, confer with those of different opinions, and never stop asking questions.
Doubt Even This:
When competing claims of truth exist, how is one to sort through it? How can we know that anything written in this book is accurate? Can any of my sources be trusted? Could this whole book be full of lies? Ultimately, there is no way to be certain. After all, this could all just be a dream I’m having. Donald Trump might not even exist. Still, in order to function in society, we must make some working assumptions. How? I’ll tell you what I do.
First, I listen to all sides of a story and take note of the foundational facts that no one disputes. Are they even talking about the same story? These facts I assume to be true until someone calls them into question.
Second, I listen to the chain of logic people use to support their conclusions. I cannot tell when someone lies to me outright, but I can spot half-truth and spin miles away. Any conclusion not supported by the evidence is discarded and any speaker using faulty logic is rejected as unreliable. I may even begin to question their reported facts. So many people’s words are filled with non-sequiturs, circular reasoning, straw men, and other logical fallacies that it is impossible to take what they say as anything other than comedy.
Third, I check every claim against my personal experience and common sense. While it is theoretically possible for my experience to be atypical and for common sense to be wrong, it should still be reliable most of the time. The burden of proof is on those claiming otherwise. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Those who make no effort to support claims they should know are dubious are ignored.
Fourth, anyone who conspicuously leaves out an important part of the story I deem less reliable than one who includes it. So often, I find one news outlet telling only half the story and another filling me in on the rest. While I do not accept everything the second outlet tells me uncritically, if I cannot find anyone countering their claims, I tend to believe them.
Fifth, those sources consistently proven right by the first four methods are accepted as reliable while those caught in lies are viewed with increasing skepticism. It is at this step that feedback bias can manifest, causing me to accept lies if coming from someone shown truthful in the past. Because I am aware of this phenomenon, I purposely keep an open mind.
It is always best to check multiple sources, but often I can tell just from reading one source that they are lying to me about something:
I once read a story about how Trump was giving citizens of El Salvador one year to go home. The article made it sound as if they could stay indefinitely if not for Trump. Only by reading the entire article very carefully did I understand that, because an earthquake had wrecked their country, many Salvadorians were allowed to come here by George W. Bush, who kept extending the deadline of when they had to leave. Obama further extended the deadline. Now Trump was giving them one year. In other words, Trump wasn’t sending them home; he was extending the deadline just as previous presidents had. So, Trump wasn’t sending anyone home. Gotcha!
I once read a story of how a change to the tax code by Trump and the congressional Republicans was likely to cause charitable giving to plummet, since people could no longer write-off all their donations. Carefully reading the entire article, I see that all they did was raise the standard deduction. This means that donations normally itemized and deducted separately were covered by the standard deduction so long as their sum fell below the new threshold. The donations were still covered; the taxpayers were simply spared a little bit of work. So, there was no reason for charitable giving to drop. In fact, it might increase. Gotcha!
When the paper first announced that a whistleblower had accused Trump of asking Ukraine to help dig up dirt on Biden’s family for no valid reason, I read the transcript of the call and saw that Trump did no such thing. He had actually asked President Zelensky to look into claims Biden had been making about stopping a prosecutor. What claims? None of the news I was hearing even mentioned it. They conspicuously left out a very important part of the story. I had to do my own research. That’s how I found a YouTube video of Biden bragging about getting a prosecutor fired. (21) This prosecutor was at that very same time investigating a company on the board of which was Biden’s son. So, there was a valid reason to look into it. Gotcha!
When someone shared a photo on FaceBook purporting to show rich and poor neighborhoods side by side, showing how unequal things had become, I clicked on it. There were several photographs, the top one from Brazil and the rest from the United States. Only in Brazil was there a large difference. The American neighborhoods were hard to tell apart. So, what’s the point? Were they trying to trick me, hoping that I wouldn’t read the captions or scroll past the first photo? Gotcha!
When I heard that it was revealed the Pentagon had invasion plans of Iraq long before 9/11, implying that Bush and his cronies were just looking for any excuse they could find for war, I immediately thought: Doesn’t the Pentagon have invasion plans ready for every country just in case – especially countries we’ve had trouble with for over a decade? Why is that surprising? They should have plans. Gotcha!
There is no point in citing sources anymore. Citations are only as good as the sources they are citing. Obviously, it is always a plus when you can show that others agree with you, but it doesn’t mean much. Democrats’ claims are backed up by sources Republicans deem unreliable. Republicans’ claims are backed up by sources Democrats deem unreliable. There is no authority that we all agree on. Textbooks have been caught in lies. Polls contradict each other. History is revealed as hoax decades later. Official government publications are accused of bias. Authority is dead. The institutions that used to unite us have been shown over and over to be corrupt and make mistakes. The truth is that those inclined to listen have been paying attention all along and are already quite aware of every example I use, while those on the other side of the issues will reject my sources anyways. There is no point.
I don’t have time to check everything out. I need someone I can trust in order to know what’s going on and who to vote for, but I can’t trust any journalist and I can’t trust anyone in government. Both have “cried wolf” so many times that I can’t even be bothered to pay attention. It might be better not to vote, but if I stay home the decision will just be made by the gullible, brainless masses. Democracy is dead.
We need to start listening to each other and stop believing whatever our favorite politician/pundit tells us unquestioningly. The fate of the world rides on this.