Truthophobia: 2 + 2 Makes 4, not 5!
Are Americans afraid of the Truth, sticking our collective heads in the sand, or is it that We the People do not know what the Truth is? Luckily, we do not have O’Brian torturing us to accept an untruth like 2 + 2 makes 5. Or do we?
In March 2023, Michael Shellenberger testified before Congress about the Censorship Industrial Complex. He stated, “The censorship industrial complex is a network of ideologically-aligned governmental, NGO, and academic institutions that discovered over the last few years the power of censorship to protect their own interests against the volatility and risks of the democratic process. They are not “defending democracy,” as they claim. Rather they are defending their own policy and pecuniary interests against democracy.”
What does this mean for Americans in the early 21st century?
Unlike many other democratic societies, Americans have assumed 1st Amendment rights as an expectation of living in America. Americans naturally presume that Freedom of Speech guarantees not only a free press, but that we can trust the media to tell us the truth. More people are coming to understand the prescience of George Orwell’s warning of what happens when free speech does not exist. This reality resulted in a number of prominent journalists, artists, activists, technologists, and academics pronouncing The Westminster Declaration in 2023.
What happens when We the People do not know what the Truth is, or are afraid of what we are told the Truth is, or simply do not trust our Institutions telling us what to believe? There is an empirical truth that there are three sides to a story: my side, your side and the Truth.
There is also an old saying that has been attributed to many: “If you are young and conservative, you have no heart. If you are old and liberal, you have no head.” This makes a lot of sense. When a person is young, they react and make decisions based on their feelings, what they consider to be the Truth. After getting beaten up (literally or not) a few times in Life, and going around the block for a few decades, an older person often makes decisions based on Facts, which we call the Truth.
That is why socialism and “social justice” appeal to the young’s desire for the good feelings that equality brings. Thomas Sowell, a believer in Marxism in his 20s, realized that Marxism/Socialism defies human nature after working in the federal government when he turned 30 years old.
So, what this comes down to is FACT V. FEELING. Do we make our decisions based on Fact or Feeling? Sometimes, facts produce negative feelings, but anyone knows that when we bury our head in the sand, ignoring the facts, the Problem only gets Worse.
FACT: XX chromosomes = female and XY chromosomes = male. Surgeons can change one’s sexual organs by a surgical procedure, but they still cannot change the chromosomes.
FEELING: Transgender children are at risk for self-harm or suicide so a parent must consent that the minor child must have a potentially life-threatening surgery and/or take potentially harmful drugs to alter the body unnaturally, even though it is only a feeling, and not a fact, that changing one’s sex will help the transgender child. This could also be a terroristic threat against a skeptical parent and that is a bad feeling!
FACT: Zac Kriegman, Director of Data Science, was fired in 2021 after working at Thompson Reuters Corporation when his data did not match the Black Lives Matter narrative, that is, Black on Black crimes are far higher than police crimes against Black people. He refused to be re-educated and so he was fired. Too many examples like this are straight out George Orwell’s warnings against what happens when Newspeak takes over society.
FEELING: A child born to a drug addicted mother and absent father grows up with no self-worth and joins a gang at age 14, then shoots and kills a rival gang member in cold blood, and winds up facing years in prison. “It’s not his fault he was born into such a horrible environment with no guidance.” That feels right unless one believes in past life karma and who knows about that? But it is a still Feeling, an extremely negative Feeling, but the Fact remains that the 14-year-old did kill someone else and should be punished for taking away a life.
FACT: Fascism is tyranny, and results in the same loss of individual freedom as any other totalitarian government on the far left. Thus, fascism is not far-right, but far-left. Far-right is anarchy - no government.
FEELING: Former President Trump (Trump) is a far-right, fascist Nazi. [Prove it!] This is a feeling uttered by people who hate Trump, but do not understand that totalitarian governments are far left, and who believe whatever they hear or read, regardless of the fact that there is no proof of the allegation.
FACT: Peter Navaro, former Trump advisor, told President Trump in late January 2020 to halt all travel to and from China due to Covid becoming a full-blown pandemic. At that time, the WHO said all is well since there is no risk from human-to-human contact. (Thank you, Peter, for saving how many lives?) Now, Peter is in JAIL to serve four months in prison for not complying with a Congressional subpoena, the same “crime” as Eric Holder, former Attorney General under former President Obama, and for which a federal judge did not even prosecute him. This Stalin type show trail should not have happened, but it did, not to mention what is happening to President Trump and some of his supporters.
FEELING: Peter Navaro advised Trump; therefore, he is MAGA. MAGA = fascist Nazi. See above.
FACT: Minorities gained record employment gains under Trump. Even the mainstream media could not deny those facts. Polls are showing minority voters supporting Trump because most Americans want a piece of the American Dream (if that is still possible?).
FEELING: President Biden is sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man who willfully withheld documents so he should not be indicted. Wait, is that a fact or feeling?
FACT: George Orwell was a Fabian socialist, aka an idealist.
FEELING: Democratic Socialism sounds good, feels good, until further examination that it is an oxymoron since the state takes the power from the individual, thus it is hardly democratic, and the idea neglects one small detail: that human nature is self-serving, always.
And so, it could go on, as never-ending examples abound, like the fact that in the 19th century, the Democratic party supported racism and slavery and the Republicans ended slavery. The point being, when we make our decisions based on Feelings, we often choose poorly.
How many people question whether the reporters covering the “news” are telling them the Truth? Obviously, not enough people, yet this is nothing new. Mark Twain lamented about the press: “There are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press. A libel suit simply brings the plaintiff before a vast newspaper court to be tried before the law tries him and reviled and ridiculed without mercy.”
One day, sometime near the 2nd decade of the 21st century, we woke up and Newspeak was now a fact of life. Those of us who are called “cisgender, heteronormative” were scratching our heads over the idea of intersectionality. People started adding their preferred pronouns to their work e-mails and the HR re-education training began. Now, it seems, it’s all about one’s sexuality – who someone has sex with. Who cares? The MSM will maintain that it’s all about someone’s rights, but really, all this gender nonsense is really about who has sex with whom. WHO CARES?
And, if it is about rights, why is there is a protected class for the small percentage of people who want to have sex with someone who is not from the cursed and hated “cisgender, heteronormative” class? Why do we need to create a privileged class? It’s a very un-American idea. We already have the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that protects all Citizens from discrimination.
And this idea adds one more unraveling thread to the un-American idea warping American culture: Oppressor v. Oppressed. Us v. Them.
When a non-politically correct boor became President, then the MSM attacks really started. As much as We the People did not like the “mean tweets” and ad hominem attacks, the President appeared to want to “clean up” DC politics. Maybe it takes a snake to slither around with the other snakes that makes up the “deep state” in Washington DC?
And this is where Truth took a far-left turn, far, far left of Trump’s ridiculously oversized ego. Remember Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017? Antifa rioters facing felony charges were dropped.
After the Charlottesville protest in 2017, when President Trump said “you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides” he was slaughtered as a racist Nazi. Any analytical person knew he was not talking about the nazi/white supremacist v. antifa because if he was saying that the nazi/white supremacists were good people, then, he was also saying that those from Antifa were good people! The “idea” of Antifa had already shown their true colors of being the actual “brownshirts” on Trump’s inauguration day. But most people believe what they are told and do not think critically or analytically.
Then it was Russia, Russia, Russia. How does the MSM have any credibility left? Don’t question the Narrative. Shut up or you are canceled…from social media…or even your job!
Then Covid-19 was unleashed on the world.
And then the riot on January 6th happened. Vivek Ramaswamy said that January 6, 2021, was culmination of the frustration many people were feeling about the ongoing censorship over Covid. He said,” You tell people in this country they cannot speak, that is when they scream. You tell people they cannot scream. That is when they tear things down." The MSM called it an insurrection and yet no one came with weapons to take over the government. It was a mob riot, which is why many smart people steer clear of populism.
On April 27, 2022, U.S. Department of Homeland Security created the Disinformation Governance Board that fortunately met with great resistance from patriotic Americans who knew how this was an Orwellian nightmare in the name of the Ministry of Truth, so after three weeks, it was “paused.”
Still, this rhetoric does not answer, what is the Truth? Aristotle said, “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.” Huh? In today’s society, George Orwell’s definition might suffice best:
And here is a revolutionary truth: Western Civilization (aka “white men”) produced many amazing feats, such as the Sistine Chapel, the Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution, to name only a few. That is a Truth, not to be ashamed or afraid of, but to be proud of, so that we teach our young to Appreciate the Good and Learn from the Bad and the Ugly that occurs with human nature being self-serving. We can Cherish the BEAUTIFUL and accept the Ugly as a lesson learned so we do not repeat past mistakes. That is the Truth!
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