What Fools We Mortals Be

It never ceases to amaze me how so many well educated and intelligent people can be misled so easily. This post is the first in a series that I hope will stimulate newspaper readers to think.

I also want to challenge talk radio listeners, and viewers of cable news shows to use their brains to think deeply about the information they are receiving. If we don't use our brains to think and to examine what we are being told more closely, what fools we mortals be.

First, let's lay the groundwork. Far too often, people confuse possessing great skill or great wealth with having great intelligence. Far too many confuse repeating information with having genuine knowledge and too many of us readily accept opinions as though they are actual facts.

With this understanding in mind, let's begin to re-examine the information we are using to make our decisions. Could it be that we, as a society, are not basing our decisions concerning major political, social and economic issues on real intelligence, genuine knowledge and facts? Is it possible in this day and age with all these information tools at our beck and call that we are still being misled by our elected officials? Is our national government acting in our best interest or someone else's? Is it possible that we have put an entire political apparatus in place that does not have our best interest in mind? The first step in this maturation process is to understand the role and limitations of our information sources.

Since newspapers and news agencies document or report reality and/or actuality, they can only identify who, what, where, when and how. They can rarely tell us why. Even if they could, we have no way of verifying, with any degree of certainty, that what we are being told is the real reason/s behind a person's or group's actions and/or activities. All we have to go on is the reporter's written or verbal statements or what he/she is transmitting to us via television, radio or the Internet.

Even I can't tell you the real reason behind any one's actions or activities. All I can relay to you is what I have read or been told. There is a simple reason for this. It is impossible to be in two places at the exact same moment in real time. Consequently, we have little or no choice but to rely on those that are closest to the actual event. We, as a society, have little or no choice except to rely on our sources of information. Because this is true, we must never, not for a single moment ,forget that these purveyors of information are human beings just like us.

Now, I have written all that to ask these questions. What is the real reason behind our War in Iraq? What are the real reasons behind the policy decisions made by our elected officials? Why didn't the Bush Administration pursue Bin Laden into Pakistan? They certainly had few, if any, qualms about invading Iraq.

Why are the Clintons, both political grifters and opportunist, still visible on our political horizon? Are we that desperate? Why are the Democrats adamantly pursuing Socialism as a national policy? What group or individual is behind the rapid decline of American society? What group or individual is behind the gutting of our industrial base? Why do major news programs feel so comfortable spoon feeding us pabulum for the evening news? Is our legislative process for sale or has it been sold already? These are just a few of the questions we need to be asking ourselves and our elected officials. Many of these questions will be addressed in future posts.