While the following does not address the birther issue and the detractors thereof directly, I think if may give a bit of food for thought. This is the foreword of a book I’m working on bit by bit.
Thinking Critically
Doublespeak, Magical Thinking and the lack of critical thought that led us down the rabbit hole
By Norm Lenhart
Where to begin? How to condense the sheer enormity of the journey that our country, in fact, our entire planet has taken from past critical thought and rational discussion over the issues of the day, to the ‘magical thinking’ and Orwellian ‘Doublespeak’ that permeate modern discourse? The answer is, you can’t. But that does not mean you shouldn’t try.
This is a work that I’ve contemplated for a number of years in one form or another, but I must admit, find nearly overwhelming. As I pondered the direction this book would ultimately take, I found myself standing amidst a whirlwind of contradictions, rationalizations and other justifications for the most nonsensical ideas, beliefs, laws... you name it, that encompass the human condition of the 21st century.
There’s plenty out in the world that attracts my interest and I find more to occupy my mind daily. While my personal political philosophy plants me firmly in the ‘Right Wing’ of the spectrum, I am open to consideration of opposing views... which is the very thing lacking in modern discourse...which leads to dogmatic fanaticism...which leads to ‘magical thinking’... which leads to the point of this book.
Modern society, both through design and the intellectually lazy desire to ‘just get along’ has wholly abandoned the concept of critical thought. We have become walking dualities who drive Hummers festooned with Sierra Club bumper stickers (which I have personally witnessed). In 2010, we watched news broadcasts and read articles telling us the (American) government was doing everything within its power to contain an out-of-control oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, while the next television news segment or article on the newspaper page discussed how that very same government had blocked the usage of “skimmers’ from other countries and the building of physical berms to keep said oil off our coastline over ‘environmental’ concerns that the skimmers’ post-cleaning 99.8% water discharge purity was far too polluting. We listened to then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and in fact, our very President, tell us with straight faces that “The economy is moving in the right direction,” boasting the one month creation of 83,000 new jobs, while the very same month tallied a loss of 125,000 jobs.
“Great news comrade! The economy lost 42,000 jobs this month! This proves the economy is moving in the right direction.”
Yea... Only if that direction leads to destruction.
We experience similar Doublespeak on a daily basis. Contradictions so very blatant that they wouldn’t make it into the pages of a bad gumshoe detective novel for their sheer absurdity. Yet we increasingly accept increasingly absurd proclamations, rules and regulations at face value because it was in a newspaper or some TV talking head said (insert daily propaganda here) was true. Again, we have lost the will, perhaps the very ability to think critically.
In the following pages, I will address a number of these absurdities and related issues. In reading, I ask that you don’t take my comments at face value. Put into use the five great questions that which passes for modern journalism has collectively abandoned in its daily reportage. “Who, What, Where, When and Why.” These are the very foundations of critical thought.
Can you find an issue in any modern media outlet whose writer asks these questions? A politician? More importantly, can you find one that answers them?
Worse yet, can you find a school left in the modern ‘educational system’ that teaches students HOW to THINK at all?
Think critically, perhaps for the first time and ask yourself...Why not?
Thanks to a lack of critical thought in society as a whole today, those of us who choose to turn a critical eye toward … well, pretty much anything, are given the Saul Alinsky ‘Rule 5’ treatment. Alinsky, a 60s radical whose book ‘Rules for Radicals’ has become a veritable Bible for the American Left, stated in Rule 5 that “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” As a result, questioning the statements or actions,(no matter how outlandish) of a minority politician, public figure, co-worker or member of the general public will often result in accusations of racism. If one questions a woman, they are sexist; a homosexual, homophobic and so on. Such ridicule is nothing more than a method to control, because after all, who wants to be associated with racists, sexists and homophobes (more on that word later)? The result? Many now keep their questions to themselves, thus keeping their friends and keeping their jobs.
When people refuse to discuss issues out of a fear they will be labeled with one vile term or another, regardless of any truth involved, how can any rational discussion, of any issue, take place? Put simply, it cannot. The end result is that public discourse has been reduced to the level of schoolyard taunting with modern leftists taking the role of the schoolyard bully (yet another ‘issue’ being pushed by the left to stifle dissent).
With critical thought banished from the conversation, magical thinking quickly rushes in to fill the gaps and as any reader of fantasy can tell you, with magic, anything is possible.
You need to write the book. Or at least a series of articles. They could be stand alone threads.
Post-modernism (or whatever the phrase de jour is) boils down to this - there is no Objective Reality, Objective Truth that exists apart from any human being’s beliefs or lack of beliefs.
But, since humans by inherent nature do accept truth in some fashion (usually accepting as truth whatever their minds believe at any given point in time), they think as “true” whatever they believe, and “untrue” whatever the Other Guys believe.
Truth and Belief are mixed up and thought of as the same, as long as it’s My Belief. The Other Guys’ Beliefs are by definition Untruth. Why are Other Guys’ Beliefs not Truth? Because “I” - the judge of Truth - hold different beliefs! (right now anyway, since beliefs always change to some degree.)
So the funny thing is that these people who spout such nonsense as “everyone has their own truth” or that there is no actual Eternal or Objective Reality are living contradictions, their very beliefs and actions and speech contradict themselves at every step. They say everyone can have their own truth, but think and say that “their” truth is really the Real one, and the Other Guys’ truth is wrong. Internal hypocrisy and positions that nullify each other are SOP. It’s like a person who thinks it can be day and night at the same time.
If humans do not accept Objective Truth and Reality that exists independently of anyones’ beliefs or lack of beliefs, then further down the rabbit hole of insanity we will go.