Skepticism as a New Way of Life

The Epoch Times ^ | February 25, 2022 | Joakim Book

[Twotone]

The 2020–2022 pandemic split parties and ideologues, separated friend from friend and family members from family members. Neighbors were dangerous, and strangers even more so: the invisible enemy stalking our lands overturned every other concern in life: The conflicts it spurred replaced bonds of affection with fear and hatred.

More than ever, we need calm and level-headed thinkers, honest and willing to admit past errors, with eyes wide open for the corruption of industry or government itself. In other words, we need as little politics as humanly possible. As I wrote in a previous piece: we need “people without a clear ideological position, and who can thus appeal to audiences across the political spectrum.”

Two sane figures recently attempted the impossible: to speak calmly to the other side, trying earnestly to explain what happened—Konstantin Kisin, of the popular show Triggernometry, and Columbia sociology professor Musa al-Gharbi.

Kisin begins his monologue with “You’re struggling to understand why some people are vaccine hesitant. Let me help you.”

He uses no study result, no appeal to the biological effect of the drug that has become the main symbol of the Covid conflict; no death rates or R0; no projection of spread or what number of lives lockdowns may or may not have saved. Instead Kisin, for 13 spellbinding minutes, walks us through the many good reasons that people had—before and during Covid—to distrust the elites in politics, business, and media. If this is a question of (dis)trusting the establishment (including “the” Science), you must ask what the establishment did to no longer deserve that trust.

The tale begins years ago, with the Brexit vote and with the election of Donald Trump.

[Jeff Chandler]

Skepticism, hell. I’m cynic.

[aquila48]

“That’s a textbook definition of politics and maybe what politics used to be.”

Still is.

You see, individual politicians THEMSELVES have their own self interests (power and privilege) that they want to protect and so they also form their own little cliques - the UNIPARTY.

So what you are pointing out is that your regular Joe is easily duped by false promises and flowety language and that we stupidly elect people that lie about having our best interest at heart.

In other words, at the end of the day it’s our fault for not being sufficiently careful about who we elect to represent our interests.

There’s also the fact that even people who initially go to Washington genuinely wanting to represent their constituency, frequently get co-opted or enamored with their new found power and privileges and to protect those interests they joing the party that does, ie, the uniparty.

So, what’s the solution:
- term limits
- give them as little power and money necessary to do their jobs
- limit their legislative sessions to one or two months out of the year. The rest of the time they should hold regular jobs. We don’t need more laws.

More ideas are welcome.

[Rurudyne]

If I had the spare change I’d design and wear my own space opera armor and tell folks I was masking up.

[ExGeeEye]

A cynic is a skeptic with experience.

[T.B. Yoits]

There needs to be recall procedures in place for every elected position.

There also needs to be "None of the Above" on ballots. No more picking the lesser of two evils. The party bosses will have to find candidates who can at least beat "None of the Above".

Any agency that has to be sued to release public information needs to have members charged and fined, if not removed from their jobs.