Dan Rather on Young Turks talking about Sinclair Broadcasting
This is the wa
y to a brutal end to rational discussion, the creation of realities into which can fit “rational” ideas that have no basis in fact and cannot, therefore, be argued against reasonably. Such ideas hold validity in the minds of those conditioned so as to possess a mind set that allows nonsense to stand as good sense and good sense to seem absurd. The real war that is being fought just now is really about the validation of versions of the real. The problem, the great difficulty faced by those battling to establish the real truth as THE truth is that what is real and true cannot be understood by great numbers of people to be such. The facts, incredibly, do not count for much for the different mind sets can interpret fact differently and, quite often, facts are created to substitute for true facts and these, because of the way certain people have learned to “think,” hold for these to describe actuality.
This is why rational argument has been made impotent in our modern day society. And the decimation of rationality has been the project of certain elements of society for a very long time. We are in a post-propaganda era because there exist more powerful ways to make dis-realities the realities against which people make “sense” of what comes before them. What is shown to prove the factual nature of a particular event or idea is not of much importance in convincing because the mentality of those interpreting is set to a particular reality channel that allows only certain understandings to develop and they will stand as truth no matter whether or not they hold any real truth value.
I need to say that it is not only the crazy right that is captive of the distorted mindset. There are, for example, Hillary and Bernie people who consistently are Hilary and Bernie people because they are Hillary and Bernie people because that is just who they are. When facts come their way that are inconsistent with what their mind set tells them has to be right, they do what ever it is to set things straight, even if the final result is something logically crooked. I notice this in a pronounced form in those I know who have to support Israel or a Muslim perspective. Their way of thinking is not motivated by desire to get things right but by a need to make right what they have come to believe is the only ACCEPTABLE right and this makes them wrong in a good many cases.
We are in a very dangerous period in the history of human beings and we will not be able to meet that danger until we allow for the truth, even if it hurts, even if it shows us to be wrong, even if it points to the need to change the way we think. Sadly, I see few signs of the many, let alone the most, being willing to do something so drastic. We have, religious or not, been conditioned by religion because it has been and remains so pervasive a force in our human world. One does not have to hold to a religion, per se, to be religious. More devastating an affect of religion is the way of thinking (non-thinking) it sponsors, belief against reality and the need to hold fast to that anti-reality sensibility for fear of punishment by forces understood to be dominant ones capable of rendering punishment that is great and lasting.
I have already written too long here but maybe we can think about this religious spirit that permeates or thinking, that is held essential to our character, that causes us to often to fear the truth, to accept the philosophical paradigms that are offered by those who wish to control us and begin to think for ourselves with the goal of understanding what is truly real and which truths survive the test of reason based upon real evidence.
