A quick summary from 90 Miles From Tyranny says it all:
Among the persistent problems the nation will face during the second Trump Administration is a sort of cognitive inertia: the tendency to go on believing that some information sources are inherently trustworthy, even though they’ve been spewing provably false statements for four years, while some other information sources are inherently dubious, even though they’ve been provably correct throughout those four years. Before November, I would not have believed that public trust in a gang of demonstrated liars and shills could be that sturdy. Yet it appears to be so.
A favorite Heinlein quote comes to mind:
“A thousand truths do not mark a man as a truth-teller, but a single lie marks him as a damned liar…. Lying to other people is your business, but I tell you this: once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind.”
Was the Grand Master being a trifle too optimistic about humans’ ability to detect deceit and scorn the emissions of the deceitful?
I once thought I could detect a liar reliably – sufficiently so to avoid being “taken.” After all, I’ve had seven decades of experience, over which span quite a number of people have tried to con me. Seldom had any succeeded. Yet a recent event showed me that I was more trusting than I’d believed. And of course, it cost me.
If a bright, widely experienced person can remain gullible after so much exposure to deceit and deceivers, what hope is there for the man of average intelligence and experience? The political implications are dreary. They suggest that elections cannot provide a long-term cure for what ails us. But what then?
Right now, we’re looking at four years of attempted corrections of the previous four years. There’s no way to know what will follow. To have a good chance of establishing the Trumpian / “Make America Great Again” program, much less continuing it after Trump leaves office, the greater part of the public must somehow be inoculated against the efforts of the legacy media to cloud our eyes. The effort must be both energetic, sophisticated, and unflagging. But how can we reach people who trust the old media and disdain the new?
Just an early-morning thought.
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I am trying to remain optimistic about our future, but after watching glimpses of the ongoing confirmation hearings that little optimism is fading quickly. We have totally lost civility. I blame it on email. Why? Before email we had one on one conversations. In my profession, a lack of civility in these personal conversations resulted in a punch in the face. There is nothing like a punch in the face to restore respect and civility. The Left is totally out of control. I say lets bring back “pistols at dawn”.
The FIRST focus is not on rolling back the abuses.
Instead:
That’s just some ideas for a start.
I like your aggressive pro-activism. I think it will be necessary to get Congress to first restrict what executive orders the SEIU may organize against. That’s a battle that cannot be presumed lost or most efforts to reduce Leviathan will fail.
this reminds me of a joke with “You see that church chapel down the street? Built it with my own hands, but do they call me ‘Chapel Builder’? NO! That guard rail on the road crossing the river? Also mine, but do they call me ‘Traffic Saver’? NO! But you sleep with one sheep…”
It only takes one “aw, crap” to wipe out a thousand “Attaboys”. Makes me wonder why most politicians aren’t hiding in those Missouri caves.