While I do think there was fraud in the 2020 Presidential election, I also believe it cannot or will not be proven. Rand Paul amongst others has pointed out that statistical fraud was found in four states where President Donald Trump lost in the presidential election during supposed “data dumps” in the middle of the night and early morning. But this, amongst other anomalies and miscounts, and counts of illegal votes, is something that most people, and especially Big Tech, the Mainstream Media, and the Washington Deep State prefer to ignore. So, that being the will of the people and this being America, that is what I and the rest of the country will do.
This is not the first time my candidate will not be the one inaugurated in January. But this time it troubles me far more than others. This election was not just about my candidate winning or losing; it was not really about the candidates at all; rather, it was about the future of America. I think that too many voters did not understand that.
So, as I move forward, my concern is how do we educate the electorate so that they understand better what was at stake in this election as well as what might be at stake in the future.
I, like many others, have tried and tried to educate people about our system of government, about the truths of socialism or even a significant move toward socialism and its “trickle up poverty” * and hopelessness. I and many others have tried to explain that a narrative, an opinion, an interpretation, that none of those are facts and that to make good decisions about our future we must arm ourselves with facts, not feelings or opinions. Yet, for the most part that has been to no avail.
I have a friend to tells me that people are not interested in thinking about these things, but that they will sit up and take notice only when they are personally and fiscally affected. Well, I suspect that those who pay taxes will not have long to wait: Biden announced that he will nominate Janet Yellen, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, to be his Secretary of the Treasury. Analysts tell us that will mean personal income taxes will increase, 401ks will drop in value as the new administration and Yellen increase the corporate tax on the corporate stocks in those 401ks, and the cost of gasoline and energy will increase. That will hit taxpayers and other Americans where it hurts, in the pocketbook.
But is that really enough? I don’t think so. In my state we are willing to accept food lines and arbitrary closures of food sources as well as other unsupported mandates issued under the cover of COVID-19. When people are not willing to question or to think for themselves, then they are likely to accept most anything they are told to do. So, if they are told that the financial hits they are about to take are for some noble cause, they are likely to accept it without question.
What we need is EDUCATION. But not just education for our children (which there is no question needs to be improved), but also for the adult population who take their information from media or tech sources that are no longer interested in providing factual and objective information but rather in creating a story or furthering the propaganda of one or another political cause.
For example, over the last 4 years, given the many accomplishments of President Trump, the media could have used their biased rhetoric to laud him and paint him as one of the greatest presidents ever. Instead, they chose to paint him as the most despicable. This was done by the ever more biased word and fact choices in the stories they presented as well as in the complete failure to report many of his accomplishments. For example, how many people know about his criminal justice reform, his raising the economic status of minorities to the all time best, his help for Black colleges, or even his work to negotiate not one, not two, but three peace accords in the Middle East? And those are just a few of many of which a vast number of Americans are completely unaware.
So, when a particular and totally negative picture of President Trump was created, the people simply accepted it. And now, the reverse painting occurs as the portrait of Biden is nothing but positive. And the people simply accept.
It is amazing how many news stories start with an unproven assumption upon which the rest of the story is based. For example, “Trump’s unfounded statements that . . . .” Too many accept stories which begin this way as if the statements were in fact not founded whereas at the time of the statement is made it is nothing more than an opinion/a wish/a narrative. It is not a fact, and everyone should be asking “On what are you basing the conclusion that the statements to which you refer are unfounded?”
When one bases an argument upon a false or arguable assumption, the whole argument is in danger of falling apart. We used to learn the classic deductive syllogism in our schools, and it became an essential part of our thought structure:All men are mortalSocrates is a manTherefore, Socrates is mortal.
We also learned that if the first and second statements were true, the conclusion must be true; therefore, the way to attack a deductive conclusion was to question the two premises:
All swans are whiteJack is a swanTherefore, Jack is white
Because all swans are not white, Jack is not necessarily white. But coming to this understanding requires questioning the first premise that all swans are white.
All Brand X car batteries die at 20,000 milesMy car battery is Brand XTherefore, my battery will die at 20,000 miles.
But, perhaps we might want to check to make sure my battery is indeed brand X because if we question and check and find it to be brand Y, then given the information we have we don’t know when it will die.
QUESTIONING. It is the beginning of being truly informed. Some of us have forgotten to do that. Others were never taught. But unless we start doing it again, start asking questions, we will never be truly informed. And once we become uninformed and willing to simply accept what we are told, then we lose control over our lives and our very selves.
And to be clear, numerous repetitions of the same assumption or opinion do not make that assumption or opinion a fact or even true. If you tell me a million times that my black swan Jack is white, that does not make it so. If you tell me over and over I have a car battery Z so I don’t have to worry that it will die at 20,000 miles, that does not make it so. I need to question – is it really a Z or is it an X? And if it is a Z, what facts do we have about when it might die? Just because I’d like my swan to be white or my battery to last forever, does not mean it can or will be so. I need to look at facts, not assumptions or desires.
When we let our emotions and feelings rule us, when we become lazy enough to simply accept what we are told because we like what is said, then that is how we lose our country.
Many did not question the negative facts about Trump because they chose to hate him from the moment he was elected. Others were simply lulled into accepting the total negative picture because it was all they saw and heard on their social media and MSM. Trump was not perfect, nor was he pure evil. Like any human and any president, he is complex. Facts give us a much clearer picture than any narrative. We need to remember that.
When we get the rosy pictures of Biden and his administration, we need to remember again that no one is all good or all bad. We need to question what we see and hear. Just because the preferred media narrative is that everything Biden is good does not mean that we should not question the assumptions we are given. We always need to demand facts, even when those facts are inconvenient and do not fit our preferred narrative.
We tend to question less when we are in fear and uncertainty. We look to someone else to provide the certainty and answers to our pain in the same way that children look to parents. But certainty and safety can become a prison. Questioning is the only true way to alleviate uncertainty and fear. It is the only way to retain the true ability to control one’s own destiny.
If we stop questioning it means that we are leaving the course of our future to those who control the narrative. We are not children and I, for one, do not want to become like children to an all-powerful government/Big Tech/Media that makes my decisions and creates my narrative for me. Therefore, I will continue to question.
Question narrative. Question
facts. Question support. Question interpretations of facts. Question opinions. Simply Question.
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