Blog entry 5 – Propaganda, truth, and critical thinking

Blog entry 5 – Propaganda, truth, and critical thinking

In many ways, Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings were yet another instance of people essentially being told “believe me, don’t believe my opponents”.  To some extent, on both sides.  “I believe Kavanaugh” or “I believe Ford” were repeatedly stated.

Can we examine our beliefs more critically?

I certainly think we can, and should.  Compare “I believe xxx” with “trust but verify” or “question authority”.  Which seems stronger, a better basis for making decisions/forming opinions?

Apply this to Kavanaugh.  On one hand, we will never truly know what happened in that bedroom decades ago.  It’s not 100% certain that Ford’s and Kavanaugh’s memories themselves, or those of anyone else “involved”, could be trusted, even if those people were 100% honest.  People have been hypnotized or traumatized to believe in memories of things that never happened.  It’s not necessarily a sign of lying.  Our minds protect ourselves from painful or dangerous memories.  Oliver Sacks had an example of this, where he has vivid memories of an attack during the blitz, but he wasn’t there – his brother described what happened later, so vividly that Oliver’s mind remembered it as his own memory years later.

So, set aside what we _don’t_ know, and instead look at the self-consistency of the statements and demeanors of the participants.  I’ve mentioned earlier all the ways that Kavanaugh was lying.  At least some of those are self-contained lies (he cannot both have been at a gathering with Judge and a couple other people, and also had it never happen).  Others are deflections from questions that he didn’t want to answer (have YOU ever blacked out after drinking, Senator?) (descriptions of himself as a model student, who of course wouldn’t ever misbehave, to avoid answering questions posed directly).  Any belief that one might have had in Kavanaugh’s innocence ought to, at a minimum, be challenged by these actions.  Meanwhile, Ford’s testimony is incredibly consistent.  Her words and her demeanor are self-consistent.  She doesn’t remember everything, but that’s not surprising about an event she has presumably tried to forget for the past 36 years.

How does this relate to propaganda?

Conservative news sources was constantly hammering presumptions and untrue statements at us.  Trump was, of course, one of the leading voices, going on and on about how Kavanaugh was being attacked politically with baseless claims, and he was sure of Kavanaugh’s innocence.  You can claim that he was merely sharing his beliefs… but they had no foundation in fact.  Ditto for the Senate Republicans who pushed the timetable forward the more questions were raised, and who repeatedly said that they would hold the hearings and THEN confirm him – essentially signaling that the hearings were intended merely as window dressing.  All the conservative news outlets stated untruths about Kavanaugh’s innocence, stating that all of Ford’s witnesses said there was no gathering like she described, when that was not, in fact, what they said, and at least 1 of those few people said they believed Ford, and another was Judge, a co-defendant in Ford’s accusations.

Was this limited to Republicans?  Is propaganda, and lack of critical thinking, partisan?  Are Democrats immune from this?

It wasn’t _limited_ to Republicans.  There were certainly ample Democrats who professed that they disbelieved Kavanaugh and believed Ford, with both, as far as I can tell, being based on wishful thinking rather than actual analysis.  I received emails about fighting Kavanaugh before any of the accusations against him, and those sources were quite happy to just on the accusation bandwagon for their own purposes.  I’ve received critical comments from both sides when I’ve made points about looking at the testimony and the situation carefully.  Maybe everyone everywhere gets critical comments from both sides, I don’t know.

People keep talking about “truth”.  Is there an objective truth?

It is clear to me that, examining possibilities, one can usually identify lies.  I often don’t know what is really true.  But I have been able to discern untruths.

The really tricky thing is convincing other people of what’s untrue.  I’ve read suggestions about placing bets, and about having neutral arbiters trusted by both sides.  I haven’t found that to be incredibly useful so far.  If anyone has any advice, I would be interested in hearing it.  Maybe, after the dress color thing on the internet, people truly do believe that black is white, that lies and truth are just dependent on where you’re standing.  I abhor that idea.  I think that the world is full of gray, rather than stark black and white.  But there are statements that are wholly untrue, and people who claim they are wholly true are damaging themselves, their community, and our country.  They ought to be opposed.

Another day of little action.  I’m hoping to make more progress this weekend.  I plan to sign up for an Indivisible phonebank training webinar on Tuesday evening.  Then there will be 6 opportunities to do phonebank calls after that on their schedule.  I’ve done phonebank calls for local issues before, but not for candidates in other states.  If anyone has any experience with this, please let me know.  Thanks!