An endorsement of healthy skepticism
Who’re you going to believe, a hundred-or-so million utopian-oriented folks for whom the ends always justify whatever means necessary to consolidate their power, wealth, or derisively authoritarian sense of superiority, or cold, hard facts espoused by a self-professed inkstained wretch?
By facts, I don’t mean the “lies, damned lies, and statistics” Mark Twain (after Benjamin Disraeli) warned us about from charlatans, thimbleriggers, and mountebanks (after Flann O’brien), but legitimate researchers objectively employing empirical evidence or exercising skepticism.
But who’s to know when fat little fingers tip the scales at every politicized-media butcher shop in the land so that currently the common aphorism “Speak truth to power” has been turned on its head to read “Speak power to truth”? Get in line, Bunky, and stop making waves. Your social media overlords are Keith Laumer’s Monitors on steroids (a 1960s’ science-fiction reference readers will have to research on their own), working in cahoots with our government’s justice system.
Step out of line, and the man come and take you away (Stephen Stills), and by the time your suspicions are confirmed, it’s too late because you’ll never have that recipe again (apologies to Jimmy Webb). No sooner have the brickbats abated from those in nominal control of our thoughts and language than the semblance of truth emerges … before another political and media onslaught is mounted to stifle us once again.
It’s truly astounding that our current tribalism has gone so completely off the charts. Recent revelations reveal we’ve all been duped by so-called journalists complicit with their political masters. The recent meme circulating on the interwebs more or less captures the essence of our current predicament: Three-month old, tinfoil hat conspiracies have been proven to be true. Not always, of course, but … revelations from the Twitter Files are pretty damning as are rumors of a lab leak in a gain-of-function laboratory somewhere East of somewhere else.
The class of zombie stooges eager for assimilation into the cool crowd, however, actively embrace their roles as useful idiots (hat tip: Josef Stalin). How is one supposed to take seriously, for example, anyone who pushed the Steele dossier as legitimate at any point in time but most especially long after it had been completely debunked?
Likewise the demagoguery surrounding voting laws in Georgia dubbed “Jim Crow 2.0.” Such was the rush to virtue signal behind such blather, Major League Baseball moved its All-star Game from Georgia to Colorado — a state with far more restrictive laws governing the ballot box.
For those of us who keep score, most Democrats weren’t peachy when it came to new voting laws the state enacted in 2021. However, the 2022 election saw record African American turnout at the polls, most of whom expressed elation and confidence regarding the new process. Now Democrats want to hold their 2024 National Convention in Atlanta. But, yes, some voices in the fish wrap wilderness still disclaim the new system as minority-voter suppression.
Question the efficacy of vaccines and masks and see what that yields. Challenge the process let alone outcome of an election and find yourself disappeared and maligned in a manner befitting Jack Lemmon’s son-inlaw and Sissy Spacek’s hubby in Costa Grava’s “Missing” if not killed outright as in the same director’s classic “Z.”
Embrace 2,023 years of religious teaching and see what that yields for you should those views run afoul of the prevailing political party’s rigidly unified front.
Whereas it once was admirable to approach current topics with a healthy skepticism, now it’s a sacrilege worthy of a governmentsanctioned inquisition. The social costs can be extreme as well.
All is not lost — yet. Edmund Burke captured the timbre of a similar era when he wrote about the French Revolution and heralded the “Little Platoons” that exist to do battle against cultural oppression.