Today you can take the first step to reforming America

Summary: Scores of posts on the FM website document the barrage of propaganda fired at us in the opening years of the 21st century by both Left and Right. Their success makes continuation inevitable and reform of America impossible. Yet a reality-based community is possible, and could be powerful. The first steps to its creation lie in your power.

Note: Experts say the title is the most important part of the article, as it gains or loses an audience. This post’s title is One of the Worst. It offers work with no promise of personal benefit (e.g., money, security, hot dates). “How to reform America” is the most-requested topic; posts about how you and I can reform America get the lowest traffic of any topic on the FM website.

“… first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
— Matthew 7:5

“Yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.”
— Leo Tolstoy, “Three Methods Of Reform” (1900)

Scores of posts show the propaganda that has come to dominate writings of both the Left and Right in America (see some of these links below). Much of it is blatant, obvious. These barrages rain down on us because they usually work, and because we accept them (there is no cost, no blowback). This is easily seen the in the comments, the most interesting part of these posts. Comments usually taking two forms.

The other side does it, too. Quite so, but irrelevant. It’s targeted at you, not them. Why do you believe?
Complacency, even acceptance.

In this, as in so many things, the Bush Administration took traits preexisting in America and developed them to such an extent that they created a New America.

The aide {Karl Rove} said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism.

He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

— “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush“, Ron Suskind, New York Times, 17 October 2004

Now both Left and Right are in the “create their own reality” business. The Right invented and perfected it (via engines of disinformation such as Fox News and the Washington Times) but the Left has adopted such thinking as the primary tactic for their climate change crusade — liberating themselves from dependence on the consensus of climate scientists (as expressed through the IPCC and major climate agencies). Unusual weather (no matter if historically common) is extreme weather is climate change is anthropogenic climate change — because they say so loudly and with conviction.

This acceptance of propaganda makes us a gift to our leaders. It makes us docile, weak, emotional, irrational, easily manipulated and led.

We see this clearly when it comes to the other side’s propaganda. That accomplishes nothing, and our disconnect with reality — the core break in our observation-orientation-decision-action loop — makes reform impossible. People can only fix this problem in their own community.

It’s not difficult to do. Be skeptical of what you read, and what you are told. Ask for evidence beyond the confident assertions of true believers. Study and understand the beliefs of your opponents, rather than relying on the demonology fed you by your leaders. Don’t believe that complaisance benefits your cause; it only helps your leaders. Be angry at lies, even from allies.

Above all, believe that a commitment to truth is a higher good.

The dream of a reality-based community can be realized, and such people can lead the reform of America. It starts with individual decisions. It starts with you, today.

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