Just a thought, I was thinking the other day about this whole ‘fake news” thing. It seems again like we’re being played. The “news” agencies, the politicians, the movers and shakers as we like to call them, have begun to see people starting to form their own opinion. Sadly this is most often the younger, more open-minded, some say liberal people. So many of the older generation, some might say conservative generation, don’t want to think for themselves. They want to be told the things they loved and were taught back in the ‘good old’ day’ are still valid. They say to those who lie about these things to them, just tell me my ‘values’ are still important and I’ll give up my sense of right and wrong to follow yours.
This is the way movements have always started. Movements rise and fall. Right now, these movements are scattered, random, little fledgling ideas roaming in the wild, but like all things, more people are noticing. This worries the “powers that be” because if a person has their own opinion, they don’t have yours, the one you want them to have. This recent presidential election was a perfect example; both sides had good and bad. A large portion of the population, again on both sides, chose not to find out their own information, to verify it; they opted instead to believe what they were told. It didn’t take long for so many people to surrender their independent thought to ‘the powers that be.’
Now, please don’t get me wrong, there are those out there who are just making stuff up, for that matter you might say I am, right now. But think about it. They say “fake news” isn’t done by the “legitimate” news organizations. That is false, that is fake news. Think about CNN, Fox, MSNBC and all the others; they have to fill a 24 hour day with something. So what do they do, they give the news, then they bring in their “experts” and hypothesizing hundreds of possible scenarios. They invent information that which is not, and probably will never be true. That is the spreading of fake news.
My question is, was “fake news” created to circumvent or manipulate the system? Was it created to encourage outraged? So they, the powers, could step in and introduce yet more regulations to a system that should be free, the media? To convince those who would give away their freedoms for the sake of fear to hand them over on a silver platter. By doing this, are they not limiting the number of people involved and filtering the information getting out. Shutting down all the other opinions. There is no right opinion, by its very nature an opinion is a single standalone entity. So how will it be decided what is fake news? Did you notice as soon as the words “fake news” entered the lexicon, all the political officials of one party started saying that this organization or that organization was publishing fake news. The Republicans started screaming CNN was spouting fake news. The Democrats were screaming that Fox was spouting fake news. People like Micheal Moore started screaming everyone but him were shouting fake news.
With all that being said, how do we fix it, you might ask? Well, you were given the tool to combat it, your brain. But keep in mind, your brain has to be willing to hunt down the truth from many sources, and most importantly, be willing to digest it, even if you don’t like what the true information is telling you. Believe it or not, there is an absolute in information. Not opinion, but information. What we’ve done is replace data with those opinions and said: “this is absolute.” It’s only absolute if you’re too mentally weak to research it, to “vet” it, as they like to say. If people think and verify, then both sides will be served, and honesty will win out. Because those who lie or voice endless opinions devoid of data will eventually dry up and die.
Now don’t get me wrong, there are tons of idiots out there, myself probably being one of them, who feel their opinion matters. The truth is the only people whose opinions matters are those with the ability to affect change. It has become too much of a luxury the way people sit around and bitch about how horrible things are, but don’t go out and do something to change the situation. In closing let me give you one example. Do you think the 43% of people who chose not to vote in the last election are sitting on the sidelines silently? Have they said, since I didn’t vote, I don’t have an opinion? No, they are yelling about how horrible things are. How things need to change, but yet they did not do the simplest thing to affect that change, vote. That should be the first, and possibly the only question you ask when someone voices an opinion. Did you vote? Do you have a solution? Do you know or support someone who does? And most importantly you should ask, “where did you get your data?”