Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).
How to Debunk:
1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.
2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.
3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.
4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.
5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.
"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.
"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."
"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."
Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge
Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021
Update: September 22, 2023: This is more important now than ever. Be vigilant and speak in your own way. Love Wins.
Update: McQuade, Barbara, "Attack From Within," 2024. New York Times best seller.
Is it any surprise that the new year starts off with the current U.S. administration invading a sovereign country and kidnapping it’s dictator and federal officers shooting three people and killing one of them?
We all should have seen this coming. The House of Representatives back in session and Speaker Mike Johnson is faced with the uncomfortable reality of enforcing the law that his own House passed with a veto proof majority on the release of all of the Epstein files. The president’s men (and women) are scrambling to divert attention away from the files and the flies buzzing around them. But, as Trump Biographer Michael Wolff points out, he can’t avoid them forever.
What is there in the files that AG Pam Bondi had (and better still have) on her desk that she was so anxious to share before she found that her boss was prominently mentioned in them? Suddenly those files got buried under a mountain of other paperwork on Bondi’s desk. Funny how things disappear so conveniently.
We haven’t heard much from the AG of late. I guess she and her staff are busy going through Black ink at a prolific rate that is enriching the folks that provide black ink to the Federal Government. We mustn’t have any mention or any inferential information that could reflect badly on #45/47.
I will try to resist the temptation to say that everything coming out of Washington D.C. in 2026 is a lie, but I will make an estimate that about 99.9999999999999999999% of what is coming from the mouths and keypads of Republican “leadership” is not the truth. Call it what you will, but it falls short of being the truth.
This all out New Year’s blitz of bullshit: Venezuela and Maduro, I.C.E. shootings and intimidation, vaccination changes, show of military force around the world. The folks that are bringing this onslaught of force are the same folks that brought the source of this crap and that is Project 2025.
So why is the manure load so thick right now?
I equate the current situation for the 47 Administration to be similar to the situation faced by the Nazis in December of 1944. The war was going badly when, out of desperation, the Nazis made a last ditch blitzkrieg-style attack on the thin American lines in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium. The all-out attack created a bulge in the American lines, but ultimately reinforcements arrived and the attack was repulsed. Six months later the war in Europe would be over.
Coming into the new year, 47’s poll numbers were down, pressure to release the Epstein files had resulted in a law requiring him to release all the files held by the FBI, people were hitting the streets in large numbers to express their displeasure with rising costs, costly foreign entanglements and unjust immigration enforcement policies.
So what is president to do when things are going badly for them. Perhaps invade a country, intimidate people hitting the streets with the threat of violence, change vaccination policies, flip the food pyramid an it’s tip, hijack tankers, bomb foreign countries, tear down half the White House.
Did I miss anything?
In the first 1 1/2 weeks of 2026, Trump seems to have unleashed his inner Nazi last ditch everything but the kitchen sink attack on anything that might divert attention from the one thing that could bring his great big House of Cards presidency floating to the ground, the files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. One last all out assault in an attempt to stay in power.
It didn’t work for Hitler and I predict that it won’t work for 47.
On the Bright Side
- There’s a lot of good and true stuff out and around social media and the internet. May you find it in your wanderings… By the way, thanks for reading my thoughts. I do think and read a lot.
- Keep your eyes on the prize: 2026 Elections
- Quiz 1: Who said this: “Venezuela doesn’t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who have held them hostage for so many years. Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the world (by far!), to protect them, and protect them we will.” The hint is in the parenthesis.
- Quiz 2: Who’s going to protect the United States of America from the thugs and extortionists who have the largest military in the world? Answer: We are.
- Now that I.C.E. has been outed as 47’s paramilitary goon squad, what will they do next?
- Maybe American protestors should pose as Iranians. Maybe we could fool 47 into coming to our rescue.
- I joined 25 others in posting a banner over Hwy 17 yesterday that read: “Justice for Renee.”
Peacefully resist