Welcome to the Second Great Depression, a Comedy in Three Parts—Part I, Reality v Fiction, or How Laziness is Destroying our Minds

Occasionally, I'm forced to slam people's barely functioning brains into the plate glass window that I like to call reality. It's not something I want to do, or particularly enjoy, but as Dave Grohl famously sang, "This is a call."

What often comes of such action is the accusation that I'm somehow a pessimist, mostly because I'm not willing to let a feel-good story get in the way of facts and critical reasoning. Or perhaps because I'm unwilling to let others, often with suspect motives, do my thinking for me, spoon-feeding questionable facts as truth. Or finally, it may be because I have so little respect for established "authorities" that I'm always skeptical of information, regardless of its supposed source.

I fail to see how any of that is pessimistic. I'd rather be skeptical than a sycophant for supposed authorities who render truth on high, blind to their motives, which often run counter to those of the public at large.

Bear with me, if you will—this play will ultimately come back 'round to its opening scene (but not until Part III).

More after the jump.





Let's start here—Charlie Rose, in the following interview, is one, all, or a combination of the following: 1. An idiot; 2. Lazy as hell; 3. A man with an agenda; 4. Blindly patriotic; or 5. Naive/gullible (see #4).

Understanding that the average citizen on the street is not a journalist or reporter, don't you think that if you're Charlie Rose, you don't simply accept as fact that our government has evidence of Syria gassing its own people, simply because that same government told us so? Or that his proof that our government has evidence, is that he was told that that evidence was shown to Congress? You mean the same congress that swore that our domestic intelligence agencies (read: NSA) were not spying on us? Or the one that said we should invade Middle Eastern countries due to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)? Charlie, just a quick heads up—that's called circular reasoning, or if you want a single word, a tautology.

It's proof of nothing, other than that your brain somehow turned to mush, or your handlers are no longer letting you use your brain. In a country with a free press, information from the government should never be considered as proof or evidence, absent corroborating sources, but rather, propaganda. 

You would think that, after those fiascoes (NSA and WMDs), Charlie Rose would be a bit more skeptical than that. Or that he would already know what comes next from a country run by a ruthless dictator aligned with Russia. To act as if terrorism is not the natural consequence of imperialism, is to act the fool. Charlie Rose should be ashamed to call himself a journalist in any way, shape or form—other than as a talking head, of course.

I don't even like Bashar Assad—I think he's a megalomaniacal dicator. But I know this: he completely schooled Charlie Rose on what it means to be a reporter in a free country. And what it means to be a gullible sycophant. 

Thus concludes Part I in this series.

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