#I’m sure I’m somewhat falling victim to confirmation bias

[dam1e]

I feel like every time someone points out that Biden is supporting genocide, someone else comes out of the woodwork to say “ummm so you think Trump wouldn’t??” like, true, but that’s not the point being brought up?? No one here is saying “Biden is supporting genocide so vote Trump instead!”

We should be able to criticize the corrupt actions of our president without the topic immediately being changed to “well the OTHER guy wouldn’t do much better”

[cyncker-blog]

Divided We Fall

I wrote an epic Facebook rant after Merle Streep’s acceptance speech for her lifetime achievement award, basically calling her out for focusing on what she considered was her most disturbing video of the year, which was Trump possibly mimicking a handicap man.  If that is what in fact he was doing, it was a cruel gesture. 

My outrage at her choosing to highlight this possible Trump moment, was because her speech happened just as Obama was leaving office, the only president to be at war the entire 8 years of his administration in the history of the United States. As commander in chief he holds heavy responsibility for the bombing of seven countries where millions died, trillions was spent causing a refugee crisis that is crippling Europe and where here in the U.S. vets are committing suicide at epidemic levels, all with little success in controlling terrorism.

 In this, Streep’s lifetime achievement moment, because she decided to talk the about the importance of leadership, she might have challenged our next president by suggesting something along these lines, "After 8 years of war we hold Mr. Trump responsible for using the collective brain power of this country along with the United Nations, to come up with peaceful creative solutions rather than endless war...because genius, not violence is our ultimate weapon.” Instead, she decided to cry over a rude and hurtful gesture she is sure Trump made, one that cost not a life nor a penny.

 This post became a lightening rod by beginning a debate that went on for the entire day and had many of my Obama loving friends on the attack. We remained somewhat civil but as my main sparing partner admitted, he was feeling ‘sour and bitter’ about the exchange. I was frustrated and pissed.,,,

Exactly what the hell is going on in the mind of someone on the left when they can give Obama a pass on an unprecedented 8 years of war as he leaves office with a trail of broken promises of hope and change? 

At the same time they are willing to nail Trump, the ‘orange Hitler’ to the cross (a phrase the regressive left has coined but apparently when they toss out insults it’s done with love) because of the crimes they imagine he will commit, as if minority report is real and they are all ‘precogs’ who are free to apprehend him and hang him based on foreknowledge.

Trump, having never held a political office is dismissed as an idiot by the far left.  Clearly false, as never in the history of the world has an idiot made it to such a level of world fame, wealth and office. If they want this idiot label to stick they would then have to admit that the rest of us are the bigger idiots and he is the smartest idiot in the room.

This doesn’t mean that all his dealings were above board or that he didn’t work the system, but again an idiot can’t work ANY system.  No, Trump is  a wild card and the two sides of the card are: appropriate and inappropriate. Because he’s a wild card the level of both is random. Respect seems to flip him onto the appropriate side as clearly illustrated by his calm, thoughtful acceptance speech. Still the far left insists with fury that he will never rise to the occasion, which flies in the face of their mantra, ‘think positive to create positive’ and ‘it’s all good’.   

What is wrong in this country when even the left has abandoned its own philosophy in panic and they find themselves at odds with the center left and independents not just the right wing? In their fear of Trump they somehow find sanity in Clinton and Obama, who are for if not beyond reproach or responsibility given a pass for all their wrong doings.  The divide is wide, because the center left and right look at the results of both Clinton and Obama policies and action and determine near criminal behavior.

In checking Truthdig regarding the Streep story, a left independent media outlet, the writer of the story was sympatric to her cause.  But once in the comment section, over 80% of the comments had the exact response and for my exact same reasons. This is just one  example of the left’s shattered unity.  What is really at the core of this divide?

 Critical Blocks

Let’s start with the fact that although we accept people having creative blocks…a common term and frustrating condition, we never hear people say “I’m having a critical block”.  That’s a problem.  If we don’t know how and when our amazing brains fail us then we are unable to improve our critical thinking.

Our rejection of the existence of critical thinking blocks and lack of education regarding how to avoid the traps, has delivered us a weak minded, faulty thinking epidemic… a dangerous trend that will divide  more and more and spin us into collapse. 

This country needs a collective cognitive check up and because I hold a master’s in ‘Critical & Creative Thinking’ I’ll take a shot at a quick body politic check up. Second opinions are of course welcomed.

Let’s start with all too common statements:

1) ”You are saying bad things about Obama and Clinton so you are a Trump supporter.”   

2)“You criticize American foreign policy. You seem to think that we are a bad country… and that everyone else including the Taliban and ISIS are victims of U.S. oppression.”

The fallacy in play: ‘Jumping to Conclusions’; Mistaken use of inductive reasoning when there are too few samples to prove a point.

In this case the person imagines that because there are two opposing forces,  Clinton and Trump, rejecting one equates to support of the other. Even though two are in opposition, a person is not required to take sides.  They may happen to be more critical of one person but that still doesn’t logically follow that they give automatic approval for the other.

Criticism of a country’s policies no matter how harsh, does not automatically equate to support of enemies of that country or support of other policies of other countries as ‘better than’.  

Let’s take a micro look of this macro example. You are having issue with your mate and criticizing their behavior, especially because it affects you directly. That  criticism of your mate (the U.S.) doesn’t mean you don’t still love your mate (the U.S.).  Nor does it mean you are in love with some guy at the club that your husband hates because he tried to ruin his business. (ISIS)  What it means is that your mate is doing some behavior that is not in line with the contract between you. (The Constitution) and you want to live in a relationship that has integrity. (I’m an American and I see my job as an American to keep our democracy, run by citizens, on course.)

In both cases ‘jumping to conclusions’ imagines a secret coded negative message of intent the author/speaker never stated.  At another time in other forum they may be critical of the another person or another country.  It is not the duty of the speaker/writer to point out to the audience in advance: Because I say this against A it doesn’t logically follow that I support B, nor is saying this in support of A mean that I do not support B.  The audience is required only to trust the words that are actually said vs. trying to infer deep, unspoken, and unknown meaning.  

So in the cases above criticism of Clinton in no way equates to approval of Trump. It is only criticism of Clinton.  Criticism of U.S. policy does not equate to hate for America or  support for  U.S. enemies. It may however mean that you have analyzed why those enemies exists and determined that it is because of unfair or violent acts by your own government. As a citizen of a democracy and of the world, it is your responsibility to insure your country is not the bully of the entire planet.

The next critical block that seems to have us crippled is ‘cognitive dissonance’.  In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time. Because it causes mental stress our brain keeps pushing us to choose one.

Here’s a personal example. Me in 2008: Obama is a well spoken, articulate, measured speaker full of charm, intelligence and sincerity and is perfectly aligned with my policies. I’m voting for him he is such an AMAZING guy !

Me in 2012: After four years I have seen little of the hope and change promised, in fact I’m really not happy about the fact that the banksters have walked, wars still wage, NDAA was signed, NSA is spying, whistleblowers are being jailed…  All these actions are in direct opposition to the leader I want. I am not voting for him again.

Then I would watch him on TV and the Obama I had trusted was still taking hope and change in a convincing way.  Cognitive Dissonance says “You’ll feel better if you simply reject the  facts you know and that will help you hold onto your good opinion of him.  Or you can stop watching him so you aren’t charmed and just consider his actions.” I had to reject him or the facts as they didn’t fit together anymore. I chose the latter. My guess is I’ll do the same with Trump. He has the opposite affect on me when I watch him, so I’ll focus on his actions to make a clear judgment.

I’m not the only person who went through this struggle with Obama.  We gave him more than the benefit of the doubt, after all he was our dream candidate and he failed us.  His cumulative negatives over the eight years had us rejecting him in the end. 

The now ‘far left’ Obama supporters instead decided to reject the facts that didn’t line up with the guy they loved. When the facts contradicted their great view of him they kept watching him on TV and loving and trusting him, which led them to conclude,  “He’s doing it for good reason, his hands are tied, they are not his wars, he is just trying to clean up the mess left, it’s complicated, the republicans won’t let him do what he wants….” Now, top off Cognitive Dissonance  with this cognitive failing…Confirmation Bias.

Confirmation Bias

Once we make up our mind to a  ‘truth’ our minds have tendency to see only the information that reconfirms that truth to us.  So while I know about the details of the NDAA, something I was able to look at because I didn’t have rose colored glasses on, many Obama loyalists don’t know about it.  They don’t know that Obama was sued by Daniel Ellsberg, famous because of the Pentagon Papers and other award winning journalist and that they won in court, even though the government won on appeal in the end. They might have read it in passing but because it contradicted their view of Obama and was a policy that did not fit it was quickly rejected.  “He has my back, he’d never sign a policy to hurt me.”

Meanwhile, the NDAA confirmed my new view of him and just solidified my now new negative opinion of him. My issue of course was to see mostly what confirmed my new negative belief and to miss other aspects of any good work.

The key however is to know the bias is in play so you can challenge yourself to keep as open a mind as possible to insure you don’t pin yourself so deeply to a position that you are imprisoned by it…no longer free to change your mind.

Choosing words carefully… The Russell Conjugation

Another point to consider regarding the ‘why’ of our great divide is a concept called the Russell Conjugation.  This is about how language effects our emotion and how emotion drives our beliefs.

Bertrand Russell on the BBC in 1930’s said, “I am firm, you are obstinate and s/he is a pig headed fool.” They are words that are content synonyms but emotional antonyms. All phrases express the same information, yet we feel positive about ‘firm’, negative about ‘obstinate’ and outraged by ‘pigheaded’.

Crafting of ‘news’ is the game to manipulate the public to feel a certain way about a candidate or policies and those feelings form our beliefs.  Main stream media is owned by a few corporations and so it’s not surprising that it’s pretty easy to tell when someone is a MSM watcher vs. those who don’t watch and look to various and independent sources.  These people often do not share the same worldview. They feel very different about some of the same information based on what words surrounded that  information. This is how we are divided and if it continues it will be how we fall.

The good news is that a computer program could actually run the news stories of any source and tell you based on the words used, the bias of the source. (more here: https://youtu.be/LruYnDjkOgU?t=1h21m39s)

Fake News and The Tower of Babble

I’ve been accused more than once of this and I’m sure many have, “You think you have all the facts.” It’s a ridiculous claim because both sides of a debate are presenting the ‘facts’ as they know them.  Who doesn’t think they have the facts when they speak?  If they are unsure then they frame it with a disclaimer of some kind; “I thought I read somewhere…Have you head anything about this?...I think it might be…”  For instance, I know zero about Obama care and therefore I never enter a discussion about it as I have other areas of interest.  It would take me several months of research to come up with facts I felt comfortable defending in a debate. 

The great news about the internet is bullshitting is pretty much dead.  In part of the exchange in the Facebook post I mentioned above a person said, “Why do you think Obama promised peace anyway? Are you putting words in his mouth?” Of course I could fire back instantly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VlXfs1K04g. 

In a debate I had with a close family member, I noted that both of us could bring to the table our solidly referenced facts about the same topic and he just had to accept that his facts were not more credible than mine.  Even though I have a master’s level education as he does and I am trained to ‘think critically’, his contention was that I was quoting  fake news.  'You need to read the books I'm  reading as they are the correct sources' was his position. Not only is this an outrageous position to take, it’s completely insulting and is yet another fallacious argument.

‘Credibility’ in the form of ‘anything the NYTimes or WSJ prints is true, so I don’t have to look any further' is history. (There are plenty of Youtube videos regarding what happened to journalism over the last 30 years that outlines its now sorry state.) 

Looking for facts we are now forced to dig around the ruins of our corporate media, picking up and then tossing aside as we find better pieces. More importantly we have to mine for gems through independent sources as we look for the investigative journalists that seem to have the focus of their work be the search for truth, to try to save us time in the exhaustive work of democracy.

Because 2016 demonstrated that we are at the wide of our divide, it is crucial that we understand we are here because of our lack of knowledge and understanding about our critical blocks.  It is important that we hold each other accountable to speak and listen with integrity. Let’s start by admitting how and when our brain is prone to fail us, by educating ourselves about cognitive distortions causing critical thinking blocks and then recognize that as we search for  ‘truth’ that some truths are held by our opponents. It begins with recognizing our biases and forming solid arguments free from fallacies. 

 Sound critical thinking understands that the focus and goal is not on the personal win of the argument. Truth is the ultimate goal, because without it we cannot solve pressing problems we face. When we hear a better argument backed by more credible facts (no matter that we don’t personally like the source) we must be willing to move our position accordingly, no matter the direction it takes us…left or right. If we instead insist, ‘My mind is made up don’t confuse me with the facts’, then we are a country of idiots with heels dug into the quicksand of collapse.

Trump as our next president is our civil servant and is accountable to us. Watch and critically analyze his and all politicians behavior.  Being a Trump loving or bashing hater is emotional not critical thinking and is an intellectually lazy position. Analyze and protest bad policy with facts and sound arguments collected from various sources with an understanding of their bias position and support any good policies that serve us.

Each day we should be asking ourselves in discussions, “Can my truth and their truth get us closer to a higher truth?” …because only the higher truths can save us.