Facts and Emotions: Battling A Culture of Lies
We need to answer emotion with counter-emotion. If we don’t trigger an emotional response, our facts won’t matter because they won’t be heard.
We need to answer emotion with counter-emotion. If we don’t trigger an emotional response, our facts won’t matter because they won’t be heard.
He’s been murdering people week after week, sometimes day after day, now month after month. We’re getting used to it. It’s not a big story anymore. It isn’t the headline. It isn’t the lead story. Oh, sure, at first, some folks were shocked, outraged, demanded an investigation. At first … but not now, not anymore. It’s become normal. Dog bites man. No big deal. Happens all the time. Not news.
Our democracy doesn’t just permit you to speak freely, but it requires it. It’s through the freedoms of speech and press that our democracy defends itself, strengthens itself, and grows itself.
It took the Resistance, the nationwide gaggle of Indivisible groups, ADAPT protesters, health care advocates, and the people themselves to bring this reality to the forefront. They marched and shouted, they posted and tweeted, they emailed and called and sang, they carried photos of their friends and family, yes, they disrupted and got arrested – but mostly they told their stories.
Lena Epstein’s unusual pre-primary attack ad may have revealed her fear of facing a female Democratic opponent in the November General Election. Epstein, a leading Republican candidate for Michigan’s 11th Congressional District seat, launched a television ad attacking Democrat Tim Greimel. The ad criticised Greimel for being “anti-Trump” and pro-choice. Epstein’s campaign has emphasized her loyalty…
As we await the trial phase of the impeachment proceedings, it’s apparent that many members of the U.S. Senate are jumping past the first question – the question of fact – and starting on the question of punishment.
Almost 50 years ago, I was transfixed as a NASA astronaut climbed down a ladder and pressed his boot into the grainy surface of the moon. A week ago, I sat transfixed as NASA guided a vehicle to a soft landing in Elysium Planitia, a “flat, boring equatorial plain” on a planet 300 million miles…
This chaos, this havoc, this loss of reliability and stability proves the foregone conclusion: that government doesn’t work, cannot work. So chaos, incompetence, corruption, havoc all play into driving this message. So all of this havoc, all of this chaos, all of this pain may be “proving” that government isn’t needed at all. This has all been part of a well-crafted plan, then?
The story of America cannot be told in terms of what we are or what we have been. The American story is that we are a people in motion – we are going someplace. Someplace better than where we are or where we were. It’s not about where we are, it’s about the journey we are on.
It’s not about what we are, it’s about what we are trying to become.
Into this world came this song. It certainly wasn’t on the radio, but I had bought the album – my second Dylan album – and listened to it, late at night, in the living room, on the hi-fi console, with my headphones on, in stereo.
When I first heard it, it was just “the next track” on the album. But halfway through, I stopped and moved the needle back to the beginning. I listened. Then played it again. And again. And again.
I learned, in 5 minutes, about poverty. Farming. South Dakota. Pain. Helplessness. Desperation. Terror. Loss.