It certainly has been a lively news cycle. In fact, the word “lively” simply doesn’t do it justice. There’s been seemingly a ton of significant activities and events. For example…
… the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro…
… the ICE shooting in Minneapolis…
… the crackdown by the Iranian government on their own people…
Suffice it to say, it’s a lot.
So how do we handle it? How do we stay objective? How do we know what we see is the truth?
I thought this was an excellent conversation recently between Geoff Bennett of PBS, David Brooks of the New York Times and Jonathan Capehart of MSNow, all left-leaning or far left organizations. They made an especially insightful, cultural point, discussing the ICE incident in Minneapolis…
BROOKS: Yes, let me talk first about the public debate, and then about the event, which Jonathan was talking about.
In 1951, there was a brutal football game between Princeton and Dartmouth. And after the game, researchers sent the Princeton kids and the Dartmouth kids film, the exact same film video of the game. And the Princeton kids said, look, this film proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Dartmouth kids did twice as many penalties.
And the Dartmouth kids said, this film proves without a shadow of a doubt that the Princeton kids did all the penalties. And so they were looking at the same video. And it’s a very famous social science experiment. And I watched it play out in real time this week, because every single Trump person on my feed, my social media feeds was saying, this proves he shot her with just cause.
And every single anti-Trump person on my feed said it was murder. I did not see one exception. And so I think what this tells us is the norm, which is essential to democracy, of putting the truth above your party and your team, that norm is eviscerated, at least on social media, hopefully not in real life.
As to the events of what actually happened, I’m not going to render a judgment on what happened, because we’re going to have an investigation. I will leave it to them. And I hope Minnesota has full information to do the investigation.
But what Jonathan [Capehart] said is absolutely correct., that the atmosphere that ICE has created is incendiary, that people who have power and have guns are supposed to exercise restraint, and they are doing the opposite. And the crust of civilization is thin. And once people with guns and with power began acting like thugs, well, then things are going to spiral. And that’s what we have seen.
BENNETT: Jonathan, to David’s point about the public debate, it does feel like we live in this moment where this idea of seeing is believing has been replaced by what you believe now determines what you see…
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Hear that, friends…
The idea of seeing is believing has been replaced by what we believe now determines what we see.
Of course we quote people and media and all sorts of sources — especially those who preface their opinion with the reason why they are of course objective — but our belief still permeates objectivity, albeit most often unknowingly.
That’s indeed insightful… concerning, too.
Respectfully…
AR