Welcome to this Sunday’s Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. Today we target: Deception
With mindless gluttony, a cardinal sin, do we stray from the straight and narrow as activists, pundits and politicians serve up deceptive and distorted information to gobble down, even act on, cooked up from the “smoke and mirrors” kitchen?
Since “Smoke and Mirrors” depends on obscuring, disguising, or embellishing a situation with partial, twisted, or misleading language and similarly irrelevant or just plain false information, is there recourse from such deception?
Should expert testimony and pejorative adjective use be suspect, especially if it’s a hit piece or policy posturing?
Is it easy to find “an expert”, especially an “on the payroll expert” or, an ideologue, and presto, narratives appear, especially ones that are divisive and inimical to the nation?
Looking into the domestic, social issues, mirror do we become slaves to BDD (Body Dysmorphic Disorder) or Spectro phobia while viewing, or trying to avoid, scores of subjects all supposedly linked by supporting intersectionality? More deception?
Is the list of social justice grievances so extensive that America must be the foulest place on earth and people should be fleeing by the millions? And the truth is?
Better to trust your gut and common sense rather than empathetic, or maybe just pathetic, thoughts conditioned by revolutionary WOKE or politically correct, control forces?
By selective example, is blaming climate change with smoke temporarily blanketing the east coast from Canadian forest fires a prime smoke and mirror example? Why?
Is accusatory racism a favorite pastime of the smoke and mirrors crowd? Besides invoking “Hitler’, when in doubt, use the “R” word?
Is drug addiction (and illegal distribution) a smoke and mirror disease that is, unfortunately, in the main, a life-style choice with its many deceptions and distortions including death?
Are recent, and not so recent , actions and antics of the Justice department and FBI and out of control administrative state plus the, in and out of office, intelligence gurus just one smoke and mirror exercise after another?
Do the smoke and mirror manipulators call for action when just one person, much less groups, are deemed to be disadvantaged?
Are claims, however outlandish, considered prima facie need for redress including redistribution of wealth (end of capitalism) and more government control to insure equity, however ill defined, with limitations on individual freedoms except for a new and perpetual ruling class?
Taken to their expressed extremes, are we lemming-like led to encourage the end of the American Dream and Reality after nearly 250 years of unmatched progress?
Are the smoke and mirror deceptions meant to fool we the people who will be lulled or led to repressions of our own making?
Time for real magic of our own to rid the stage of deceptions caused by smoke and mirror actors?
Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The answers and actions are yours.