Polls show that more and more Americans believe in the
theory that the government is being influenced by “the deep state.” Those same
polls show that nearly 3 out of 4 individuals don’t know what “the deep state”
actually is. The situation is just another example of citizens surrendering
their God-given ability to think. That failure to think can have serious
consequences.
Most of us have simply become lazy. Instead of researching a
topic through reading and exploration, we allow all sorts of electronic media
to do our thinking for us. How many of us are guilty of watching 24-hour news
stations and blindly accepting what its commentators, whether liberal or
conservative, say? If a person is a Fox Network fan, he isn’t about to listen
to a different point of view that airs on CNN. The same holds true for those
who choose CNN as their news deliverer.
Social media delivers too many individuals’ news. Facebook,
Twitter, and Instagram all shotgun news bites and ads and links with
information we might find interesting. Of late, the discovery that Russians and
even some political factions in our own country have corrupted those outlets
with misleading stories has come to light. Still, too many people take the bait
and swallow made-up lies as gospel.
Even more of us unquestioningly accept information from the
Internet. I’ve heard so many times individuals say that something is a fact.
When I ask how they know that, folks reply, “It says so on the Internet.”
People have assigned the same divine qualities to the Internet that they give
to the Bible or the Koran.
The simple truth is that too many of us have grown
intellectually lazy. We don’t have the desire to discover for ourselves.
Reading isn’t on the top ten list of activities. As children, most of us found
great joy and entertainment as we delved into a topic to find as much
information as possible. As little ones, we made buttercup flowers from egg
cartons and painted them a beautiful yellow to celebrate spring and the coming
of Easter. In fourth grade, we students worked in groups to build replicas of
the Matterhorn and report on Switzerland and the Alps. In 6th grade,
Mr. Fowler instructed all of us to make a scrapbook of the events of John
Kennedy’s assassination, which had occurred in the fall of that year. I still
have pieces of that project in a drawer somewhere.
The safeguards against foreign intrusions and subversion are
continued pursuit of the truth. That comes when people invest in reading and
examining information for themselves; they never merely take the word of a
third-party source. At the same time, a well-informed person listens to both
sides of an argument and finds the salient points from both.
Our country is more polarized each day. Folks buy into the
side they like and close their minds to anything the opposition proffers. Such
single-mindedness leads to a loss of moderation, and in the end, paralyzes
leaders from acting in the best interest of the entire country. The time has
come for each of us to reclaim our intellectual curiosity so that we no longer
can be blindly lead to believe that only one answer is the right one. We owe
this to ourselves and to our children. Otherwise, an authoritarian form of
government will take over because of our laziness and lead us far from the
democratic principles that Americans love.
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